Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, once said that he “tried to do for computers what Eichler did for homes.” This was a reference to Joe Eichler, a home developer throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. My father, John Boyd, was a senior architect in Palo Alto, California, for Joe Eichler. They both admired the architect Frank Lloyd Wright and took inspiration from him to imagine subdivisions of homes that worked for common people and families.
I grew up in one these homes.
So if we take what Eichler did for homes and Jobs did for computers, create things that worked for everyone, how do we apply that to our international community so that rights are created that work for everyone?
When Eleanor Roosevelt was asked about what qualities were needed for the creation of the UDHR, she said “imagination.” Following her guidance, Eleanor Lives! asks people to use their imagination to think through how our international community can be designed. For example, after personally witnessing the horrors of WWI and WWII, Eleanor was determined to put athoritariansm behind us, yet now, once again, athoritarianism is on the rise.
Too often the discussion about human rights is what rights are we born with? It becomes an endless circle of discussion and those who resist enforceable rights goad others into this discussion. What rights are inherent in being human? The answer is none. We are not born with rights. We are born into societies where they either tell the story of rights, or they don’t. And they either have independent judges to enforce these rights, or they don’t. It’s better if they do.
For many within the human rights community this is blaspheme. They like the story of rights being inherent in human beings so much that they like to assume it as a given. So if we just repeat the story, or write out the list of rights enough times, they will develop and become enforceable: it has not worked. For the most part the UDHR was an unenforceable document when it was created, and it has remained so.
Please understand that I like the story of the UDHR, and the story of rights for all. I’ve spent one half of my legal career, much of it pro-bono, doing what I can to further the enforcement of rights in the UDHR. The basic principles in the UDHR have helped create rights in some localities. I’m glad to have children in all countries taught the story that there are rights we all have, and share, but it cannot stop there — rights need enforcement.
The mistake since the UDHR was created in 1948 is that our judicial enforcement institutions haved lagged too far behind our proclamations about rights. For the 75th anniversary of the UDHR, it’s important to recognize and celebrate the many proclamations of rights over the years, they have created important norms, but we should equally and forcefully move to the next step, judicial enforcement of those norms. This is the story we need to tell.
The stories we tell create the lives that we lead.
It does not weaken the story of rights to admit that it is a story. It actually strengthens rights to untether them from the story of natural law. As long as people are willing to tell a story of a right to free speech, or a right to education, or a prohibition on racial or gender discrimination, and to demand that those right are enforceable against those who they let govern, that’s the point where a right becomes “fully realized” in accordance with Article 28 of the UDHR.
To secure rights for all, we need not prove that we are born with them. All we need to do is muster enough people to demand rights, and then use our ability to read and write to put those rights in a written Bill of Rights. With an International Bill of Rights in hand, we make it a quid pro quo for those who govern – then create Courts with independent Judges to ensure that leaders keep their part of the deal. There will always be despots. Power corrupts. As we transition to an international community, we can create judicial institutions to restrain despots so that the rest of us do not suffer their abuse.
Given humanity as it is, the UDHR is the best blueprint, created by people of free will, for the world as it can be. Now, for its 75th anniversary, it’s time to use our imagination to also figure out how to make the UDHR enforceable. It’s story, plus enforcement of the story that, like an Eichler, creates something that works for all.
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