
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, June 21, 1993                   TAG: 9308260261
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WOMEN ARE HUMANS, TOO

THE U.N. World Conference on Human Rights has been faced with an assault, mainly by Asian nations, on its widely accepted Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The argument: The equality of half the world's human population, women, is a Western idea, and contrary to the culture and traditions of some nations.

It's also not part of their culture to allow full freedom of political expression.

In other words, the people holding the power want to keep it. It's the tradition, and they do real well under it.

The abused and repressed would like to see a little cultural change, however. Take Nahid Toubia, for example. She is a Sudanese woman who appeared before the Population Council in New York last week to speak against the practice of female circumcision, a mutilation practiced mainly in Africa.

``Parts of our bodies have been removed in the name of culture and social conformity,'' she told the organization. ``But culture belongs to us, too. We have the right to decide what parts of our culture we want to preserve and what parts we want to abandon.''

Leaders in Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore disagree. Human rights are subject to ``cultural relativism,'' they claim. A core of fundamental human rights, articulated 45 years ago and already recognized by 118 nations, is foreign to some cultures, which shouldn't be expected to adopt Western values.

China and Syria, which have, not coincidentally, abominable human-rights records, have taken up the standard as ardent guardians of non-Western culture.

It is indeed a special and prized part of Western thinking to recognize the basic dignity of all human beings, male and female, of every race. But it is a concept that has evolved recently even in Western history.

It has not been all that long, after all, since the enslavement of one race was part of the American way of life - part of its culture, if you will. And a newer concept, even, than racial equality is the idea that women, as well as men, are covered by the declaration that ``all men are created equal'' - an idea a lot of people still find troublesome.

While human equality and freedom of political expression are values that have taken root and evolved in the West, they do not spring from one culture. The desire to live with dignity, free from abuse, free to seek change and better one's lot - these are desires of the human heart. Witness the waves of immigrants - from the East as well as the West - who have come to this country in this generation and in every generation since the rest of the world found the ``New World,'' and heard of its promised opportunity to live in freedom.

The reality has often fallen short of the dream. But progress comes only after a society has accepted the principle, and starts working to realize it. In striving for an equitable social order, recognition of basic human rights among all peoples is fundamental.

To say a person's value depends on where she is born - a Western woman is a full person, but a woman born in the East is something less - that would be cultural arrogance.

The Western nations must be firm on this. The 183 United Nations members represented at the human rights conference in Vienna are not expected to accomplish much. In a group where consensus is required, what hope is there of establishing a High Commissioner on Human Rights, one of the stated goals, when some members resist the notion that there is a universal code they should follow?

Western nations should, at the least, stand fast against any erosion of the progress already made toward establishing basic human rights worldwide.

by CNB