Are human rights equally distributed?

A not-unexpected controversy arose in the anniversary week that celebrated the signing of the UN Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.

TT became a signatory in 1990, and the precepts of the declaration are reflected in sections four and five of the Constitution, a matter of which we should be proud.

The controversy was the doubt cast on the continuing relevance, not of the declaration, but of the UN itself at a time when its Security Council, dominated by the US, remained silent and inactive in the face of the virus – like contagion of war.

Human rights, defined by the UN as being fundamental, means they are ours as a result of being born. Full stop.

Once you have successfully achieved that hurdle (and not everyone does), you are one of the holders of those rights.

According to the UN, you can be any of race, gender, sex, nationality, religion, IQ, or social status: in an ideal society, in an ideal world, you have them.

They are reflected in the best strivings of mankind to date. They are imperfect, fallible and more acknowledged in their absence than in their presence.

But the acknowledgement that you do have rights shows up in the mechanisms set up to correct the injustices that you feel have appeared in your life at work when your rights have been ignored.

Last week, we heard about those rights contextually: they exist within the framework of justice, equality and freedom. So, if they are what they call “fundamental,” we should experience them as realities, not just as ideals in our schools, law courts and workplaces.

An example of an attempt to correct a breach in the principle of justice was the notification of a man recently incarcerated for up to 30 years before the courts got around to hearing his case and longer before deciding that he should be freed as being not guilty in the first place.

In the workforce, examples abound as well. That is what the Labour Ministry and the Industrial Court are set up to correct. They are not perfect mechanisms but they are available for those who feel themselves subject to unfair treatment.

Then there is the right to equity. Why are some people paid more than others for doing the same work? Or at least "work of equal value," as the ILO terms it? Why are some people working for the government allowed to retire on a pension to which they have not contributed, a pension which had to be funded by the contributions other, less favoured workers paid for through taxes? As Orwell put it in Animal Farm: are some people more equal than others? Is that equity? Are there still measures that need to be taken to ensure the human right to equity, or are we confusing equality with equity?

As for the human right of freedom, in the workplace, all workers are free to accept or reject employment. Forced labour is against the law.

But every right contains the countervailing right. The only way in which a human is equal to God is in the right to say "no."

The right to associate includes the right not to associate, to leave a job, a relationship or a company. It skirts the question – why are some people free to live in peace when others, especially women, are confined to the misery of virtual servitude, domestic violence and abuse from household members? Or forced to work in demeaning and humiliating positions? No right can be isolated from contingent responsibilities like the need to support your children.

There is also the question: shouldn’t managers and workers have the same access to justice? equality? And freedom?

Well, they do, according to the law. If anyone commits fraud they can be jailed for ten-15 years. If they are not guilty, they all have access to the law and can be exonerated, but, as my grandmother told me: "Justice is like the Hilton Hotel: if you can afford it, you can get it."

If you can afford to pay the fees top lawyers with top reputations charge, the chances are good that justice as you perceive it may prevail. All you have to do is read the results of cases in which attorneys themselves charge other attorneys for bribing government authorities because justice is not a cloistered virtue. This has been much in the public eye lately, causing the man liming in Woodford Square to stand in his shoes and wonder, when others cannot even get the courts to listen to their cases because of technicalities, having nothing to do with morality or ethics.

Do the concepts of human rights matter less and less in our judicial system, where perpetrators evade justice because of fear of reprisal if a witness refuses to testify, as, in the medical field, traditionally doctors defend each other against charges of malpractice, even when the patient dies? Human rights are not equally distributed.

So what about equality in the workplace, you ask, or your advocate asks for you?

All those cases in the public service, police service, etc, demanding promotions and salary increases they feel they are entitled to? For repeating the same duties over and over, year after year, as the environment and the core needs of the job have changed around them? Do those people deserve the promotions they are no longer qualified for? Or should those positions be given to the new unemployed but university-qualified graduates?

Unfair discrimination in the workplace is contrary to the law dealing with equal opportunity and monitored by the Equal Opportunity Commission.

But the term "unfair discrimination" implies that there is also something called "fair discrimination." Despite social and economic constraints, there are obstacles in life that each human is required, in all fairness, to face and overcome, and discriminatory measures, thanks to the work of the ILO arising from the Declaration of Human Rights, will often be there to assist.

Fair discrimination includes maternity leave, for example: special provisions apply to women who are pregnant producing the next generation of the workforce without which the economy will not survive. Special leave provisions are granted to protect them when they are giving birth, lactating and caring for offspring during infancy. There will be provisions which discriminate on behalf of workers who are genuinely ill so that they can still support their families, even to prevent exploitation of people regarding age – not allowing marriage, employment or voting in a national election for people before the age of 18.

There are special fair-discrimination provisions built into the OSHA Act for the differently abled, in recognition that all of us are potentially disabled.

It is the responsibility of every organisation that serves the public to respect the rights of its stakeholders under that law.

TT culture has many weaknesses and many benefits and we choose to live with them when we choose to live here.

One of those weaknesses is the expectations of entitlement and the failure to understand the distinction that exists between the right of eligibility to try for what we want and what we need, and the expectation that someone else has the obligation to work and to give them to us.