Antidiscrimination

THE RIGHT TO EQUALITY and the principle of nondiscrimination are among the most fundamental elements of international human rights law. As humankind faces the dilemma of poverty, a powerful tool [Page 39]is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, articles 1 and 2, adopted in Paris in 1948, which proclaim: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.”

But with mankind empowered since 1948 with such profound antidiscrimination principles, have prejudice and resulting institutionalized poverty that it inflicts been abolished? A glance across the globe finds:

In July 1983, armed groups of ethnic Sinhalese of the Buddhist religion attacked the homes of ethnic Tamil of the Hindu religion in the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo, attacking the Tamils and driving them out with a death toll of more than 3,000, destruction of millions of dollars of property, and the creation of thousands of refugees as their homes and property were burned, looted, or seized.

Between December 1998 and December 2001, an estimated 2,000 native Christians on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi were killed in attacks by bands of Muslims from the nearby Maluku Islands, where an estimated 8,000 Christians had been killed in a four-year period from 1999 to 2002 and thousands were driven from their villages and land, resettling on predominantly Christian Sulawesi as destitute refugees.

In March 1999, Human Rights Watch denounced slavery practiced in Sudan conducted by government-backed and armed militia of the Baggara tribe in western Sudan, directed mostly at the civilian Dinka population of the southern region of Bahr El Ghazal. The tribal militia, often operating with government troops, raided Dinka villages, looting cattle and food as well as abducting women and children for use as domestic slaves and for sale in adjacent countries. The abducted children and women often lead lives of extreme deprivation and cruelty at the hands of their masters. They are denied their ethnic heritage, language, religion, and identity as they are cut off from their families and are held by Arabic-speaking captors, most of whom rename the abductees with Arabic names and coerce the children and women into practicing Islam.

In July 2005, the United Nations' World Food Program estimated that 2.9 million Zimbabweans would require food aid over the year ahead, an estimated 36 percent of Zimbabwe's population. The famine was blamed on food shortages and limited tillage after millions of acres of farmland owned by the white descendants of European colonials were confiscated by the Zimbabwe government, divided into small parcels, and given only to blacks belonging to the political party of President Robert Mugabe.

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