Before
the modern human rights system emerged from the ruins of the Second World War,
humanity lived in a world where rights were
not inherent but conditional—granted or withdrawn at the whim of empires,
monarchies, political systems, racial hierarchies, and economic elites.
Across continents, people were
governed by systems of domination rather than universal principles, where
elites saw certain groups as inferior and unequal based on race, skin colour,
ethnicity, faith, sexual identity or other defining characteristic. Colonial
powers carved up territories and categorized peoples in terms of resources to
be exploited without regard to any inherent rights.
In the
America’s, Africa and Australia indigenous peoples were dispossessed and
annihilated, to the point that in North America (present day Canada, Mexico and
the United States), their populations declined to 5%
of their pre-Columbian levels by the 1890s—a
death toll of more than 95 million. Enslavement, segregation, caste oppression,
and patriarchal subjugation were woven into the fabric of societies and
were part and parcel of political governance. Workers laboured under conditions
that amounted to economic bondage, and dissent was criminalized, while entire
populations lived under the constant threat of violence by the state or
economic elites who were only too willing to violently exploit workers.
This was
the 19th Century world that shaped the views of American abolitionist and
social reformer Frederick
Douglass, who said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it
never will.” It was the world of the Jim Crow era US south
that Rosa
Parks confronted when she refused to surrender her seat on a segregated bus
in Montgomery, Alabama—a simple act that exposed the absurdity and cruelty of
the system of racial hierarchy that affected
the lives of millions of Black Americans. It was the world B.R. Ambedkar, who
fought to transform colonial India, arguing that democracy without
social justice is merely a new form of tyranny. And it was the world that 18th
century French playwright and political activist Olympe de Gouges
challenged when she demanded equality for women, knowing full well that such
demands were a threat to her own life.
Human
rights, before 1945, were not universal—they were fragile aspirations, and
often violently denied by political, economic and social elites.
The shock
that forced a reckoning
The
Second World War shattered any illusion that humanity could survive without a
universal moral framework. The Holocaust, the mechanized extermination of millions, the mass slaughter of civilians in Europe and the Far East, and the global devastation of total war
forced the world to confront
the consequences of unrestrained state power. The scale of atrocity
was so vast, so systematic—between 60 and 70 million killed—tthat it demanded a
new global rights infrastructure.
The
architects of the post‑war order understood that without binding principles,
humanity would again descend into a barbarism that could engulf the world.
Eleanor Roosevelt, who chaired the drafting committee for the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, insisted that the new system must reflect the
dignity of all people, not merely the interests of powerful states. Her work,
alongside French jurist René
Cassin, Lebanese politician and diplomat
Charles Malik,
Chinese academic and diplomat Peng Chun Chang, and Canadian
diplomat and human rights activist John Humphrey,
produced a document intended as a “common standard of achievement”—a moral
compass for a world emerging from darkness.
The UN Charter
(1945), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the Genocide Convention
(1948), the Fourth
Geneva Convention (1949), and eventually the International
Court of Justice were built on the ashes of Auschwitz, Treblinka, Nanjing,
and Hiroshima. They were designed to ensure that no state could again commit
mass atrocities with impunity.
Elie Wiesel,
speaking from the experience of genocide, warned that silence in the face of
atrocity is itself a crime. His
words became the ethical foundation of the post‑war human rights system—a
reminder that neutrality is never neutral when human beings are being systematically
annihilated.
The
promise and the slow betrayal
For
several decades after the war, the human rights architecture held—unevenly,
imperfectly, but with enough force to restrain
the worst impulses of states. Anti‑colonial movements invoked human rights to
dismantle Europe’s empires. Civil rights leaders used its language to
challenge segregation in the US. Feminist, Indigenous, labour, and LGBTQ movements drew strength from its universal principles.
Nelson Mandela argued that denying human rights was an assault on human
dignity itself. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. taught that moral courage
requires confronting injustice even when the majority remains silent. And South
African Anglican Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu reminded the world that neutrality in
the face of oppression was a form of complicity.
However,
the end of the Cold War in 1991 appeared to mark a turning point. With the
collapse of the global bipolar power structure, the international human rights
order built after World War II began to fray. Its erosion was visible in the
Bosnian Genocide (1992–1995), the Rwandan Genocide (1994), and the sanctions
and embargo regime imposed on Iraq in the 1990s, which led to the deaths
of more than 500,000 children—a toll that former U.S. Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright infamously said was “worth it” in a 1996
interview. As the United States emerged as the world’s lone superpower, it
increasingly treated its international legal obligations not as binding
commitments but as optional constraints it could disregard when convenient.
