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July 1998 |
The Revolution of Dignity
Fifty years ago, the American nations planted the fertile promise of international protection of human rights. Meeting in 1948 in Bogotá on the occasion of the Ninth Inter-American Conference, their representatives adopted what constituted the first international juridical instrument consecrating the concept of human rights: the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man. It was approved seven months before the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Of even greater significance is that its pioneering character and its content inspired the process of adoption of the Universal Declaration.
The American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man was not born as a binding instrument with the purpose of setting forth legal obligations. And probably few of those who took place in its formation foresaw the very important historical significance that it would acquire. At the same time, there is no doubt about the sense of urgency that surrounded the discussion and approval of the text: humanity was beginning to recover from the self-inflected lacerations of the world wars and the urgent task of founding an international order that made the coexistence of all the peoples of the orb viable was set forth as never before. We were finally starting to realize that wars were not sudden episodes of animadversion between countries, but that their gestation begins with the oppression of citizens by their rulers, with the absolute exercise of power, with the deprivation of the most elementary dimensions of personal dignity. This explains why the internationalization of human rights and the dissemination of democracy became the fundamental pillars of the new world order.
The American Declaration introduced into the international agenda the first normative list of human rights. Its broad content is not exhausted in the plain of civil and political rights, but also incorporates economic, social and cultural rights. No less important is its clear conceptualization about the correlation that must exist between rights and duties, as this is an essential requirement to achieve a social climate that guarantees the efficient rule of all human rights.
The germinal resolution adopted in Bogotá in 1948 has generated transformations of revolutionary magnitude thanks to which the world's people have recovered hope. The American Declaration and the Universal Declaration of human rights have stopped being mere good will charters and have progressively acquired imperative meanings within international law. At the same time, both within the frameworks of the OAS and the UN, new normative instruments and procedural mechanisms have been put into work as expression of the growing international commitment to bring efficient protection to every person. The argument of state sovereignty as a justification for authoritarian abuses has been delegitimized before the recognition to an essential solidarity among human beings. Thus, the cause of human rights, plagued as it is by lack of understanding and political manipulation, has greatly contributed to the democratic development of nations and the recognition of the dignity inherent in each person.
Today the Inter-American system provides a sophisticated operative framework for the protection of human rights, which greatly relativizes the dogma of res judicata within national jurisdictions. The synchronic interaction of the Inter-American Commission and Court is a recent achievement. During the decades of authoritarian poundings of the seventies and eighties the system lacked the necessary political will to assume the serious challenges that it was given. But, now, within a regional scenario of progressive democratic development, the institutional responses of both institutions have acquired a significant quality. Within their procedural agendas, the traditional and heartrendering themes of forced disappearances, extrajudicial executions and torture, are giving way as the mechanisms and democratic conducts of the member countries mature. New themes, such as those of non-discrimination, freedom of expression, and patrimonial defense, are at the same time acquiring importance, while the qualitative and quantitative sediment of the jurisprudence issued by both institutions broadens.
But the task of protecting personal dignity and promoting democratic development does not cease. In this manner, as a manifestation of its commitment with the new challenges and circumstances of the new times, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has just adopted the important decision of creating a Special Rapporteur Office on Freedom of Expression. This opportune initiative has merited the support of the American chiefs of state, meeting in the recent Presidential Summit in Santiago de Chile.
Fifty years later we can look with satisfaction on how much we have advanced in cementing in our surroundings and consciences the recognition of the essential rights of every person. But at the same time we must lament how much more we could have achieved, and recognize that the still-pending task is immense.
Oscar Schiappa-Pietra teaches Comparative Law and is a member of the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at American University in Washington D.C.
