Download PDFWhy the Rhetoric is Flawed
According to the UDHR, rights are to be upheld uncompromisingly for all individuals, but its current state makes it all too easy to ignore. Understanding how the rhetorical strategies of the document purposefully undermine its effectiveness helps explain why it has been a relatively unsuccessful document, especially under the current climate. Lyon and Lester discuss in “Special Issue on Human Rights Rhetoric” the ways “language is adapted to circumstance” and how “rhetorical inquiry examines how audiences identify with both rights themselves and the individuals or communities whose rights have been violated” (205). Hierarchies of social privilege and political power exist in the language of the UDHR to establish and maintain social dominance, one that happens to be skewed toward a particularly Eurocentric inclination.
Genre of Legal Opinion
One of the major issues with the UDHR is the difficult genre it’s written in. The document is written formally and rigidly, much in the style of a legal document whose techniques are meant to promote neutrality and universality, which, according to Katie L. Gibson’s rhetorical analysis on judicial opinion, overwhelmingly shape the tone of the law (123). Gibson goes on to cite Katherine Bartlett explain that “‘traditional legal methods place a high premium on the predictability, certainty, and fixity of rules’” which is a method the UDHR relies on for its effectiveness and authority (qtd. in Gibson 125). Per the language and style of the UDHR, it aims to be interpreted as a finalized document that is to be referenced when a person feels their rights are being violated. The genre of judicial opinion typically focuses on closed discourse that perpetuates the “unquestionable power of the judiciary,” resulting in articles that are decontextualized, authoritarian, and dismissive of alternative perspectives (Gibson 125). The UDHR easily fits into this genre. Instead of beginning with an “introduction” or “premise,” the UDHR begins with a formal “preamble,” which right away sets the tone of a legally written document or statute. Within the preamble, the term “whereas” appears seven times as it lists reasons for the document’s enactment, which is in line with the West’s Encyclopedia of America Law definition of the term: “When whereas is placed at the beginning of a legislative bill, it means ‘because’ and is followed by an explanation for the enactment of the legislation,” further placing the UDHR within the genre of judicial opinion and legal documentation. Before getting to the actual articles of the document, readers are already exposed to tenets of the genre and are persuaded to accept it as singularly correct.
The problem with a universal document written in the genre of legal documentation is that its language immediately categorizes it as inaccessible, intentionally ambiguous, and closed to reinterpretation. While the motive for using the legal genre may be to remove bias and open interpretation, the genre mainly serves to further marginalize countless groups while establishing biased social hierarchies. Plain-language contracts appeal to a much wider audience and should be the model for any universal document, instead of using frequent elevated language seen throughout the document like “endowed,” “impartial tribunal,” “penal offense,” “arbitrary interference,” “set forth herein,” and more. The abstract and vague application of such terminology leaves many openings for infringements to take place, seemingly within the rights of the law. The language of the current document is written in the language of an oppressor that still expects the oppressed to accept it at face value. Analyzing this language further begs the question of who is included in each given group of oppressed and oppressor.
Who’s Included?
The UDHR suggests that all lives are sacred and that everyone is included under the document. The issue with this claim is that people are often only referring to the members of their own group when they refer to “persons,” “lives,” or “everyone.” This presents itself most recognizably in contemporary cultures and societies via laws and norms that subjugate women, LGBTQIA, BIPOC, and/or Jewish people, to name a few. The United States, for example, ignores Article 2, which states that “everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind,” when it denies marriage to homosexual partners and when it denies due process to the BIPOC community, violations of articles 16 and 112, respectively. The BLM movement resurgence of 2020 specifically protests against the lack of due process given to George Floyd, who was murdered for a “bad check” accusation. Additionally, people of color in the United States also were barred for many years from Article 27, which allows for the right to “freely participate in the cultural life of the community” because desegregation laws did not pass until the 1960’s, well after the UDHR was decreed. In these circumstances, “everyone” certainly did not receive “all” the rights. Passively classifying certain groups of people as “subhuman” is a tactic that can easily be used to subvert UDHR articles that use terminology like “everyone” and “all,” and thus deny applicability to those outside of the mandatory criteria. This happened with the Jewish population in Nazi Germany and also with the Chinese population during Japan’s invasion. The term “everyone” appears 30 times throughout the document in an attempt to persuade audiences that it is truly inclusive, and yet many state laws only grant privileges (read “rights”) to certain groups and not to others. Conflicting ideologies on what discrimination is and who it affects invalidates inclusivity terms as they appear everywhere in the UDHR, such as Articles 7 and 23 concerning everyone’s right to equal protection and pay, and redefines the conditions by which people are to be treated.
