In the words of the United Nations, “human rights” range from “the most fundamental—the right to life—to those that make life worth living, such as the rights to food, education, work, health, and liberty.” These rights are supposed to be “inherent to us all.” But this lofty ambition has become distorted, not only by the UN itself but by the whole of what Alfred de Zayas calls the “Human Rights Industry.”
This industry, headed by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), has multiple layers that include UN “expert groups” and “rapporteurs,” regional commissions like (in the Western Hemisphere) the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, international NGOs such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, and tens of thousands of other non-governmental organizations.
In part, this industry still attempts to defend real human rights—the most topical example being the remarkable work of the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese. But, take almost any other country as an example—such as the much less publicized case of Nicaragua—and the real purpose of most of the human rights industry is exposed.
Hellbound and Down 