Recently, the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank influential with the Bush administration stated: "The idea that the UN embodies a greater good is a fantasy." While I have some sympathies with that statement, as evidenced in part by UN’s failure in the 1980’s to arrest the increasing flow of information in the global media that tended to filter the news through the lenses of the most developed nations of the world, as urged by UNESCO, which then resulted in US withdrawal from UNESCO. Since the United States has rejoined UNESCO, largely because it may be that in this new millennium it is an understatement to say that the news is largely that of western viewpoints, the US and its European allies having won the cold war. There is also the continuing UN’s failure to tame the largely free-market policies of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization, which continue to result in an increasing global maldistribution of wealth and most recently, its failure to stop the invasion or should I say continuing invasion of Iraq.

Yet, despite the UN’s failures to consistently implement its Charter, which according to Articled VI, the Supremacy Clause, of the US Constitution has the status of treaty, thereby considered "law of the land" and the "judges bound thereby," whose purpose is "to maintain peace and security," (Art. 1 of the Charter) "to promote higher standards of living, full employment, and conditions of economic and social progress" (Art. 55 of the Charter) among other things, I still think that the UN is one of our best, if not the best, hope for a socially just world. I say possibly one of our best hopes because there have also been regional developments, progeny of the United Nations, such as the Organization of American States, the Organization of African Unity, and the Council of Europe which, while they too have their problems, still represent further hopes for humanity. Their aspirations, largely similar to those of the United Nations, however, are also not immune from political meandering, or some say, more bluntly "bullying" as just last month the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the "most prestigious human rights monitoring body in the western hemisphere" at least according to the New York Times, recently refused to allow the United States to have a seat on the commission because of "Mr. Powell’s excessive and narrow focus on Cuba at the expense of other issues… like the embargo against Cuba" and the US appointment of a Rafael Martinez, a health lawyer of questionable credentials, but also leading fund raiser for Bush’s presidential campaign.

I say that the United Nations is still possibly our greatest hope primarily because, in my view, it has enshrined in its documents an increasingly powerful "social construct" that of human rights, which in this new millennium no government would dare say it is against. That is quite a switch from the days prior to World War II when many members of the international community failed to stop the onslaught of the Third Reich’s pogroms against its own citizens, in part because they adhered to the principle of domestic sovereignty of nations, but also, because to do so might bring attention to their own human rights abuses, such as public lynchings, the death penalty (particularly of juveniles and today the US is the only country in the world that gives the death penalty to persons who committed homicide while children) and extreme poverty in the United States; official policies of torture by European governments in their colonies; and, of course, the Soviet’s Gulag, a land mass roughly the size of France which contained many political dissidents.

Thus, "human rights" a term officially coined by the United Nations in 1945, has already been etched in stone, so to speak, by what Pope John Paul II called that "milestone in the long and difficult struggle of the human race," the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), drafted under the able leadership of and American, Eleanor Roosevelt originally meant to be a hortatory document, but today, increasingly referred to as customary international law, which all nations of the world must follow. Roughly, it asserts human dignity, civil and political rights, like freedoms of speech, the press, peaceful assembly and religion; economic, social, and cultural rights, like rights to shelter, health care, security in old age, and employment; and solidarity rights, like the right to development and international distributive justice as human rights. It sees all these rights as interdependent, indivisible, and equal, different from the US position, which has consistently argued for the priority of civil and political rights, as exemplified in its Bill of Rights.

Following the Universal Declaration are its "the long train of conventions and declarations" to quote the Pope again which by and large, further elucidate the rights of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Briefly, for example, the Universal Declaration states in Article 25: "All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection." The Convention on the Rights of the Child, which, incidentally, only two countries in the world, the United States and Somalia have not ratified, with Somalia it appears not having the governmental capacity to do so, further states what these social protections might be for example that: "State parties recognize the right of a child to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health and that no child is deprived of his or her right of access to such health care services (Article 24) or that "State parties recognize the right of every child to a standard of living adequate for the child’s physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development (Article 27). As you may have guessed, the US has objected to the obligations, which that convention imposes upon government to provide for the vast array of economic and social rights of children.

In brief, there are other human rights conventions, each like the United Nations Charter also having the status of treaty, which should become law, once ratified. In addition to the Rights of the Child then, there are five other major human rights conventions which are pretty much self-explanatory: the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ratified by the US in 1992); the International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women; the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ratified by the US in 1994); and the Convention Against Torture (1994). I see these conventions as "keys" to a socially just world, but if only we will open our eyes to them and live them in spirit, creating what has been called a "human rights culture" a lived awareness of human rights principles. This obligation I feel is especially pertinent to us as Americans, residents of arguably the world’s only super-power, apart from the other power being "world opinion," as recently stated in the New York Times.

In order then to move towards a human rights culture, an idea we definitively owe to the United Nations, there needs to be strong domestic initiatives that either formally or informally "coordinate" international UN human rights initiatives with domestic organs. Without domestic support for UN initiatives, anyway, the UN would be sorely ineffective.

I would recommend, therefore, on the federal level, for example, in addition to the newly created Department of Homeland Security, a Human Rights Cabinet which would serve, among other things, as a central coordinating agency to submit reports to human rights committees that monitor compliance with UN treaties, act as a forum where individuals and other countries can voice their concerns about human rights violations as pertaining to US domestic and foreign policy, and provide information and assistance to executive, judicial, legislative, and non-governmental bodies wishing to implement human rights into their laws and policies. Many legislators, for instance, do not know that the US Constitution is sorely lacking in the areas of economic, social, cultural, and solidarity rights. And certainly, Ms. Eleanor Roosevelt’s wish that every school boy knows about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as much as the Bill of Rights has certainly not become a reality. But, that should be our challenge, that should be one of our hopes. It would be interesting to see the extent that the National Constitution Center Museum opened on July5th entertains the full plethora of human rights as enunciated in human rights documents.

On the state level I would recommend support of the present Human Rights House Bill #2840 initiated by Ms. Ellen Story of Amherst and cosponsored by Benjamin Swan, Anne Paulsen, Patricia Jehlen, Susan Fargo, and Kay Khan which calls for the "Investigation and study by a special commission relative to integrating international human rights standards in Massachusetts laws and policies". On the municipal level, we can attempt to endorse human rights documents such as the Declaration of the Rights of the Child as law for the City of New York under the Dinkins administration and the recent Cambridge Declaration, largely upon the initiative of the Coalition for a Strong United Nations, which in 1998 declared the Universal Declaration of Human Rights "law of the land".

Informally, we may wish to show a principle of the Rights of the Child on children’s television, as opposed to the abominable practice of advertising on children’s television, forbidden in the majority of the countries of the world, socializing these defenseless ones into placing a priority on "having," rather than "being" with others in humane ways. When I had attended the Human Rights Defenders Conference in Paris in 1998 which celebrated the 50^th anniversary of the drafting of the Universal Declaration, I was favorably impressed to find copies of that document in Air France’s magazine and also actors and actresses dancing in a kind of MTV "skit" to Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights who would say "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood." Then, all the dancers would stand in unison and say: "Think about it." Did France’s refusal to go along with the US invasion of Iraq having something to do with a clash of cultures?