President Obama got lucky; he won the Nobel Peace Prize a little early. Good on him. The award which is given on December 10 Human Rights Day in Oslo, Norway, of this year. The date is a remembrance of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in Paris, France in 1948. This award ceremony honoring our president will be watched like an Oscar audience all over the world.

For those of us who voted for Obama, we hope he will not merit the treatment the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has suffered. Little known to most people, the UDHR has been read by less than 5% of the world. Governments neglect it and abuse it on a regular basis. They surely do not publish it, though that was mandated by the actual documents. Forgotten and neglected, the Nobel Award is the single annual event that honors the UDHR. Even Amnesty International until 1993 did not adopt all 30 articles of the UDHR. Most human groups seldom use it. Those collective rights bother the West and many human rights groups. There is a great love of individual rights in the West but little time for collective rights, though they live and breathe in the same UDHR as do the individuals rights. i.e. The lack of respect from Wall St regarding the common good has brought down the USA economy to near collapse. The common good in the UDHR is clear and straight forward.

After all, most human rights monies are raised and spent in the West. The left side of the UDHR has suffered from the lack of the strength, money and power of the constituency in the non-West. Not many large offices or big salaries in human rights groups outside of New York, London, Geneva and Washington.

A reading of  ‘Heartbeat and a Guitar’ by Antonio D’Ambrosio tells us the heartache and glory of Johnny Cash who use his music to remember moments of national embarrassment of slavery and land stealing away from the Native people. Awards like songs can become heavy burdens. For if one absorbs the agony of the Apache and the Cherokee, if we remember the ‘strange fruit’ of slavery, a musician changes as does the listener. Johnny Cash sang them all into musical history. Like Cash, the President is a student of history. Obama knows that December 10 is about the stories of the other Peace Prize winners; the struggle of Christians in Ireland, the loss of so many Cambodians, six million Jews, apartheid’s lasting for so long until Tutu and Mandela, the disastrous war of Vietnam for us and them, the massive human rights abuses of military regimes like Argentina, Chile, Burma, especially raping of women as a state policy….all these times and events lived and live in the souls of the Peace Prize winners. By osmosis, Obama will inherit them as well. They are a burden to bear. Surely, sad lessons to learn, but must be learned to avoid repetition.

Our young President will get a little older. The Prize wants him to become wiser as well. The chasm between rich and poor; the chasm between Islam and the other faiths; the chasm between a nation empire in  support of wars as opposed to a nation state in support of peace will emerge; ecology beloved or damned….these chasms and more will surface in the ceremony. Obama will be handed the greatest prize in the world……on the day the greatest document ever written for all of us on earth was signed. My question is simple….will our president accept the prize with the document? Or like former American presidents and award winners, he will take one without the other. Hope not.

The poor everywhere deserve nothing less.

The world will await Obama’s acceptance speech.  With the Peace Prize in his hand, I hope he gives the best speech he has ever given using the frame work of all 30, yes, articles of the UDHR. After 62 years, the real prize is the UDHR and what Obama will do about it.

After all, a former Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Martin L King, Jr. used a document, namely the Constitution, to move this country forward. Maybe, this President will move our world forward using a document as well. The UDHR. The dream worked. Now for the hope.

Posted by Jack Healey

in The Huffington Post

Governments need to lead the nation the way good drivers operate a vehicle (you may not talk on your cell phone while driving). To avoid trouble, one must look ahead as well as in the rear-view mirror. To neglect either direction will invite serious trouble.

Eric Holder has called for a limited review of the past regarding torture accusations of the CIA. A good decision but not a great decision. Let me try to tell you why.

Governments that torture will inevitably inherit the hatred of people everywhere, and appropriately so. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Convention is clear in its statement of No Torture. Any government that does not keep that standard before their soldiers, intelligence people and prison guards risks the friendships that decency brings.

Not looking in the mirror when there has been a pattern of torture, or even the torture of one person, is immature denial of a dark past that should not occur again. There needs to be a review, a probe, and a study.

Violators must be chased in each case. I have met more victims of torture and heard more stories than one man should hear. And what I see time and again is this:

First, victims of torture want the torture to stop and second, they want to know who gave the orders.

