h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"3. Everyone has the right to life.." - And yet the majority of the worlds countries have the death penalty...and a possible future leader of the 'free world' has himself signed over one hundred death warrants.

"9. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest" - And yet the prevention of terrorism act (UK) specifies just that.

"11. Everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty" - Recently in the UK silence has been admissible as evidence of guilt and the R.I.P. bill is written such that it is effectively presuming guilt.

...I could go on, but am only depressing myself

I was going to do another article about the more 'overlooked' violations, but never got round to it. In the end I just settled for putting in that many places do not follow the decleration, even tho' they signed it, and that many in places this blue-green flattened sphere should not be considered 'mostly harmless' but 'inherently dangerous' Hmmm I have to much on my plate at the moment to follow this up, but maybe sometime in the future I may get around to doing that article Well, until later.....
BCNU - Crescent

I can't speak for America's brandeadidness, but last I heard, the RIP bill was going to get challenged in the EU Court of Human Justice. Which is based on the UN Convention, of course. The death penalty (for treason, et al) was recently removed by the UK. Prompted by.... yep - the declaration on human rights. The wheels of the world grind slowly, but grind they do.

I can't comment on the prevention of terrorism act - details?

MyRedDice - bounding on in mindless optimism.

The prevention of terrorism act is a bit of very draconian legislation introduced to deal with a desperate situation (i.e. "sliding popularity of the then government" - erm., sorry that should read "the threat of terrorism")
It gives the police the power to detain a person for (I think) 72 hours on suspicion of being involved in terrorism without the need for them to be formally charged...and this can be extended by application to the courts.

Hmmm - wanders off to look it up without causing too much alarm at snooping central

3. Everyone has the right to life: let's get something straight - it is NOT a majority of the worlds nations which have the death penalty (Please see the most recent Amnesty International Report on human rights abuses available at www.amnesty.org) and I have a REAL problem with refering to George W. Bush as the potential "leader of the free world". Last time I checked, America is just one open democracy in the "free" world. America may have cast itself as the world's policeman and be myopic enough to believe that it is the only force for freedom and democracy on the planet , but let's be a little more realistic and try and keep this discussion global.

Here's the deal with the declaration, as far as I understand it. It's unfortunately just a declaration, more like a statement of intent than a legally enforceable document. The attempt to codify the Declaration into something like law has been carried out through a very long string of treaties. There are too many to name off the top of my head, but among them are things like the Convention for the Rights of the Child, which, among other things, outlaws child labor and using children as soldiers; and the Convention Against Torture and Inhumane Punishment (I think I have that title right), which seems to be the most often used of the treaties--it got Pinochet arrested, and it got amnesty in the US for a... Nigerian(?) woman and her daughter, as the woman was trying to protect her daughter from receiving a ritual clitorendectomy. The problem with these treaties, however, is that there isn't yet (thanks to the US, China, and a handful of others) a universally accepted court to charge anyone in, though the ICC is a step in the right direction. These days, international law regarding these human rights conventions is a really weird hodgepodge of international agreements and national legislation, as I'm sure folks in the UK following Pinochet's case know. As it stands, many countries can break the treaties either because a) there's no way for the victims to complain to a higher court, and/or b) because the country is too powerful for other countries to intervene. Also, international humanitarian law (which has adopted the handy abbreviation of IHL) invariably runs up against other issues that complicate things, like issues of national sovereignty--hauling a foreign citizen into a national court without an extradition request is generally considered bad form, even if he's an ex-dictator--and international trade agreements, as child labor laws directly conflict with the labor laws of many developing countries, which depend on child labor to keep their industries running. It's all a gigantic mess.

The free world thing was meant to be ironic - but I can't do an ironic smilie.

http://www.law.qub.ac.uk/qub_law/nireland/Ni4.HTM has the prevention of terrorism act - but following the link may get the spooks after you

In that case we all ought to click it, It will keep them running round in circles for weeks

True, the only way to deal with these people is keep em off balance & chasing shadows.

In India, the situation is a little different ... as far as i know, all the provisions of the Decl. HR are set out in our constitution ... the problem is all in the execution. Most laws are freely waived.

Oh, we've got Preventive Detention too (that's that 72hrs thingie)

72hrs... In theory, they can detain someone on ANY grounds (with additional legal messing about) for 72hrs anyway, in England, cf Jill Dando's suspected murderer. But I think 72hrs might be the limit, not the start-instigating-complex-legal-manoevers time.

I feel that it's important to create these kinds of statements to give human society something to live up to. To say that we believe these things and are working toward them as a society is an important civilizing step forward.

Yeah ...

If we end up dieing by destroying most of our wildlife (key links in the food chain, if we fry the earth by global warming, if we kill every single intelligent animal on the planet (except ourselves, we will die with dignity - knowing that a little piece of paper somewhere on what will be a near-dead planet says "Law of Conservation of Life" or something like that ...

BTW, on that subject, did anyone realize that it's easy to drive the tiger extinct, than it is to exterminate a house-ful of cockroaches?

I have to agree with that. It's too easy to criticise (and there ain't no such thing as "constructive criticism"). Unfortunately we're dealing with the most dangerous creature in the known universe, man. People will always put themselves before anyone else, it's human nature. If we start with that as a fact then we have to accept that there will always be some sod who cares NOTHING for anyone or any law.

The Terrorism act may seem a bit drastic, but if you suddenly found a bunch of people in balaclavas in your living room about to shoot your family would you be so dismissive?

I don't think I would be so dismissive, but excuse me a sec while I ask the bunch of people in balaclavas here in my living room what *they* think.

well - the 'great' US constitution started off with a declaration of principles and suchlike - you really have to start somewhere. Then you can start to build the house... if you can't agree what the *aim* of the laws should be, there's no point in trying to agree on the law.

It's always easier to extinct larger animals, in general - there are less of them, and they're more fragile. I have every confidence that we'll kill ourselves off long before we get to the stage of being able to wipe out all life on earth. If cockroaches can survive neuclear holocaust, they can survive global warming...

We must strive to say what we SHOULD do, so that we CAN do it, so that is IT done.

But give us a chance - the world only get connected to the rest of the world about 60 years ago - we are still in our infancy.

Pretty awful toddlers, though.

Well, I think it's also pretty important to get these basic principles ironed out and agreed on so that we can move on and colonize other planets to help keep us larger animals from going extinct--either from climate change, a random asteroid hit, or an accident with the sun. It just seems to me that exploring & colonizing space is so expensive that we ought to try and work on world peace first.

And that isn't marginally more difficult?

More difficult, yes, but there are six billion folks helping.