Here in the UK, we are starting to celebrate the Christmas holiday period, a time supposedly of ‘Goodwill to all men’ (in this instance, with a non-gendered use of the term). However, I am not sure that this year is one when we can claim this to be universally true.
We seem to be entering, or more accurately have already entered, a period of serious and determined political pushback against some of our most basic and shared human rights – the very thing that is supposed to statutorily guarantee the universal application of such ‘goodwill’. Indeed, the term ‘human rights’ has now itself become a negative or pejorative term that is frequently used as such by some mainstream British current affairs and media outlets i.e. in many UK newspapers, on some UK TV news stations and across a number of online political/news outlets.
This hasn’t happened by accident – indeed it is clear that this is an issue that is now being used to deliberately divide us as a society (as it has throughout history). It is currently in vogue in some political quarters to think that some people somehow deserve to have less rights than others. But that’s not how human rights work; by definition, they are meant to be ‘universal’ and ‘indivisible’.
Now converting ‘human rights’ declarations and conventions, often internationally agreed, into effective national policy and cultural change is often complex and can therefore be a difficult long-term change proposition. But there needs to be the political will to continue to guide or drive us in the morally right direction – and at the moment that political will to act morally has been replaced with a form of cynical and corrupting political expediency that looks to exploit short-term populist and divisive tendencies, and deliberately does so to secure power (as it often has throughout history).
Indeed, I worry that this current divisive political trend favoured by those currently in powerful positions (of authority and influence), unless effectively countered, will soon be coming after or looking to weaken the human rights of the people we care for and support. From history we know how these things work; it’s been evident and obvious time and time again – at first, they come after ‘other’ people, people who are visibly or culturally different, people with less power, and those who they see as the weakest sections of society and least able to fight back.
Recently these deliberately ‘othered’ groups of people, people who are deliberately ‘othered’ by certain political groups and their supporters in the press, have included migrants, asylum seekers, environmental activists, the homeless, trans people, people of different sexual development, and the most recent of all – people who can’t work because of their level of disability. So that’s my worry, that this trend will continue … and continue to get worse.
However, here in the UK, we are signatories to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the European Convention on Human Rights (1953) and more recently the ‘Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities‘ (2006): a treaty intended to protect the rights and dignity of persons with disabilities. Signatories to this convention (which includes the UK, but interestingly not the USA) are required ‘to promote, protect and ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by all persons with disabilities, and to promote respect for their inherent dignity’ i.e. that they are full and equal members of society with equal human rights to the rest of society.
Indeed, even yesterday (20.12.23) the Daily Mail editorial column was explicitly gunning for the Equality Act (2010), an act of parliament which aims to protect people against discrimination and harassment due to their disability, or gender, or age, or race, or religion, or sex, or sexual orientation.
We need to be actively proud of protecting all our hard-fought ‘human rights’. If they push back and weaken the human rights of any one of the ‘othered’ groups, those with such a political agenda won’t stop there. We currently see it across the world, this rolling back on peoples’ universal human rights – I worry it’s a trend that will get worse before it again gets better: yes, I’m a diehard optimist, and as Martin Luther King told us: ’The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice! So, we know we are on the right side of history.
So yes indeed, let’s have ‘Goodwill to all men’ and women and children (obs!) – and let’s mean it; for everyone.
Merry Christmas.
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