Who gives the orders to torture? Failing to provide that answer is not an option. Human progress demands answers for Human Rights violations. If you are the father or the mother of a victim, you want and deserve an answer. Democratic governments were made for the good of its citizens. Thus, once torture is alleged, the government must act and dig into the facts of all the violations, not just some.

If you want a moment of despair from which you can escape, ask a survivor of torture what happened to him or her (two separate issues usually). Ask the person when, how did it feel, how long did it last, where did they hurt you, was it once or twice or weeks and months? How did you survive? How did you recuperate? As you ask, watch the eyes, the body reactions, help wipe the tears and the sweat, be prepared to catch one if they fall, watch the fear come and sweep over the room like a tsunami. Suicide often becomes an unseen but real visitor.

Then remember this: Almost all torturers go free. That is the history. A few brave nations are recently trying to turn this fact around: Peru, Argentina, Chile, Rwanda, Bosnia. But the damage torture brings onto the citizens is immense and there is little interest in a real and wide pursuit of justice for the offended. Sixty-three years after the founding of the United Nations the wickedness of torture is alive and well, and spreading. Will this tide of abuse continue?

If you feel torture should be allowed to protect our national interests and therefore we are exempt as a nation, at least do this one thing: read or meet a story of a survivor of torture. Women in particular need to look closely at these stories, for their gender is usually abused for weeks and months by many. 300,000 rapes in the Congo, 30,000 in Bosnia, I could go on, but why?

When the dogs of war are let into the jails, into intelligence meetings and into hidden rooms in hidden countries, cold sweat should come to the back of your neck for any one inside that chamber. If that is your sister, cousin, friend, you will pray and beg God for help. Little relief will come but you will demand the standard of No Torture should be kept and all violators prosecuted, no matter what the President says.

When governments torture, the car is crashing. And, whether you like it or not, the citizens of the U.S. will be implicated in the post-crash police report. It is now time to remove ourselves from this list. By chasing all the violators of people, we begin a process of saying ‘no more’ once again. Maybe this time we might mean it. The world’s decent are looking to see how the U.S. will act. After preaching for years that we are the greatest nation on Earth, isn’t it time to prove it?

Posted by Jack Healey

in The Huffington Post

“Sixty years ago, the best document ever written came together in Paris under the leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt. It is called the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That’s the good news. The bad news is less than 5% of the world even knows about this document. Worse yet, many governments do not properly adhere to its tenants. This Declaration was written against the horrific backdrop of WWII, when human rights violations reached immense proportion. Although similar levels of human rights violations have remained consistent throughout the world in places like Darfur, Burma, and the Central Congo, the principles discussed in this document still remain ideals, rather than realities.

By the year 2010, 42% of the world will be under the age of 21. As was seen in the recent American election, there is a clamoring for change amongst this demographic. This exists not only for young people at home, but all over the world. When injustice occurs in far corners of the globe, this document empowers the innocent against the oppressor. Just as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. pointed to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as an example of justice and equality, so to will this new generation need a rulebook to combat oppression.

Such a rulebook already exists in this Declaration. For 60 years, governments have let this document gather dust in a closet. This anniversary reminds us that this Declaration is living and belongs to every citizen of the world, no matter what nationality, race, gender or creed. It is time to put this Declaration in the hands of the people, for there is an awful lot of suffering in the world.

This document is for, as Bob Dylan wrote, “the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones and worse.” If you are in a far-away land being tortured, raped, censored or held captive, this document is the “the chimes of freedom flashing.”

This is not just idealism. There are practical things you can do right now to honor Eleanor Roosevelt’s greatest achievement, and more importantly, protect the fabric of decency that should exist between governments and their citizens.

Below is a video of artists, activists and children reading the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — send it to everyone you know.

Sign the petition at www.humanrightsactioncenter.org to get this Declaration printed in every passport.

Write your representatives and encourage them to take the necessary steps to free Aung San Suu Kyi, the present, living-day symbol of Human Rights and the rightful leader of Burma.

Lastly, print a copy of the Declaration of Human Rights and put it in your wallet. Take it from a guy who has met his share of innocent people being abused: you never know when you just might need it.”

- Jack Healey