Does anything the UN does matter? I don't mean that in a flippant/sarcastic way. The "teeth" of the UN is ostensibly the UN Security Council, which runs on vetoes by interests that are practically never aligned. It seems to provide cover for US policy, and when it can't serve that purpose the US does what it wants anyway either with NATO or by itself.
The stated point of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights is to prevent the need for constant Declarations of Independence through violent revolution.
https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/righttod...
The history is that western democracies generally emphasized civil rights while poorer countries social rights. This “evened the playing field” to play off rights against each other. For example one can claim that it’s been necessary to to limit certain civil rights to improve the situation of social rights. (Take away the farms and give them to the workers).
Why not just adopt the damn land value tax or just do plain old ground leases? Come on. Why does everything have to be solved with some stupid repossession thing where people get free shit that they don't want to take care of?
How about a right to live in a community free of external interference—a stronger version of the right to self-determination? You could argue that it would prevent acts of external aggression, but it could also be used to prevent aid when a nation's people are being oppressed.
I believe the part about authoritarians trying to trojan horse bills that erode our rights disguised as unobjectionable bills. We see it all the time with bills that restrict our right to privacy disguised as anti-child porn legislation. People who come out in favor of the 4th amendment are painted as vile criminals.
That said, I don't see how it works in this instance. Care to elaborate?
Authoritarian country criticizes democracies for environmental “crimes” which violates human rights. Says they have no right to criticize since they also violate human rights.
Massive whatsboutism that detracts from the important issues.
He complains to the authorities that you fly on a jet a few times a year, contributing to climate change. He never flies, you see (because he can't afford it).
He promises to stop beating his children once you stop flying.
The authorities are forced to admit that this is a fair proposal, as both beating children and flying on jets are violations of human rights. No deal is struck, you continue flying on jets, he continues beating his children, knowing that what little leverage the neighborhood had over him has been lost.
That aside, whoever speaks second appears to be the one accused of engaging in whataboutism. Just make the neighbor complain first, and then you're the one doing a whataboutism.
Both of those aside, the authorities aren't forced to conflate two separate issues and begrudgingly support the status quo. Both can and should have consequences.
Does this mean no new human right can ever be established? And by extension, that the set of human rights currently in the UDHR are "complete"?
(I don't have a strong opinion yet, just found this framing curious...)
The UN is a diplomatic discussion forum and place to organize joint projects. It's an anarchy, not a not a government.
I'm pretty clueless when it comes to diplomacy. What is the drive for authoritarians? How do you negotiate with them, or otherwise limit their influence? (and is that desirable?).
It occurs to me that this same argument can be used against anything that ought to be enshrined at the UN as a human right. An obvious example being loving who you want without regard to sex or gender.
What’s the fundamental human right? Shouldn’t we be worried that these so-called human rights are being newly discovered relatively recently?
"Who" implies a human. The topic is human rights. I'm not sure I follow what this particular question is trying to get at.
> Why is it linked to sex or gender?
Pro answer: It isn't. We've known this since prehistoric times.
Con answer: Because only a man and a woman can create a new human life on their own.
> Is this a singular love or is polygamy a human right?
Age differences would have made for a better example here. But my answer would be that this question is that it frankly doesn't matter for my example. I.e., one does not need to answer the question of "how many people should we allow someone to marry" to answer the question of "should people be allowed to marry someone with the same genitals as themselves". Indeed, our global reality reflects that.
> What’s the fundamental human right?
What I previously stated: "loving who you want without regard to sex or gender". Notice that it does not say "without regard to singular vs plural love" or "without regard to reciprocation" or anything else.
> Shouldn’t we be worried that these so-called human rights are being newly discovered relatively recently?
That's... how it works.
We (or at least Western society) don't enshrine rights into laws and constitutions until we realize something we ought to be allowed to do freely is being unduly infringed upon. That's a process that doesn't stop.
We should be worried when we stop "discovering" new rights, not the other way around. Humanity has yet to produce a generation that "has it all figured out" with respect to fundamental rights, and there is no reason to assume we ever will.
We should be worried about certain societies “discovering” new rights and attempting to impose them on the rest of the world who may or may not share that viewpoint. This is true of “enlightened” societies like in the West just as much as other societies.
You mean sorta like... the past 50 years or so?
Procedurally, I mean. Presumably the same mechanisms used to vote for/against this could be used to prevent terrible people from pushing for terrible things?
Now the question of a slippery slope could be that with a right to clean environment developed nations could stifle growth and innovation in developing nations citing clean environment worries (maybe Nigeria and oil). This could go way deeper than oil however as any country trying to harvest any sort of natural resource can face scrutiny and potential action. In an extreme example developed nations could then say 'we will mine these resources because we can do it less intensively' robbing nations of potential nation building revenue. How would you combat this? Maybe a 'right to develop' and boom rights dilution and authoritative in nature. Perhaps am extreme example but extreme isn't too far with people involved.
As things stand, what this decision does is make it look like the UK has a vested interest in polluting the world, which makes exactly 0 sense to me from a foreign policy POV: this is not something countries want to look like they stand for.
Hence my asking, I just can't make the decision or the arguments behind it make sense?
Is this a joke? If there is no issue with the resolution itself, then we for sure should accept it.
So it's basically about using one set of issues, which in substance are hard to fight, to weaken human rights as a whole. But it could just as easily have been about something else, like the "right to development", which has been pushed by authoritarian countries for years.