Back to Archives

February 4 , 2003
Defending Human Rights and the Human Person

"In 1948 world leaders signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It would serve as the ideological charter to the work of the United Nations, and provide the basis for the development of human rights language, law, and politics over the coming 50 years. For the first time, world leaders agreed that the human person has intrinsic and inalienable dignity, that this dignity is the basis for the enjoyment of human rights, and that some human rights are universal. In practical terms, it established clear directions for the state. The state acts for its citizens, and the citizens therefore have prior rights irrespective of the desires or wishes of the state." Thus began Miss Anna Halpine, the 24 year old President of World Youth Alliance, in her lecture entitled "Human Rights and the Human Person: Building a Culture of Life at the United Nations" at Christendom College on February 3.

Halpine explained that it was following the turmoil of World War II that the leaders of nations, leading academics, and philosophers struggled together to establish universal norms and rights for the person. They were all searching for the answer to one simple question: who is the human person?

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights reiterated that the dignity of the person is the basis for all human rights, says Halpine, and recognized that this dignity is inalienable and intrinsic. States could not arbitrarily remove that dignity, or qualify the granting of rights. No basic human rights could be denied to any human person at the whim of a dictator, tyrant or state.

The drafting of the Declaration was recognized by everyone as step one. Implementation of the principles and ideas laid out in the declaration by nation states would be the real achievement.

Looking back on various world conferences held over the past decade, Halpine explained that the Declaration is not always properly interpreted or implemented. In many of these conferences, the rights of the human person were at stake, for example at the 1992 Rio Conference on the Environment. At this conference, the United States, under the new leadership of the Clinton administration, had attempted to create a document that recommended the elimination of huge numbers of existing and future populations through abortion and population control in order to protect the environment. "The underlying philosophy of their position was that people polluted, and people were the problem. Reducing the number of people seemed the obvious solution," said Halpine.

And again, at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, a document was released "which had many problematic passages within it," stated Halpine, "but it did not grant abortion to be a human right." At the International Conference on Women in Beijing, the US used this as an opportunity to try and promote abortion. Hillary Clinton wrote a large part of the document, which "promoted new rights for every conceivable reproductive and sexual urge women might have, but which saw the choice for motherhood as degrading and oppressive to women," Halpine remarked.

The World Youth Alliance was founded at Cairo in 1999. Recognizing that millions of young people were being misrepresented and that the priorities in their lives were not being addressed at all, the World Youth Alliance began as an authentic voice of youth for a real constituency. "We have engaged UN conferences, delegations and states, and have participated in every major UN conference since then that addresses the question of the human person and the definition of human rights," continued Halpine.

According to Halpine, at the 2000 conference for women, the Clinton delegation suggested a reversal in the human rights language. They proposed stating that human rights grant human dignity; a direct reversal of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that the dignity of the person grants human rights. Clinton's suggestion, made and rejected quietly, indicates the underlying philosophy of the conferences of the 90's and touches on the power of what transpires at the UN. The definition of the human person is the primary focus of an institution that gathers the leaders of the world together to establish how and upon what basis, their societies will be run. Ensuring the proper definition of the person which cannot be changed by any of the 188 member states has ramifications in the national and foreign policies of every country in the world.

"Without establishing a solid basis for how we, as a global community view the human person, all other activities and projects will falter. The evidence for this is now clear, and extremely bleak. The view that the person is an object that can be used and discarded at will is not new. It is perhaps the single most tragic idea that each generation will embrace. The list of dictators and tyrants who have selectively eliminated members of the population is long. The ways that they have achieved their goals are many. Today we continue to struggle with these ideas. Cloning, abortion, euthanasia and bio-manipulation all point to a flawed vision of a person; one which allows us to experiment and use another person as a product or means to an end," concluded Halpine.
top of page