We live in the frigid zone of inhumanity and men are afflicted with megalomania. Human rights and human dignity seem to be no more than mendacious claims. The oozing blood from the amputated throats of the innocent victims is unable to rouse the public concern. The painful groans of the widows and orphans fall on deaf ears. The hackneyed phrases of violence, terror, bloodshed, violation of rights, rap victims, etc. can no more make people raise their eyebrows. Devotion and affection are changed into industrial products which are used merely to embellish the amorous films and romantic serials. Moreover, only the abortive love or tragic suicide of adorers can move one to tears.
Altruism and humanity are left meaningless in real life and as if cruelty and barbarity run in men’s blood. As a result, A UN report released that 2014 has witnessed some of the worst violence in years, leaving at least 12,282 civilians killed and 23,126 others injured, making it the deadliest year since the flare-up of sectarian violence in 2006-2007. However, a recent report said that a total of 1,375 Iraqis were killed and 2,240 others were injured in terrorist attacks and violence in January in Iraq. “790 civilians, including 59 policemen, and 585 Iraqi security forces personnel were killed, while 1,469 civilians including 69 policemen were wounded. An additional 771 security members were wounded in terrorist and violent acts during the month.”
The lurid reports and poignant tragedies of the day are highly nauseating for one who feels a tinge of humanity. Imagining the amputated limbs, cut throats, bloody corpses of men, women and children in war zones in Syria, the piercing screams of a mother saddened by the death of her child in Iraq, the soulful sobs of a child orphaned in a suicide bombing in Afghanistan, the blood-spattered bodies of schoolchildren in Pakistan, the faint and fair bodies riddle with bullets in the war-stricken areas of Palestine and the chained bodies of Nigerian women being arrested by terrorists before the eye of international community reflect the barbarity of our age.
It is a certain fact that war undermines our economic infrastructures, razes the cities to the ground, wrecks havoc on our financial resources but they are all considered unimportant comparing to human loss. In other words, precluding from the mammoth destructions of war is secondary to preventing human loss.
“Unfortunately the love that is to be born out of hate will never be born. Hatred is sterile; it breeds nothing but the image of its own empty fury, its own nothingness. Love cannot come of emptiness. It is full of reality. Hatred destroys the real being of man in fighting the fiction which it calls ‘the enemy.’ For man is concrete and alive, but ‘the enemy’ is a subjective abstraction. A society that kills real men in order to deliver itself from the phantasm of a paranoid delusion is already possessed by the demon of destructiveness because it has made itself incapable of love. It refuses, a priori, to love. It is dedicated not to concrete relations of man with man, but only to abstractions about politics, economics, psychology, and even, sometimes, religion…”
Our modern age, wherein “human rights” are declaimed in stentorian slogans, is void of virtue and moral values. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) claims to heal the bleeding wounds of human societies and precipitate universal peace and justice as it is asserted in the preamble of UDHR, “Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world, Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people, Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law ….”
Furthermore, article 2 of this Declaration states, “Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status….” Besides oozing charm, the statements claim high moral aspirations; however this Declaration, like many other international instruments, lacks a strong mechanism to enforce the law. As it was mentioned above, human rights are violated flagrantly in the worst possible way around the globe, the megalomaniac powers infringe the international law with impunity, Syria, Iraq, Palestine, etc. are burning amidst violence and bloodshed, the war victims flock to neighboring countries with a tinge of hope to find a safe haven and, to their unmitigated chagrin, some lose their lives in peregrinations, yet no voice is raised or finger is pointed at seriously from the UN families, including international community.
The UDHR, based on its assertion, entitles men with equal rights irrespective of their “race, color, sex, language, religion, etc.” but why a Palestinian baby is doomed to pain and suffering from the very first day of his/her birth? Why the cruelty and barbarity, take place in Palestine, Syria, Iraq, etc, are given the cold shoulder by the world? Hope restrictive measures be taken to preclude from further violence and bloodshed and men be entitled with equal rights, in is true meaning, all around the world. In short, prayerfully the day will come that a Muslim baby born in the war-stricken area of Palestine be entitled the same rights as a Christian baby born in the heart of America.