Human rights

Today’s central line of conflict runs between open societies and various forms of Identitarian radicalism. The challenge we face is to reconcile rapid changes in a globalized modern age with our need to belong and our need for security.

As the second decade of this new millennium pushes toward its completion, it may come as a surprise to readers to learn that the sterilization of women without their consent remains a persistent problem for public health systems worldwide. Recent efforts in Europe to address these abuses have revealed how public health administrators and justice systems have yet to learn the lessons of these abuses.

When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the UN in 1948, eight of its 48 member countries abstained from the final vote: South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Yugoslavia, USSR, Belarus, Poland, Ukraine and Czechoslovakia. While watching developments in human rights protections in the Czech Republic over the past 15 years, I have often reflected on the repercussions of that abstention. The Charter 77 movement, which resulted in Civic Forum and the democratic transition of 1989, has been lauded internationally, especially in the English-speaking world, for having based its challenge to totalitarianism on demanding respect for human rights.