Revised version

Professor Harold Suderman has come all the way from Canada to tell us about the Universal Declaration of Human Responsibilities. He says this draft Declaration, which is not yet widely known in North America , and perhaps elsewhere, deserves the same recognition as that enjoyed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Professor Suderman found out about the Declaration in 1998 and subsequently contacted the InterAction Council, the NGO that initiated it and has promoted it since then. "It was clear to me from the start", he says, "that human rights imply human responsibilities too". This connection is rarely made in the press, although the collapse of several large corporations as a result of scandalous business practices is drawing much public attention to corporate responsibilities.

That is, Professor Suderman says, one of the reasons he asked the World Federalists of Canada to support and promote the Declaration. They showed great interest in it and even asked for more information, as did other people outside WFM-Canada. For two years, Hasrold Suderman roamed the internet only to find that the Declaration was already widely reproduced and debated, and that the InterAction Council is also involved in developing recommendations on, and practical solutions for, the political, economic and social problems confronting humanity.

 

Harold Suderman works on the Declaration in its entire form, as it was presented to the U.N. on September 1, 1997. Declaration supporters then hoped the General Assembly would decide to adopt it, preferably by 1998, which would have been "a fitting tribute to the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights". Besides English, the Declaration exists in sixteen languages.

 

Economic globalization requires global solutions to the problems it creates - solutions that can be accepted by all cultures and societies. The Declaration seeks to balance rights and responsibilities, which includes a necessary transition "from freedom of indiffference to freedom of commitment". The need for balanced rights and responsibilities is clearly underlined in the introduction, as are the need for world ethics and the opportunities for self-achievement this new balance would provide for everyone.

 

Yet the response to the Declaration has been mixed. Some of it is strongly supportive, some hesitant, and some outrightly opposed, especially in some of the Western press. What is urgently needed is a better understanding , and acknowledgment, that the acceptance of human responsibilities will advance the acceptance of human rights, not hinder it as some have claimed.

Harold Suderman