Israel—shielded
by unwavering Western diplomatic and military backing, above all from the
United States—has been able to violate Palestinian human rights repeatedly and
with complete impunity for decades. No meaningful accountability has ever
followed. Russia carried out atrocities in Chechnya and later in Ukraine,
beginning with its 2014 annexation of Crimea. China constructed a surveillance‑driven
authoritarian system and imprisoned millions of Uyghurs in concentration camps,
abducting Uyghur children and placing them in indoctrination facilities—acts
that meet the Genocide Convention’s definition of genocide. Both Moscow and
Beijing were condemned for their crimes.
The post‑Cold
War era saw the rise of a global double standard where Human rights were
invoked when convenient and ignored when
politically expedient. The international system expanded in scope, but
enforcement weakened, with serious
violations increasingly going unpunished. In the process, the moral authority
of the post‑war human rights order began to collapse, with genocides
taking place in Darfur,
Sudan (2003–present); Myanmar
(2016–present); Xinjiang,
China (2017–present); and Tigray, Ethiopia
(2020–2022), with the erosion ultimately culminating in the current genocide in
Gaza.
The collapse
of global moral authority
The
Israeli‑Palestinian conflict has deep
historical roots, shaped by colonial legacies, competing nationalisms, and
decades of conflict. But the events that have occurred since 2023 marked a
moral rupture unprecedented in the modern era. Entire neighborhoods in Gaza have
been leveled, while hospitals, schools, and refugee camps have been bombed.
Civilians were intentionally targeted, starved, displaced, and massacred.
International law was shredded in full view of the world, and Western humanity
was shown to be a charade. Additionally,
the major Western powers did not merely fail to stop Israel’s genocidal crimes,
they enabled it, particularly the US, by selling weapons to Israel which were
used in their military assault on Gaza.
The
United States served as Israel’s primary arms supplier, with the United
Kingdom, Canada, Germany, and others close behind—and Washington defended
Israel’s actions diplomatically at every turn. Canada wavered between muted
criticism and active complicity, continuing to provide military components even
as the scale of Israel’s violence became undeniable. The European Union voiced
rhetorical concern, but offered no meaningful action capable of halting the
atrocities. In Gaza, the international legal order—created precisely to prevent
the kind of heinous, genocidal crimes Israel carried out and continues to carry
out—was not merely ineffective, it was immobilized by the geopolitical
interests of the very states entrusted with upholding it.
The
betrayal of Palestinians can be summed up in the following statement: We must
refuse to compromise our humanity and never back down from speaking the
inconvenient truth to power, for people whose very humanity is under attack.
This is the moral crisis of our time. The very states that built the
human rights system have chosen to abandoned it, and leave innocent people to be slaughtered, unless intervening
advantages a higher political purpose. Which, in the case of Palestinians,
doesn’t seem to be the case.
The
voices that still guide us
In this
moment of collapse, the wisdom of human rights icons becomes not historical
reflection but urgent instruction.
South
African anti-Apartheid activist Steve Biko taught that
oppression thrives when people internalize silence. Kenyan social and political
activist Wangari
Maathai showed that human rights include the right to a livable planet. South
African musician and civil rights activist Miriam Makeba used her
voice to expose apartheid’s brutality. American labour unionist Cesar Chavez demonstrated
that economic justice is inseparable from human dignity. Salvadoran archbishop Oscar Romero died
defending the poor against state violence, while Malcolm X insisted that dignity requires
refusing subjugation in all its forms and speaking truth with uncompromising
clarity.
Along
with Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu and the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., these
voices form a chorus across continents and centuries, united by one truth—that human rights are not granted by states—they
are won with the blood, sweat and tears of ordinary people.
The moral
imperative today
We now
live in a world where the major powers—the US, the UK, Russia, China and
others—have abandoned the very international order they once claimed to uphold.
They have returned to the logic of empire where power takes priority over principle
and geopolitical agendas over human rights.
This is what
political barbarism looks like. And the only force capable of stopping it is
the collective moral courage of ordinary people, human rights organizations,
activists, scholars, journalists, and anyone with even a modicum of economic or
political influence that still possess a moral compass.
It’s
clear from history that human rights don’t come about naturally. They only exist if they are protected and
defended.
To
maintain human rights as part of our society and culture we have to live by the
adage that when those in power are telling you to move as you stand for
principle, you need to plant yourself like a tree and say, “No, you move.”
This is
the ethos the world needs now.
The
preservation of human rights must become a global moral imperative. Not a
slogan. Not a diplomatic talking point. A commitment rooted in the
understanding that without human rights, civilization collapses into violence, moral
decay and barbarism.
Human
rights organizations must refuse to be cowed by political pressure, and
activists must continue to speak truth to power even when power threatens them.
Scholars must expose injustice with uncompromising clarity, journalists must
refuse to sanitize atrocity, and citizens must demand accountability from their governments.
