Did You Know?
The term human rights basically means that every individual should share and enjoy the same freedoms and fundamental rights —
in other words, the fact that you exist as a human being means that you
have the right to life itself, which includes those things needed to
survive such as food, clothing, shelter, and so forth. The human rights
concept can actually be traced to ancient times; for example, the Ten
Commandments, which prohibit murder and theft, thereby recognizing the
right to life and property.
The old adage, "treat others the way you would like to be treated" can
also apply to a discussion on human rights. It is only when the rights
of others are taken away, or abused, disregarded, and ignored
that human rights becomes an issue. Unfortunately, the rights of
humans have been violated since the beginning of time. Legal documents
such as the British Bill of Rights (1689), the U.S. Declaration of
Independence (1776), and France's Declaration of the Rights of Man and
of the Citizen (1789) all included a number of fundamental rights and
freedoms for individuals.
It was not until 1948 though, as a result of the atrocities of
the Holocaust during World War II, that an actual resolution was
adopted by the United Nations General Assembly to protect the rights of
all humans in the world. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)
urged all countries to promote a number of human, political, economic, and
social rights stating that these rights are "part of the foundation of
freedom, justice, and peace in the world."
In 1944, only four years before the UDHR resolution and again because of the Holocaust, that a lawyer, Raphael Lemkin introduced the term genocide
to describe Adolph Hitler's policy to persecute and exterminate a
particular group of people, killing more than 6 million Jews. The Greek
root word geno- means family or tribe and -cide means to kill, hence, the word genocide. In 1951, the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide
came into force as international law, making genocide a crime. The
Convention defined genocide as "acts committed with intent to destroy,
in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group."
(Ethnic cleansing is another term, which is often associated with
genocide.)
Since the time that these two famous documents (UDHR and the Convention)
were created, there have been other acts of genocide, and many other
abuses of human rights, from war crimes and torture to the growing
number of weapons of mass destruction (for example, nuclear bombs,
chemical and biological warfare), landmines, and cluster bombs; from
child soldiers to refugees; from women and children's rights to
terrorism; unfortunately, the list goes on an on.
Lesser Known Facts
According
to international law, the definition of war is an armed conflict
between two or more governments or states. A more common definition is
a large, prolonged conflict among political or ethnic groups. In an era
of medical breakthroughs, no cure has yet been found for war. (National
Geographic)
Genocides and other mass murders killed more people in the twentieth century than all of the wars combined.
From
1857 to 1867, Russian soldiers systematically removed Circassians and
Caucasians from villages and during the Caucasian War, more than
400,000 Circassians were killed or starved to death.
Through massacres, death marches, and forced deportations,
Turks eliminated 2 million Armenians living in Turkey from their
historic homeland from 1915 to 1917.
From 1932 to 1933, Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union
caused a famine, which resulted in 7 million Ukrainians starving to
death because of his forced Collective Farm System —
the farmers could not eat the food that they had grown from a
collective farm until the government's procurement quota was reached.
This meant that the peasant farmers had to give Stalin's government a
certain amount of food determined by the government before they could
eat it themselves.
In 1933, there were more than 9 million Jewish people in Europe. By
1945, the Nazis had killed almost two out of every three European Jews.
The Nazis did not only target Jews, they also killed homosexuals,
mentally and physically disabled people, political opponents, Gypsies,
people whose religion they did not agree with or accept (for example,
Jehovah's Witnesses), and more.
About 700,000 Jews immigrated to Israel after the Holocaust.
In 1941, in reference to the atrocities being committed by the Nazis,
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill stated that "We are in the
presence of a crime without a name." (Three years later, lawyer Raphael
Lemkin introduced the term genocide.)
In 1945/1946, the Nuremberg Trials that took place in the Nuremberg
Palace of Justice in Germany, tried 22 Nazi leaders on charges of
crimes against humanity, war crimes, crimes against peace, and
conspiracy to commit these crimes. Two judges from each of the Allied
Powers presided over the trials, the first where international
tribunals were used to hold national leaders responsible and
accountable for their actions.
In 1972, a Hutu-led coup resulted in the murder of 100,000 to 200,000 Hutus and Tutsis in Burundi, Central Africa.
From 1975 to 1979, Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot attempted to form
a Communist peasant farming society in Cambodia, which resulted in
approximately 1.7 million deaths from starvation, executions, and being
overworked.
From 1975 to 1979, the Indonesian military used starvation,
along with napalm and chemical weapons, to exterminate the people of
East Timor, killing 150,000.
In 1988, in Iraq, Saddam Hussein's regime conducted the
al-Anful Campaign, a genocidal campaign against the Kurds in northern
Iraq. Hussein's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, nicknamed "Chemical Ali" for
his role, led the Campaign in gassing civilians: 2,000 villages were
destroyed and 50,000 to 100,000 people were killed. In 2007, Ali and
four others received sentences ranging from death to life imprisonment
for their role in the killings.
From 1992 to 1995, the conflict between Serb, Croat, and
Muslim ethnic groups in the Republic of Bosnia–Herzegovina led to
genocide committed by the Serbs in which tens of thousands Bosnian
Muslims were killed — in one small town, Srebrenica, 7,800 Bosnjiak men and boys were murdered. The Bosnia events were labeled as ethnic cleansing.
In 1994, over a period of 100 days, the Hutu militia killed 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda using machetes and clubs.
Refugees flee their country because of fear (of persecution, threats, war, and more).
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the following countries
had the largest amount of refugees: Iran (1.8 million); Pakistan (1.2
million); Germany (976,000); and the United States (513,000).
Darfur, a region of western Sudan has been under siege by
militia, who are brutalizing its citizens and destroying their
villages; more than 10,000 people have been killed and an
estimated 1 million have been displaced, in one of the greatest humanitarian crises of
current times.
Landmines are designed to severely wound rather than kill
their victims. At the end of the 1990s, approximately 15,000 to 20,000
people had been wounded by landmines; because of worldwide efforts that
number has gone down and it is now estimated that about 5,700
occur a year — still to many.
More than 75 countries are affected by landmines but no one knows
exactly how many are in the ground, the most landmine-contaminated
countries include: Afghanistan, Angola, Burundi, Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Cambodia, Chechnya, Colombia, Iraq, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.
For over 40 years cluster bombs have killed and injured
civilians during and after conflicts. Unexploded cluster bombs continue
to kill and injure for days, months, even decades after a conflict.
Every year nearly 1 million young children and women are sold
into sexual slavery. Nearly 30% of the victims are between the ages of
9 and 15, and some are as young as 5 or 6 years old. A US$12 billion
industry, protected by corrupt officials and an indifferent public, it
continues to grow.
Two to four million young women and children will be sold into slavery in the next 12 months.
Female genital mutilation (FGM) includes procedures that
intentionally alter or injure female genital organs for nonmedical
reasons. An estimated 100 to 140 million girls and women worldwide are
currently living with the consequences of FGM. In Africa, about 3
million girls are at risk for FGM annually.
The United Nations estimates that this year, at least 5 million people will need food aid in Zimbabwe.
|