Additionally, the use of “he” in Articles 11 and 27 and the term “his” appearing 21 times throughout the document create a distinction severe enough to remove women from its context altogether, an issue that grows more problematic as the concepts of gender equality and fluidity become more mainstream. The term “woman” appears only twice, first in the preamble and second in Article 16, about marriage and family. The term “brotherhood” in Article 1 is supposed to elicit comradery and togetherness, but why not use words like “comradery” instead of the gendered assumption of man caring for man, or woman caring for man in a nurturing way? The subject of “brotherhood” is male and promotes the ideal of male-centeredness, encouraging countries who do not recognize gender equality to continue perpetuating that standard. Gibson notes Gerald Wetlaufer’s remark that rhetorically committing to abstraction and universality perpetuates the status quo, “disempower[ing] the already powerless to reinforce the existing distribution of power and wealth, to prove wrong those who question the legitimacy or neutrality of the existing system, and to marginalize the voices of opposition” (qtd. in Gibson 125). Decontextualizing women from the universal group creates distinct levels of hierarchies and points to whom the standard is centered around.
Article 4 states that “no one shall be held in slavery or servitude” and that slavery “shall be prohibited in all their forms,” which runs contrary to Article 16, which asserts that “men and women of full age . . . have the right to marry and to found a family” in countries where a woman is only allowed out of her home with the accompaniment of her husband or another male, known as a guardianship policy (“Boxed In”). Ownership of a woman is a form of slavery, wife or not; however, there are countries whose culture directly opposes this. Article 16 goes on to say that “marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses,” although it is well known that many marriages worldwide are not created this way (“Boxed In”). Does this qualify as an infringement of human rights per the UDHR’s codes, or does the resident culture’s norm dominate? The fact that “women” only appear in the document in relation to family and marriage further positions women as secondary to men and necessary only as an object for procreation. This is supported by the final part of Article 16, stating that “the family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society,” which defines a “family” as a heterosexual relationship and the one time a woman is needed and protected, explicitly.
Articles Failing to Meet Needs
The rhetoric of the UDHR can also be recognized as flawed through the reasoning behind abstentions from countries like the USSR who found that a more explicit condemnation of fascism and Nazism was indisputably necessary. Article 19 refers to “freedom of opinion and expression . . . through any media,” which worried nations like the USSR who had firsthand experiences with the Nazis and wanted to create explicit condemnation, in writing, against such radical groups expressing themselves (Danchin). Since the article does not limit expression, and instead asserts that opinions are to be held “without interference,” there is no way to stop an individual from participating in hate speech, perpetuating misinformation, or inciting violence. Communist countries, however, recognized the need for a generalized document that would at least combat Nazism and were prudent enough not to oppose the decree outright (Danchin). As Article 19 is written now, it not only fails to condemn fascism, the vague language is flexible enough to defend a person’s right to recruit and promote violence.
Observing how the weak and imprecise rhetoric of the UDHR fails to meet the needs of a universal audience highlights some of the reasons why various other countries chose to abstain from the vote. Those who abstained recognized language in the UDHR that was insufficient in some way, or that crossed a line in its wording that offended or ran contrary to their cultural mores. South Africa, a country once ruled by Apartheid, abstained from the vote because the UDHR contained too many economic, social, and cultural rights, as opposed to not enough (Danchin). The system of Apartheid institutionally enforced racial, economic, and political segregation, which clearly violated numerous UDHR articles, specifically those about rights to vote and participate in government. Article 21 grants everyone “the right to take part in the government of his country,” and yet it is known that only certain groups were allowed to vote under Apartheid. The Saudi Arabian abstention stemmed from a refusal to accept the wording surrounding equal marriage rights in Article 16 and the right to change religion/beliefs in Article 18, although these issues did not prevent the favorable vote of other Muslim countries (Danchin).
