Protecting the world’s human rights (From Gazette)

Protecting the world’s human rights

9:47am Thursday 6th December 2007 in

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With his shock of red hair, face full of freckles and piercing blue eyes, the 80-year-old man looked to John Packer as his last hope to end a living hell.

The tribal leader of the marsh Arabs wanted to stop the horror Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had created.

"He said the only thing he wanted was the water back," remembered Prof Packer.

The marsh tribe, who lived on floating reed beds on the Iraq/Iran border, had fallen out of favour with Saddam after providing refuge for his opponents.

Saddam's retaliation was simple, but very effective - he drained the area, sucking the very lifeblood out of a 5,000-year-old community.

As part of a United Nations mission to the area, human rights expert Prof Packer was powerless to reverse Saddam's actions.

What he could do was tell the world about the plight of these people in the hope it would help make a difference.

Making a difference over human rights issues is something Essex University's Human Rights Centre has been doing for 25 years.

While highly-regarded internationally for the work its scholars do, helping shape social justice around the world, the centre is relatively unknown in Essex.

That's not to say there are not human rights issues all around us.

As Prof Packer stressed, the human rights of a prisoner being held on trumped-up charges in an Iraqi prison are just as important as the human rights of a single mother from Essex fighting to get proper housing for her family.

Human rights, in its most simple terms, is that all human beings are born free and are equal in rights and should be treated as such.

It is something Prof Packer feels we are born with.

"Children have an innate sense of equality which is what human rights is all about," he explained.

Sibling rivalry is often born from feelings of injustice if they feel they are being treated differently and unfairly.

Justice for all and a passion for fighting for everyone's human right to live a dignified life is what first brought the Canadian to Essex University in the early 1980s.

It was one of the few places which offered a law degree in international human rights.

It helped launch his professional career in international human rights, which has taken him around the world.

He has seen horrors many of us would not even be able to imagine. He has coped with facing these horrors by knowing his work means the truth is being told for the world to hear.

Prof Packer has now returned to the university as the Human Rights Centre's first full-time director.

He is among the 1,300 people who have graduated from the centre and have used their human rights skills to help improve lives around the world.

The Second World War was one of the major triggers for the human rights movement.

Until then, what went on within a country regarding its own people was really its own affair.

All that changed with the holocaust.

"It was seen as so repugnant and served no evident purpose," explained Prof Packer.

"It shocked the consciousness of mankind."

This, along with the boom of global communications, means that countries can't hide their atrocities anymore from the rest of the world.

Prof Packer will never forget watching the TV reports about the Albanians fleeing Kosovo during the crisis there in the late 1990s.

Sitting comfortably at his home with his two young children on his lap, he watched in despair at the pictures of droves of people, young and old, being forced to give up the life they had known.

"Those pictures made a big impact on me, but you didn't have to be a human rights scholar to react in that way," he stressed.

"Their dignity was in question and there was the feeling that humans should not have to live like that."

We in the UK may take comfort from not having to face the horrors of some other countries, but Prof Packer said fighting for human rights everywhere was open-ended.

The modern world will always have challenges like improving standards of health, education and housing.

As for the rest of the world, it's good to know that past and present scholars from Essex are playing a big part in helping the human rights for all.

HUMAN RIGHTS DAY

Human Rights Day on Monday kicks off Human Rights Week. The date was chosen to honour the United Nations General Assembly's adoption and proclamation, on December 10, 1948, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states: "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."