National Human Rights Consultation Submission 

AGWW-7RBDEM 

Name: John Wallace 

Submission Text: 

Thanks for the opportunity to make a comment.
 

 
I support the notion of structural change to support the disadvantaged,
 
marginalized and the many hidden victims of our systems. My comment only
 
has to do with whether there is a better concept than “human rights” by
 
which to progress this agenda.
 

 
The weakness I see with the concept of “human rights” has to do with the
 
reactions of anger engendered when people feel they are “denied their
 
rights.” The logic around is that if someone’s “rights” are being denied,
 
someone must be doing the denying – in other words a “wrong” is being done
 
by someone. For instance a husband may feel justified in badgering his
 
wife with her duty to give him his “conjugal rights” for sex and in forcing
 
himself on her. A fundamentalist Christian quotes “children obey your
 
parents” and considers his children’s disobedience an affront to his
 
responsibility to keep order and to his status as “head of the family.” He
 
readily may assume that this breach of “parental rights” (to have his
 
children obey him as God says would be good) gives him a corresponding
 
right to enforce his headship. An Israeli government may focus
 
politically on their own right to exist and use it to justify violent
 
confrontation.
 

 
Experience shows that we can discuss rights at the UN with nothing
 
changing. In conflict situations, the rich and powerful too easily justify
 
their goals and methods by focusing on the simplistic and legally-accepted
 
concept of their “rights.” Furthermore “human rights” are complex
 
theoretical constructs and therefore are always susceptible to becoming
 
overly-theoretical and further removed from the harsh reality and raw
 
emotion of human tragedies. Human rights are susceptible to endless
 
debate because they are based on consensus morality. But why should anyone
 
listen to my beliefs about “human rights” – or yours? Why should Cuba
 
listen to the USA ’s view on what is right, or Australia to China or Iran
 
’s views? To overcome this weakness, much effort is put into strengthening
 
international law and co-operation… but resorting to legalism in conflict
 
situations is in my opinion usually counterproductive by diminishing the
 
parties’ natural compassion for the other.
 

 

 
In my view, we need to focus on an alternative concept that doesn’t lend
 
itself to legalism but to compassion, in the tradition of restorative
 
rather than retributive justice.
 

 
What I’d like to suggest is for the concept of “human rights” to be
 
replaced, or at least supplemented by concern for “human indignity.” For
 
example, a husband feels the indignity of his wife refusing sex; a father
 
feels the indignity of his children paying little heed to him, a government
 
feels the indignity of not being able to guarantee the public’s safety as
 
much as they want. Straight away we can sympathise with these parties
 
living with these indignities, and yet without any suggestion that they
 
should, or that it would be justifiable for them to, use force to redress
 
the situations. If we focus on their indignity, then we want to support
 
them to strengthen their remaining dignity and, in a dignified, moral
 
manner to engage in safe and mutual exploration of complex issues. 

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