A thought about trends in human rights

The movement to end the slave trade began in England in the late 18th century, and slavery was outlawed in the French Revolution at the very end of that century and in the American Civil War in the mid 19th century. (Yet there remains an important problem in human trafficking and involuntary servitude in the world today).

Decolonization swept away the colonial empires in the 20th century. How many now believe, as many Europeans once believed, that Africans and Asians were unable to govern themselves well and need European overlords? (Still, state power is exercised to exploit the peoples of the former colonies.)

The Civil Rights movement in the U.S. in the mid 20th century continued the process of enfranchising the blacks (Latinos and native Americans) that had been started in the 19th century. (Still, the nation is plagued by racial and ethnic prejudice.)

From Women's suffrage to women's rights, the 20th century saw a major improvement in gender equality. (Still, there are lots of glass ceilings against which upwardly mobile women are embedded.)

Genocide peaked during the Nazi era, and the Stalinist Soviet Union forced mass migrations based on ethnic prejudice. There are now international sanctions institutionalized against such practices. (Still, episodes of genocide continue to occur albeit on a lesser scale, and "ethnic cleansing" continues to describe a process which occurs not only in Iraq.)

I hope that this year, which marks the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, might simply be a point on the trajectory towards respect for diversity and universal recognition and guarantee of human rights. Still, there is a fear that it might mark a cusp in the trend. After all, the Bush administration has objected to habius corpus, has said that it does not recognize Constitutional limits on bugging people and gotten Congress to go along with some further limitations on privacy, has exercised federal power to limit the right to die, and has even allowed torture and estraordinary rendition to places where its prisoners would be tortured.