No century in human history, before the 20th century, has had the privilege of witnessing so much interest, so many declarations and so much legislation about human rights, globally. Indeed never before, with a few short-lived exceptions, had people attempted to establish a language of human rights, to replace all other ethical languages. In opening the 1993 Vienna Conference on Human Rights, the then Secretary-General of the United Nations Boutros Boutros Ghali was right when pointing out that these rights represent “the common language to all humanity”. At a time when the great ideologies have been superseded, the human rights narrative remains the only universal ideology still in the making, and on which rest both the constitutional legitimization of states and the liberation struggles of people and communities, whose resistance is still widespread throughout the world.
An ideology still in the making, indeed. The rule of law principles must not and cannot be interpreted and used only to defend what has already been achieved. The foundation of their legitimacy lies in a continuous and ever renewed process of their monitoring, so as to verify whether these are suited to concretely respond to human rights demands and the unanswered needs of individuals and peoples – individuals and communities in their real life context – virtually represented in the enunciation of those rights.
It was with this awareness and from this epistemic perspective that the Universal Declaration of Peoples’ Rights was drawn up forty years ago, on July 4, 1976. This occurred largely in the wake of resistance and liberation movements, with the support of a staunch group of international law experts. Known as the Algiers Declaration, the Universal Peoples’ Rights Declaration stressed the need for a paradigm shift, built on the analysis of the painful contradictions of the international context of those years, politically and juridically. The conclusion of the decolonization process – one of the main priorities of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights – was dramatically countered by the violent thrust of economic re-colonization processes, coupled with the overthrow of any fundamental rights hyerarchy. Peoples, the legitimate right holders – both as individuals and communities – ended up being once again marginalized to the extent of being perceived and indeed becoming the enemies within those very States that violated their lives and dignity with complete impunity, unchallenged by the international community and international law.
The celebration of the fortieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Peoples’ Rights – increasingly recognized by many groups and movements as a visionary anticipation of a new people-driven international order – is situated in a globalized context dramatically calling for the formulation of new definitions and original answers. The consequences produced by the financialization of the economy, and the growing liberalization of transnational corporations from the rule of law, unequivocally testify the extent to which constitutional democracies are no longer able, or rather are no longer authorized, to guarantee the priority and the untouchable stance of fundamental rights over development and governance models that impose purely economic indicators.
The Rome international conference will jumpstart a global route of debates in the second half of 2016, planned in a sequence of continental meetings with the operational focus on:
- The need for a transformative look and strategy with regard to the principles and practices of self-determination by communities of people, tailored to their present and future challenges;
- The commitment to enhancing the cooperation among the different international entities that share – in their own diversity – doctrinal strategies and operational approaches aimed at resisting the current global economic and financial order. Such broad engagement should lead to experimenting the feasibility of a social model based on respect for individual and community rights.
