Human Rights: N/A

The year is 2008: you’re sitting in a haze, staring at a newly opened Microsoft Word document. The occasional chimes of forgotten AIM conversations catch your attention for a few fleeting moments, but you remain lost in your thoughts. You feel as though you no longer hold reign over your life; your voice was lost amidst the rabble. You tried to scream once of course—the pinnacle point of existential success—your cries transcended the mindless droll, but wait: silence.

At some point, we have all been silenced. From the second we left the isolated sanctuary of our carrier’s womb, our individual rights have been trampled upon. In some cases, they have been simply taken for granted. Why? Our “youthful ignorance” apparently grants those with a few more years of breath or a few more dollars in the bank to determine our will. We have been reduced to pieces of commodity. Our lives have been homogenized by school, government, the media, and corporations—the latter two we may not even realize.

Yet, we still blindly champion the respect they all have for our rights. We will refer to the United Nations Charter, specifically to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Listed in this document, which you should all read at some point, are 30 articles which outline some of the essential liberties of humans—rights, which should in no instance be infringed upon. Many of the same rights are espoused by national constitutions, including our own. Humanity itself is sewn together by this understanding and respect; in fact, without a realization of one’s rights (and consequently, the rights of one’s fellows), humanity may further degenerate to the point where it is mechanized by an omniscient, invisible demagogue as depicted by Orwellian foretellings.

One does not need to read the Declaration in its entirety to recognize that individual liberty has become vastly irrelevant in today’s society. Let us take a look.

1. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Capital punishment. I will skip the doublespeak and refer to this as the death penalty. Despite our evolutionary development, some humans have been unable to decondition the rather primal aggression of intraspecies murder. We have our Charles Mansons and we also have our Mike Huckabees (reference to the “What would Jesus do question?” from the CNN/YouTube Republican debate). Criminals and politicians both condone murder, regardless of their varying intentions. The Declaration uses the object “everyone” for a reason—the United Nations does not want to limit the application of these rights. They could very well have written “All innocent civilians” or something of that nature. This is not an issue of semantics. The U.N. does fight to make the death penalty obsolete; however, the opposition of many member nations makes this effort impossible. Nations such as the United States do not want to dissolve the death penalty because it is an easy alternative to expanding prisons or actually combatting the psychological and social circumstances that underlie crime. Nations such as Iran are held in the iron fist of a self-appointed squadron of “Morality Police” that slay the victims of rape, yes, the victims. Murder—the conscious act of taking away the life of another—is an indefinite attack against our individual liberties.

2. No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

Human trafficking. No, this doesn’t mean a jam of people blocking traffic on 42nd and Madison. It is the physical commodification of the human body. A few months ago, my mom told me a story after she returned from a trip to Bangladesh. On line at the airport there, she struck up a conversation with a girl who looked just about my age—seventeen. Apparently, the girl had married a man, who then abandoned her leaving her penniless. A businessman approached her family, who lives in a very rural area, and said she could find work in Kuwait—in return, the man would give the family money (usually an insignificant amount, not enough to buy even a bag of grain.) My heart sunk immediately since I knew the reality of the situation. Rich, charming men, (think “pimp”) gather together young, vulnerable women—these women often have no source of income and their families are desperate for clean drinking water, let alone a bite to eat. Women and children, often as young as 4 are thrown into this dehumanizing cycle of slavery. Foreigners, often very rich, go to the red light districts of Southern Asia to essentially purchase these humans “at a discount” and exploit them to live out various atrocities. Even at our southern border, humans are objectified; many whom are desperate for money and hopeful for a better life in America cross the U.S-Mexico border after ingesting condoms packed with cocaine; many times they die before they even had a chance for something better, the fragile latex bursts and they essentially overdose.

3. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Guantanamo Bay. A recent report was issued by a human rights group based in France that outlined specific cases of torture in Guantanamo Bay. I never learned French, but I certainly tried my hardest to get through this massive documentation of inhumanity—by the end it became incomprehensible, not because I was totally illiterate by French standards, but because my mind could no longer bear the suffering bleeding through the pages. One account still remains vividly traumatizing: a young boy, barely fifteen, was stripped naked and then sexually harassed by American officers. I will leave out the details of the treatment (considering that they would most likely be censored—hey, another infringement on liberties!), but one can read about them simply by googling “Guantanamo Bay torture” or any similar query. This torture is perpetrated by our own government, fueled by our own money (actually our parent’s): our hands are not clean. Although we may not condone it, we have not stopped it which is just as inhumane. In fact, many of you may not even be aware of the severity of the torture that occurs in Guantanamo Bay—it rarely finds its way into the media unless photos are leaked. We are a nation founded in the ideals of brotherhood and “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”—our credibility is unquestionably nullified by the actions of the government we put into office.

4. Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

High school. I thought I might as well conclude this look at our rights by bringing to light one which affects you all indefinitely. With each passing year, the workload of high school students becomes invariably greater. Students, whether through the influence of “helicopter parents” or concerned teachers, feel obligated to enroll in as many classes, gain leadership in as many clubs, and spend as many hours studying as humanly (or even robotically) possible. So kids, take a break once in awhile. Tell your parents the U.N. told you so: it’s a universal human rights. Everyone needs a little rest and relaxation if they don’t want to die from stress-related cardiac failure before they graduate. Take time to figure out where your passions lie and never allow anyone (your parents, teachers, me) to tell you how to think or what you should believe. Our life is beautiful because we have these convoluted masses of grey stuck in our heads—this miraculously efficient organ allows us to think, breathe, live, and feel. Let it grow and guide you; it’s a wonder to think where it can take you!

On that note, take a second (minute, or hour) to think about humanity. If you allow the rights of one human to be taken away, you do not only a disservice to that individual but to the rest of us as well. We are humans because we have this extraordinary level of sentience and compassion for the rest of our species. Don’t let Big Brother peek in through your bedroom window.

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