"Human" means everyone. "World" means everywhere. The preamble to the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "human rights should be protected by a regime of law.
"Should?" The use of that word was a concession to nationalism, which stands as the diametrical counter to universal human rights and indeed to humanity itself.
Human rights must be protected by a regime of law, just as the United States' Bill of Rights takes the form of amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The U.N.'s Human Rights Declaration, however, was unfortunately issued prior to the establishment of a world constitution. That accounts for the dichotomy today between human rights and world law.
According to national leaders, there is no connection between human rights and world law. That much was plainly illustrated in the words of those officials taking part in the U.N.'s recent 50th anniversary bash.
That celebration was addressed by 91 heads of state, eight vice-presidents, one crown prince, 37 prime ministers, 10 deputy prime ministers, 21 foreign ministers, nine chairmen of delegations and 23 observers-a total of 200 speakers. While the dominant theme woven through the speeches was reform of the United Nations, not one of the speakers mentioned world law. And, of course, none suggested relinquishing a portion of their sovereignty to a world government. Yet many mentioned, even insisted on, human rights.
Norway's Prime Minister, Gro Harlem Brundtland, came closest, saying, "We must build a civilized world on law and contracts." Does Norway's leader then advocate amending Norway's constitution to include world law? If that is what she intends, she did not share that revolutionary notion with her fellow heads of state.
President Clinton, in his 14-minute speech, mentioned human rights once and peace seven times but failed to define either.
While Nelson Mandela claimed that "no one in the north or the south can escape the cold fact that we are a single humanity," he did not promote a single world law for that single humanity.
Boris Yeltsin spoke of "the development of a world community." In an apparent contradiction, however, the Russian president went on to profess "respect for the identity of each state and an understanding of the peculiar features of its history." How does a "world community" develop, pray tell, without a common code of behavior, i.e., world law?
Le Duc Anh, Vietnam's president, called on the "international community to do their utmost for the enjoyment by all individuals and nations in the world of their fundamental rights for a life of peace, equality and development." No mention here, either, of a world law to enforce respect for such rights.
President Franjo Tudjman of Croatia: "The affirmation of human dignity and the universal rights of the individual upheld by the Charter of the United Nations can be achieved only through respect for different ethnic, cultural and political identities, through an efficient system of collective security and through respect for a law-governed state and international law." Here we have a somewhat subtle contradiction. "International law" is not world law; it is a matrix of treaties between equally sovereign states. It is not people-oriented, and thus cannot refer to human rights. Advocating "international law" is a national politician's method of blinding the public to reality, of maintaining the fiction of national sovereignty while pretending to espouse idealism.
Fidel Castro, Cuba's Communist dictator, after calling for the "total removal of all weapons of mass extermination, for universal disarmament, and for the elimination of the use of force, arrogance, and pressure in international relations," laid claim "to a world of peace, justice, and dignity where everyone without exception has a right to well-being and to life." But wouldn't that require world law, Mr. President? Is Cuba ready to enter a world community of human rights where dictators have no place?
PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat reminded the assemblage that "the winds of change are blowing in our world. A new world order is emerging." But the heretic words "world law" never crossed his lips.
And so it went, speech after glowing or critical speech, all of them employing the terms of 19th century rhetoric.
While every single nation-state constitution-except Saudi Arabia's-claims that its government's power derives "from the people," national rulers in fact represent only their respective states, the creature of their constitutions. In short, the U.N. gala was a feckless gathering of state, not people, leaders. Neither you nor I, nor humanity as such, was represented there.
Moreover, the myriad human rights organizations themselves never mention world law as the prerequisite to human rights protection. Amnesty International bases its operations on Article Nine of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights prohibiting arbitrary detention. But it will not advocate world law as the ultimate defense of human rights.
No NGO, to my knowledge, includes world law on its agenda. The world federalists, pacifists, fundamentalists, socialists, communists, and all movements in between, have eschewed world law in favor of pleas for "strengthening the United Nations," or for establishing "international law" and even "world governance," the slipperiest of all.
But national leaders cannot fairly be reproached for acting as they do. After all, their status is a product of the sufferance of the popular will. And so long as we, the people, consider ourselves exclusionary nationalists, the war game of the states will continue. In the process, we degrade our own humanity.
Either humanity is sovereign or nation-states are. And when humanity is threatened in its entirety, then each one of us is threatened. The nuclear threat raises the stakes of human rights to the global and collective level. That is precisely why world law is the only protector of fundamental human rights, both of humanity in general and of you and me in particular. The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government," states Article 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
If we don't claim our human and, therefore, world rights, then we deserve the leaders we have.