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BBC Learning English
Talk about English
Insight Plus
Part 2 – Human Rights
Jackie: Welcome to bbclearningenglish.com and a second chance to hear
Insight Plus - a series first broadcast in 2001 that looks at the language
of issues you hear about in the news. Today’s topic is Human rights -
do we have a right to freedom, food and shelter? Here’s Lyse Doucet.
Lyse: The world is all too full of injustice. People’s rights are not being
respected. And these violations are getting more and more coverage in
the media. Our rights are being denied despite international laws meant
to protect us – laws, conventions, charters on human rights have existed
for centuries but the abuses still exist. In today’s Insight Plus, we’ll look
at the language used to report on human rights and gain some insight
into how the rights of people around the world are not being respected.
First, let’s listen to part of a report by Richard Hamilton, featured in the
BBC World Service radio programme, Analysis. He focuses on the
European Convention on Human Rights. But the language in that
agreement - that convention, is universal, like the issue of human rights.
Clip
We start just after the 2nd World War. In 1945 Europe was in a mess. Many European
cities were destroyed by the bombings, people had suffered greatly. And there were
troubling questions about the cruelty, the attrocities that had occurred during the war.
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The worst abuse of human rights was what came to be known as the holocaust, the
genocide of Jews in Nazi Germany. So much had been destroyed, but from the ruins,
or out of the ashes of post war Europe came a new determination.
After the Second World War, Europe lay in ruins - devastated by bombs, killings and
atrocities. But out of the ashes emerged a convention that lawmakers promised meant
citizens would never again suffer persecution, torture, slavery, or discrimination.
Lyse: Immediately after the war, 46 governments came together under the
title of The United Nations. The UN declared that the horrors of the
Second World War should never be allowed to happen again. Respect
for human rights and human dignity is, it said, “the foundation of
freedom, justice and peace in the world.”
In 1948, The UN created the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
and shortly afterwards came the European convention. The spirit and
principles in both these documents can be found in similar works
throughout history - as long ago as 1215, in England’s Magna
Carta…in the Declaration of Independence in the United States of
America in 1776, and in the 1789 French Declaration of the Rights of
Man and Citizen. Let’s return to our report on the European
Convention of Human Rights. We’ll hear from Keir Starmer, a leading
human rights lawyer, on the significance of this convention.
Clip
It’s meant common values across Europe and a common strategy to uphold human
rights and make them central in the protection given to individuals from their
governments.
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Lyse: Human rights are based on the idea that we have common values,
shared ideals such as “all human beings are born free and equal” and
“everyone has the right to life and liberty.” These common values are
stated clearly in the European Convention. Here’s Keir Starmer again
describing the protection the convention has given to citizens.
Clip
Individuals throughout Europe have relied on the right to liberty to challenge arrest
and detention on a widespread basis. They’ve relied on the convention to challenge
discrimination throughout Europe and they’ve widely relied on freedom of expression
to put forward views of minorities as well as majorities.
Lyse: Keir Starmer mentions some rights that are enshrined or permanently
protected in the European Convention. They include the right to
challenge, arrest and detention so we are not punished for things we
haven’t done. There’s also our right to freedom of expression – our
right to say what we think and feel whether its about religion, politics,
or personal matters. That can be especially important when we are part
of a minority, when our views are different from the views of the
majority of people.
In our next clip, we’ll hear some key articles - or points - from the
1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They’re read by Eleanor
Roosevelt, the wife of former American President Theodore Roosevelt,
She chaired the group that spent 3 years creating the historic
declaration.
Clip
(Universal Declaration of Human Rights)
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Lyse: Human rights are the subject of today’s Insight Plus from the BBC
World Service, your guide to the language and background to the
stories that stay in the news. Over the years, a large number of laws and
charters have been developed based on the United Nations Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. They’re meant to protect citizens, and to
confront human rights violations wherever they occur.
Around the world countries and regions have written their own
conventions. We’ve heard about the European Convention of Human
Rights. There’s also an American Convention and an African Charter.
But the report asks whether a global agreement could work.. Some
countries argue that certain cultures, for example Islamic nations, may
need their own human rights charter. But most experts agree that
human rights are universal and should be applied around the world. To
help achieve that, there have even been attempts to establish an
international guide such as The International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights, signed in 1966.
It’s a great goal. But the report reminds us that this lofty - or grand,
idealistic talk about people’s rights isn’t much much help to people
living in the poorest nations. If you’re hungry or don’t have a roof over
your head, it’s not much comfort to know you have a basic right to food
and shelter.
Clip
Lofty discussions about civil liberties might seem a long way off for people in many
parts of the world where their first concern is to get enough food to survive. The
human rights lawyer Kier Starmer says in these cases conventions give more priority to
economic rights rather than political ones.
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Kier Starmer
“These are of primary importance to developing nations who rightly see that civil and
political rights, for example, the right to vote the right to education, can only be
achieved if there’s a degree of economic prosperity and that ordinary people are
educated and have access to their civil and political rights. So that’s why there’s
different emphasis. In truth, both sets of rights are indivisible - you can’t have one
without the other. There are not many countries that say we need to be fed and
therefore we don’t care about freedom of expression, for example. There’s many
countries that say in addition to freedom of expression we need to be fed and until we
are fed we can’t have true freedom of expression and that’s a very valid position for
them to take.”
Lyse: As new conventions are prepared, there’s a growing understanding that
economic and social conditions must be emphasised if basic human
rights are to be respected worldwide. When we speak about human
rights, we also look at human wrongs - the abuse of these rights. We
often learn about these abuses through organisations which monitor the
behaviour of governments and other authorities. There are many
national and international human rights organisations. One of most wellknown
is Amnesty International.
Let’s listen to a report on human rights abuses, by the BBC’s diplomatic
correspondent Barnaby Mason. It looks at the violent conflict in the
Middle East and at criticism by Amnesty International of the behaviour
of both sides - the Israelis and the Palestinians. This short extract
contains the kind of language that you often hear in broadcasts about
human rights violations.
You’ll hear the expressions - breaking rules, grave breach and gross
violations. They mean the same thing, that rights have been abused and
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conventions ignored. And words such as gross and grave tell us the
violations are very serious indeed.
Clip
Amnesty International criticises both sides but the weight of its condemnation bears
more heavily on Israel. It says the Israeli forces are breaking their own rules as well as
international standards laid down in the Geneva Conventions. That lethal force must
only be used to conter an immediate threat to life.
Mr Cordone said Amnesty International condemned what apppeared to be random
Palestinian firing at Jewish settlements, as well as punitive Israeli raids mounted after
the event to teach a lesson.. Asked whether "war crimes" was the phrase to decribe
Israeli actions over the past month, Mr Cordone said there was a pattern of gross
human rights violations that might well amount to war crimes. The Geneva
Conventions prohibited wilful killings, he said, that would be a grave breach and
therefore a war crime, though Amnesty could not say that any individual case fell into
this category - that was a matter for a tribunal to investigate.
Lyse: The report says the Geneva Convention has been ignored. Like other
human rights conventions, it outlines how people should be treated.
But the Geneva Convention applies to the specific circumstances of
war. It protects the rights of soldiers captured by the enemy and also
the rights of the sick and wounded. It’s there to remind warring groups
that even in the middle of a conflict, individuals must be treated fairly
and humanely.
You also heard the term tribunal. It’s a committee or group of people
with legal powers to establish whether serious abuses were committed
during wartime. For example, the International War Crimes Tribunal
investigates accusations such as genocide - or mass murder dur
