Human Rights “A Partnership”

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31786, 17 September 1968, Page 14

Human Rights “A Partnership”

There had to be an interaction between respect of the law and conserving all that was best in a society with a desire to go a bit further, Mr R. Quentin-Baxter said last evening when speaking on “The Responsibilities of Government and Human Rights”

Mr Quentin-Baxter, Assistant-Secretary of External Affairs and vice-chairman of the United Nations Human Rights Commission, was delivering the third of five addresses on Human Rights arranged by the United Nations Association and the Workers’ Education Association.

Mr Quentin-Baxter said that people were easily fooled in dealings in matters involving their own interest and objective judgment could be swayed. On human rights persons should be reluctant to cast stones on those who disagreed with their stand and they should be equally reluctant to be dogmatic about their own opinions. In human rights the time scale was also important when making judgments about harsh things happening today Standards of mercy in law were not established by the judges but by the public. Juries had been known not to convict because of being scandalised by the punishment meted out for a crime. These showed the need in human rights for an inters

action among different disciplines. Government had to ensure a respect of law but it had also to create conditions where people could discuss freely and so worthily influence society. Governments had also to provide minimums in food and shelter without which other rights were useless. Human rights were a partnep ship of Government and people Not Sufficient Today it was known that internal security alone was no longer sufficient as without peace there could be no human rights. Since the establishment of the International Labour Organisation after World War I there had been big changes in international thinking. Without an international

organisation in which there was a respect for law there was not much chance of peace. It was all too easy to say the United Nations had not yielded a sufficiently great dividend. Human rights, which some decried as trying to foist Western Christian liberalism on countries, was not a bad inheritance of the new nations. What had been the bad inheritance was rather the old international law which permitted countries to do what they liked with their subjects. In the United Nations in the last 20 years there had been a great deal of legislation and much done to promote human rights but there had been little done to implement them. There was no sovereignty over nations. Three Evils

The three evils the new nations saw were the remnants of colonialism, racial discrimination and the enormous differences between wealth and poverty. There was little the new nations could do but protest

It was natural that the newly emancipated should not feel grateful for receiving what the charter said was their’s from time immemorial. Racial prejudice was deeply ingrained and the new countries tried in vain to have complete freedom. The problem of differing wealth and poverty was of such a scale that it defied an easy solution and it was difficult to think of it being met till mankind could organise himself on a world scale. Crimes against humanity were a limiting factor on states. Since the Nuremburg trials and the Declaration of Human Rights a state could no longer be as rough with its subjects as it liked. In spite of shortcomings of the United Nations, there was no other way of achieving peace and human rights than in the way that very imperfect organisation was trying, he said.