WATERLOO, Ontario — Dec. 9 and 10 marked the anniversaries of the Genocide Convention and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). Both were an acknowledgment of the dark side of European history and embodied the determination to ban vices that had been let loose with terrible consequences by Westerners. Both the vices and the values they offended are universal, not characteristic of any particular civilization or culture but inherent to human nature.
As human beings, we bear rights that are inalienable. Because these arise from the fact of us being human, they are necessarily universal, held equally by all humans. The parallel growth and expansion of human rights and international humanitarian law converged in the protection of civilians and punishment of perpetrators against the backdrop of government-instigated atrocity crimes like genocide, ethnic cleansing and large-scale killings.
Changes in the nature of armed conflict have put civilians on the frontline of conflict-related casualties as well, from about 25 percent during World War I to around 65 percent in World War II and up to 90 percent today. Meantime, globalization has shrunk distances, brought images of human suffering into our daily lives in graphic detail and expanded our capacity to respond meaningfully, thereby increasing the calls to do so. Burma in 2007 was vastly different from Burma in 1988 on this count.