Havel speaks

Former Czech President Vaclav Havel writes in today’s New York Times that the way UN member countries treat the Human Rights Council says an awful lot about the value they place on human rights.

This is an important point of interface between political philosophy and practical politics.  Philosophers can spend a lot of time defining abstract concepts, but process often adds (or subtracts) dimension from those concepts.

A nifty excerpt:

Like the citizens of Azerbaijan, China, Cuba, Russia and Saudi Arabia, I know what it is like to live in a country where the state controls public discourse, suppresses opposition and severely curtails freedom of expression. It is thus doubly dismaying for me to see the willingness of democracies in Latin America and Asia to sit by and watch the council further lose its credibility and respect.

Activists and journalists in Azerbaijan and Cuba have already appealed to the international community not to elect their nations to the Human Rights Council. States committed to human rights and the integrity of the council cannot remain indifferent. Countries must express solidarity with the victims of human rights abuses and reclaim the council by simply refusing to vote for human rights abusers in this shamefully uncontested election.

–Sam

Related posts:

  1. Is poverty a human rights violation?
  2. Flotilla folly
  3. Human rights and gay marriage
  4. Family ties
  5. Gay marriage, continued . . .

May 11, 2009 · Filed Under Human rights, Sam

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9 Responses to “Havel speaks”

  1. Who does the United Nations represent? : The Public Philosopher on May 11th, 2009 3:52 pm

    [...] Sam mentioned Vaclav Havel’s op-ed on the absurdity of undemocratic, illiberal states sitting on the U.N. Human Rights Council.  America’s founders have some thoughts germaine to this crisis. [...]

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    Jacob Bronsther is a law student at NYU. He has an MPhil in Political Theory from Oxford.

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