EDITORIAL: A Cherished Document is Further Discarded

Today is the anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

As we look back on the past six decades, it is evident that the signatory nations have not fully adhered to the declaration, nor have they respected the impetus for drafting this important document.

We see more human rights abuses today around the world that go unpunished and even unnoticed. Yet world leaders regularly invoke the Declaration to paint themselves as arbiters of justice and responsible citizens of a world currently marred by war, genocide, poverty and corruption

“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood,” reads Article I of the Declaration.

Using the Declaration as a blueprint for advancing a civilized world is nowhere more appropriate than the current Armenian reality.

After almost 95 years, Turkey not only continues to deny the Armenian Genocide but has set in motion a series of events that aim to forever bury the fact that its predecessors systematically murdered a race and attempted to wipe an entire nation off the face of this earth. The US’s continued collusion in this matter, makes it—a so-called bastion of human rights—complicit in the crime because of the state-sponsored and adamant denial of this historic fact.

On the Karabakh front, this very declaration is being thrown out in the internationally-sponsored peace talks, which all but ignores the Azeri aggression that started the war in the first place and calls on Armenians to make severe concessions in order to appease gratuitous and unreasonable international interests that, at the core, trample upon the 30 articles that make up the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Domestically, the Armenian authorities have gradually tightened the noose around their citizens by pillaging the country’s national wealth for personal gain, and this year, through their reckless disregard, have steered the entire nation toward a dangerous path that all but jeopardizes the future of its very existence.

To enumerate the daily breaches of the Declaration in every-day life would require a Web portal quadruple the size of Google.

The utopian nature of the Declaration has given rise to the proliferation of organizations whose mission to preserve the essence of the document has earned them the reputation of watchdog in the international arena. Unfortunately, these groups have also been tarnished, to a certain extent, by personal and political gains and their arbitrations often contradict their stated purpose. By becoming the pawns of political power[broker]s, they have diminished their role and have become servants to narrow political interests.

To preserve and protect the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a crucial imperative now, more than ever. Politics, greed and the wanton desire for domination have blurred the lines of acceptable behavior and expectations and heinous violations of basic human rights have become tolerable in this global society.

On this anniversary, each individual—citizen of the world—must pledge to not merely work to preserve but to vigorously fight to uphold and protect human rights in order to ensure that humankind can be differentiated from savage beasts.