Respect Human Rights

What the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said is true. The United States has historically been the vanguard of the global human rights movement. Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, had a major role in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and seeing to its adoption by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948. At this point in time, it is very strategic for Kofi Annan to choose and make his final speech, finishing his term as the United Nations Secretary-General at the end of this month, at the library of the late United States President Harry Truman in the Missouri City of Independence. Not only that President Truman was an early champion of the UN, but also, that it was him who appointed Eleanor Roosevelt as United States delegate to the first meeting of the United Nations General Assembly convened in London in January 1946. It was this important appointment that resulted in the United Nations recognition of the human rights and the commitment to the equality of men and women. President Truman had fully supported Mrs. Roosevelt in her active role to persuade 55 countries to sign International Bill of Rights. If Eleanor Roosevelt were alive today, I am sure she would be pleased with Kofi Annan’s speech, with his five key lessons learnt during the last ten years as Head of the United Nations: collective responsibility, global solidarity, the rule of law, mutual accountability and multilateralism, which she believed in, and in particular, his reminding the Americans not to loose sight of their country’s role in given birth to a worldwide human rights movement. Had she been alive, she would have joined with him in urging the United States to embrace its natural and historical role as responsible global leader - true to its principles – in respecting human rights in its “war on terror”.

Filed under United Nations, World Affairs |