Assignment in Comparative Human Rights Law

Session 2
The Last Utopia – Samuel Moyn
Chapter 3 Summary
Submitted by
Joselito C. Manuel
“The ornament called Human Rights”
Anti-colonialism is basically a rights of man movement. It espouses that
all men are created equal, they have rights and most prominent of them is
Liberty. Post war era understandably went more towards self-determination of
colonies. The „freedom‟ to govern by themselves and free from the reigns of
another state. The “self-determination of peoples”. On the heels of this
decolonization movement, is the creation of their „State‟. The sovereign. The
one organ to rule them all. The one above all of the citizen. The collective. A
new „nation-state‟. As oppose to the idea of „human rights‟ and the idea that
these human rights transcends the state and conferred (one might argue
inherent) to an individual. That when transgressed and trampled upon, it can be
invoked upon against the „State‟. While human rights fueled that war cries of
WW2, the aftermath tells a different story. Looking at it from a historical
perspective, it was anti-colonization or self-determination that progressed and
not human rights. Human Rights faded into the corner (if not into oblivion at
all). In fact anti-colonialism, instead of being aligned with human rights a
promised, became in tandem with international law and became „universalistic‟.
An international by-word. A universal goal. Global.
This was fueled by the Bandung Conference when several African and
Asian countries, including the Philippines, pushed for their role in the Cold
War, economic development, and most of all, decolonization. Human Rights
became subordinate to self-determination. Human rights however got its much
needed win when the “Covenant on Human Rights” was drafted. However,
instead of center stage, it again became a flash in the pan as the right to self-
determination became the first right in the covenant. Making the colonial
system an international crime according to Cabral. UN even came out with
resolutions and the current events at those times „showed that human rights
were defined by anti-racism and anti-colonialism. The apartheid comes to mind
and the anti-Jim Crow laws. Negroes subordination by the Whites as human
rights violation. Still, having no powers, the UN and its Commission on Human
Rights failed to act on it. Roosevelt even downplayed this Black Movement so
as not to give the soviets more ammunition in its propaganda against the US.
Even Malcolm X, black hero of the era, rode the human rights bandwagon
however briefly. Preferring civil rights over human rights which he deemed
more legally enforceable. Moyn, while applauding Carlos P. Romulo‟s thrust
then in the Bandung conference, urging America to live up to its anti-racist
precepts, however did not condone the conference‟s inability to see that it
spurred the way to establishing international legal protection for individuals.