Equal in Dignity

Article 1.

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.

This first article, with the phrase, "Equal in dignity and rights" tempts me to write a long tirade against American foreign policy. Our decisions in Iraq and Pakistan make it plain that we don't see the world the way this article asks us to. Iraqis aren't equal in dignity if we aren't concerned enough about their deaths to have an accurate count. And Pakistan isn't equal in dignity if we are happy to support a president who is eroding democracy because he supports our "Global War on Terror".

But instead, maybe it would be more fun to start off our celebration of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on a more idealistic tone. So maybe we could right now imagine what the world would look like if our governments really did believe that, "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights."

As I close my eyes, I see a world that lives up to its promise of troops and support in Darfur - a world that is truly committed to preventing genocides, like those of the Armenians in Turkey, the Holocaust, in Cambodia, the Balkans, Rwanda, and the Kurds in Iraq. I see a world that moves immediately to crisis like the ones in Congo, Somalia, and Kenya. And I see a world that starts a project on the scale of the Marshall Plan to help move Afghanistan from a country of perpetual war and refugee crises, to one that might be stable and without extreme poverty. Finally, I see a world that uses all available resources to end extreme poverty.

What do you see?