All-Out Hymns To World Peace: Vain Incantations Without Respect For Human Rights By All!
On Tuesday, December 10, 2024, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights turned seventy-six (76) years old. This anniversary was placed under the theme “Our rights, our future, now” by the United Nations (UN). In Burkina Faso, the event will be commemorated on Thursday, December 12, 2024, at the Paul-Zoungrana National Center by the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) in collaboration with the national office of the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Burkina Faso and the Delegation of the European Union. This commemoration “aims to highlight the importance of human rights and the protection of civic space in order to contribute to the building of a better future.’’ It therefore seemed appropriate to me to bring my share of understanding and conviction on what the different subjects of international law should adopt as a position and behavior with a view to an effective exercise of human rights by all for a peaceful world, a prelude to a peaceful world.
Spring of extremes within politics and religion on a global scale, the inability of international and regional organizations to have States enforce rules of law they have sovereignly adopted, exacerbation of commercial and diplomatic tensions between the different world powers, hegemonic ambitions of regional powers, the resistance of so-called developing countries to the will (affirmed or subtle) of domination of powerful political entities of planetary rank, etc. This is unfortunately one of the faces that the world presents in this third decade of the 3rd millennium.
In such a context, the founding values of the United Nations, namely peace, justice, respect, human rights, tolerance and solidarity, which the Member States claim to espouse, are either omitted, ignored or, finally, variable in geometry depending on the interests of the States or governments of the moment that represent these States.
Legality and legitimacy, two concepts not to be confused!
From this context arises the erroneous conception that, in many cases, makes legality a word synonymous with legitimacy. However, legality is a concept with much narrower and more restricted semantic contours than legitimacy in that it characterizes what is only in accordance with the law; while legitimacy includes in its field of definition fairness, social justice, equity, or equality. More simply, we can say that legality refers to written law, and positive law, and legitimacy is tied to the quality of what is just and moral.
It should also be noted that legality is a reflection of the balance of power in the social arena where individuals and groups of individuals compete. The legislative, regulatory, and administrative texts that govern the life of societies are the expression of these forces. This is why they are temporally determined: either because the community has undergone changes and it has become imperative to adapt them to new social realities or to repeal them purely and simply; or because of large-scale changes at the institutional level of States.
On the other hand, legitimacy is less so, which is tied to moral values of fairness, equality, and justice) that are less subject to the consequences of the vicissitudes of social life. In relation to the current global situation, the observation is that while some people have chosen extremes by consequently electing leaders likely to embody their vision of the world and respond to their existential needs, others have endorsed de facto rulers who have more or less (and sometimes more than less) this type of political and diplomatic orientation.
Such a situation disconcerts the other subjects of international law, namely international (or intergovernmental) organizations, of which the UN is the leader. Similarly, respect for human rights is in many respects in the trough of the wave.
The UN, fruit of the lessons learned from the 2nd World War
Indeed, learning lessons from the causes and consequences of the 2nd World War, the preamble to the UN Charter adopted on 26 June 1945 underlines that the Member States are “Determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, to reaffirm our faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, to create the conditions necessary for the maintenance of justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law, to promote social progress and establish better conditions of life in larger freedom.”
To this end, the Member States undertake “to practice tolerance, to live in peace with one another as good neighbours, to join forces to maintain international peace and security, to accept principles and establish methods whereby armed force shall not be used except in the common interest, and to have recourse to international institutions to promote the economic and social progress of all peoples.”
Resolutions that are still relevant but royally trampled underfoot by States
Today, more than ever, these resolutions and commitments are of indisputable relevance. But is it enough for the texts to be timely to produce positive effects in practice? Obviously not, since the sine qua noncondition is that they are applied! And it is still necessary for the governments and the people they represent to want to do so. This is not the case today, where many of the latter are more in the logic of casus belli (cases of war) than in that of casus pacis (chance or case of peace). By having little regard for the charters, conventions, treaties and other pacts that they themselves have approved without any constraint, peoples and their leaders thus contribute to ensuring that human rights and international relations are increasingly governed by decisions of fact and not by international law.
The question that arises from this is the following: are humans really in a perspective of building peace which is not that of the strongest but the result of the acceptance and implementation by all States of the rules of international law? Certainly not! Yet, what praise, hymns, and odes to peace which, however, cannot be effective without respect for international law, human rights, and certain timeless human values such as good, truth, fairness.
Deliberate refusals to respect or enforce international law
Everything happens as if the people and their leaders were lying to themselves and that they have not learned enough from the errors that led their predecessors and the populations of the globe into the unspeakable horrors of the 1st and 2nd World Wars. Even the Romans who devoted a divine cult to force through large-scale warlike excursions said this: “Fortitudo pacis in soliditate nexuum cum lege consistit”. In other words, “The strength of peace lies in the solidity of its links with law”.
This means that unless they want to impose peace with variable geometry in the service of motivations contrary to those of humanity as a whole, the leaders of the world, starting with the most powerful, who like to teach lessons here and there on respect for human rights, must provide proof that their observation of these rights is not dependent on their exclusive national or particular interests but is part of the imperative to bring an extra soul into the life of a world subject to an accelerated growth trend of the law of force to the detriment of the force of law; that in addition to this, they refrain from protecting States or governments who have little regard for international law and/or their own national legislation.
Exemplarity must come first from the oldest Western democratic nation-states
In this, the example should first come from the old Western democracies through the corrections of the glaring injustices that abound in the management of world affairs: inequity of the terms of trade, quasi-enslavement of the World Trade Organization (WTO) by a few countries, non-compliance with UN resolutions and other rules of international law ; which rules nevertheless have a general, abstract and obligatory character and a social purpose recognized by all States and indicate what must be done in a given situation. This is only an order of precedence that does not mean that other countries are exempt from it since they too can, in accordance with the adage according to which ‘’for well-born souls, value does not wait for the number of years’’, be respectable specimens in terms of the democratic governance of their peoples.
This is why even the most optimistic analysts seem to despair of this state of affairs while waiting for the future to demonstrate the opposite. As much as peace is a necessity for humanity, it cannot go well with the liberties that certain countries, certain international firms, certain international organizations, and certain governments take with regard to the rules of international law. The degree of adequacy between what the texts to which one has subscribed say and/or societal values on the one hand and on the other hand what is done in practice seems to me to be the only element revealing the sincerity of leaders and peoples concerning their real will to work for the consolidation of peace without which sooner or later we will all perish and without exception!
The speeches celebrating the importance of human rights and peace are, consequently, so many useless intellectual digressions if the human values that the rules (international or national) of law are supposed to carry or contain are not translated into facts.