Singular Ideology
Unsurprisingly, the biased nature of universal rights makes it a document that is largely ignored and has created natural resentment in those excluded and overlooked. Many within Muslim communities express concerns about the Western bias of the UDHR, including Riffat Hassan, who states:
What needs to be pointed out to those who uphold the [UDHR] to be the highest, or sole, model, of a charter of equality and liberty for all human beings, is that given the Western origin and orientation of this Declaration, the "universality" of the assumptions on which it is based is – at the very least – problematic and subject to questioning. (“Introduction”)
Not all varied and evolving global views align with Eurocentric ideals of integrated rights, and it’s important to recognize that differing perspectives make up significant portions of the population, although the genre and language of the UDHR would suggest that everyone around the world can agree to their one specific standard of rights. For instance, alternative views might contend Article 1’s claim that “all human beings are born free . . . they are endowed with reason and conscience” because of the prevailing non-Western belief that:
Rights are neither natural nor the essential part of man’s person, nor are the[y] impressionable. They have no special significance or importance. They are part of the general law of the land. . . man is sum total of a stomach and matter, and economic struggle [is] its only goal of life. (Manzoor, “Socialist View of Human Right”)
This view heavily values physical rights like food and shelter and is less concerned with individual moral growth and development, as Articles 27 and 29 would suggest about “enjoy[ing] the arts” and “development of personality.” This again demonstrates how differing fundamental truths make an all-encompassing declaration of rights difficult to produce. Manzoor agrees that “by and large, the concept of human rights is very much the product of history and of human civilization. Being as such, it is always subject to evolution and change” (“Conclusion”).
Article 23 also supports the singular ideology that favors Western cultural views, and yet is still not achieved by most. This article states that everyone has the right to work and the right to “protection against unemployment,” that everyone has the right to “equal pay for equal work” without discrimination, that everyone who works has the right to dignified standards of living to be “supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection", and that everyone has the right to be involved in trade unions “for the protection of his interests.” This article, paired with Article 24, which grants everyone the right to “rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hour and periodic holiday with pay,” is an example of fruitless rhetoric that is not backed up or supported in a practical way by the UN. Although a small portion of countries seem to enjoy some leisure rights, in many other nations promises like these read more like unrealized privileges than rights. What qualifies as “reasonable limitations of working hours” depends on the opinion of the employer, and in some cases, employers have been notorious for demanding work hours that fail to allow even for the suggested eight hours of recommended sleep. As far as “periodic holiday pay” goes, the matter is so complicated by intermixed cultural beliefs existing within a singular workplace that it would not be feasible to allow extended holiday time to some groups while others receive none at all, based on the holidays they adhere to.
Concerning “equal pay for equal work,” women and racial minorities experience infamously widespread wage discrepancies that are unlikely to be corrected any time soon. According to UN Women, “worldwide, women only make 77 cents for every dollar earned by men . . . even though the work itself may require equal or more effort and skills, it [is] valued and remunerated less. For women of color, immigrant women and mothers, the gap widens.” This obstinate system is expected to take as long as 70 years before it is corrected, according to current trends. One of the problems with the equal pay concerns is how difficult it is to prove that “equal work” is being done. Any employer can claim that a woman, or any person, is doing less work than a higher paid individual and is thus justified in paying them less. Language needs to be worked into these articles that allows for specific contextualization of an individual’s needs to lessen the possibility for exploitation. Issues like these need to be backed up by the UN rhetorically to ensure enforcement of equal pay and due leisure instead of pledging it as finalized and concrete and then relying on the resident legal system to settle the rest.
Additionally, Natalie Midiri discusses the importance of appealing to a universal audience that is “convinced by logic, persuaded by the style of the presentation, and not motivated by self-interest,” although Midiri notes that no such audience exists (99). The UDHR assumes the same singular logic of its entire audience and has relied on the traditional official format to serve as rhetorical ethos. Although the document is translated into over 360 languages, conceptually not all topics receive an appropriate communication of ideals. Article 6, for example, states that “everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.” Although this article seeks to recognize and establish that all humans are legitimate, it passes the responsibility to a nation’s current legal system, instead of through universal enforcement. The article does not state that the “law of the UN” determines and enforces legitimacy, but that it is determined instead by the law of the state where a human happens to be. Should the state pass laws that no longer recognize particular groups, then those groups would no longer be protected and would be subject to abuse. The vague language of Article 6 fails to protect groups that are being victimized by stronger opponents.
[2] Article 16: (1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution. (2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses. (3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
Article 11: (1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence. (2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.