Own Thyself

by Mark Robert Dy

All persons are equal, regardless of the color of their skin. While one could have more schooling, wealth, or beauty than another, all that does not make one more human than anybody else.

Emilio Jacinto
Section 5, The Kartilya Code of Ethics

The dignity of the human person is an indispensable constant. All conflicts stem from the desecration of this valuable trove of primordial protections that every rational person would defend without hesitation. Dignity ought to be common – unremarkable. In all senses, it is supposed to be the most ordinary thing. Yet, we continue to find many people in the world yearning for it. It is not a gift and never has been. Still, we continue to see entire communities begging for it as if its existence was dependent upon others. The powerful abuse the weak. The wealthy command those who have nothing. The many dictate the few. Some philosophers say that this is human nature. Self-interest and evolution determine who survives and who perishes. They say that we were meant to compete and in competition, there will be few winners and many losers. If all these are true, then does it mean that we, as advocates of human rights, would have to surrender our human nature to protect human dignity? Would this not be a ridiculous contradiction?

This is the challenge of democracy.

Human Rights
Human rights are those rights that are built-in to every person and exist throughout the entirety of his life. They are universal, meaning they exist in all persons regardless of any natural or artificial condition. They are also inherent, meaning they co-exist with and have their origin in every person’s life. Lastly, they are inalienable, meaning they cannot be transferred, surrendered or taken away. These rights form the wide gamut of freedoms that allow a human being to function fully as such. They are intensely vital to human existence that without these rights, there is no human to speak of.

John Locke in the second of his Two Treatises of Government grouped these natural rights into three broad categories: life, liberty and estate. Human dignity can be said to be self-ownership. It is about owning one’s life, owning one’s actions and owning property. These are the rights that enable a person to course his own life and decide for himself what he wants to become and what he wishes to accomplish. When any of these three disappear, human dignity is seriously compromised. When a person becomes dependent on another for any of these, self-ownership is placed in harm’s way.

The concept of natural rights has evolved into what we understand today as human rights. The peak of its development and recognition was brought about as a result of the appalling events of World War II where the widespread and systematic torture, abuse and slaughtering of persons were carried out by Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. The attitudes of the world shifted and many states agreed that more effective safeguards have to be set in place. In 1945, shortly after the war, 51 countries came together and formed the United Nations. Three years later, on December 10, 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was proclaimed. In the years to come, some states would argue about the binding force of the UDHR and they remedied this by creating the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights in 1966 and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 1976. Many other international agreements have been entered into but these three documents are the most prominent as they form the International Bill of Rights.

The Universality of Human Rights

As mentioned above, one of the characteristics of human rights is that they are universal. This feature of universality presupposes that every person has human dignity and therefore, deserves self-ownership. Every man, woman and child is complete in their rights and they must not be treated as instruments for the designs of any other person or group of persons. A more familiar formulation of this concept is that “the human person must be treated as an end, never as a means”.

Here, we enter into the much-debated realm of equality. The premise is that all people are equal. For the most obvious reasons, this is clearly untrue. Some persons are more attractive or skillful or intelligent than others. People vary in aptitudes, interests, physical attributes and any other factor we can possibly fathom. This cannot be helped for it is the work of nature. On the other hand, people become equal in the light of their humanness when their dignity is recognized. People become equal when they are free to own themselves, liberated from the control of external factors. When dignity is respected and affirmed, all other factors are nullified for the purposes of self-ownership and self-determination. Hence, this principle of universality declares that all people are equal as free agents, able to craft their own destinies and determine their own existence.

Democracy

The word Democracy is derivative of the Greek word demokratia, which is a combination of the words demos, meaning people, and kratos, meaning rule. Literally, it means “rule by the people” and was used to signify political systems existing in some of the Greek city-states during the 5th century B.C., particularly Athens . The political system in these original city-states, however, were far different from democracy as we know it today when we consider the element of human rights protection. Athenian democracy did not allow women to vote and slavery was commonplace .

Today, this term is used to denote political systems characterized by fair and free election of leaders and representatives. In this setup, power ascends from the people and does not descend from any divine source . The people are the sovereign power and the leaders are placed in power because the people, or at least the majority, will it. Thus, those who hold power are considered servants of the people and they are held fully accountable for their actions and inaction. People participate in governance through representation by electing leaders who will represent them in the legislative bodies or through direct democracy by voting on specific legislation directly.

Criticism on the Democratic System

John Steward Mill in his work entitled On Liberty criticizes democracy for encouraging ‘Tyranny of the Majority’ where there interests of minority groups will be left unprotected . He poses the question, “What if the majority opinion is not the correct opinion?” In such a case then, the correct opinion would be drowned in a sea of numbers under the standard of majority rule.

At any rate, Mill did not leave us hanging without a solution. He proposed the Harm Principle , which stated that "That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others." This creates an effective ceiling over the deciding power of the majority. Not only will the government be held in check by their accountability to the people, but the people themselves will be held in check by the limited scope of their collective legislative power. The majority, therefore, may not prejudice the rights of the minorities because the only allowable exercise of power will be for the prevention, not the perpetration, of harm.

A Democracy that Protects the Universality Human Rights

Democracy is one of the most overused and abused concepts in the political showground. Nearly all the modern states consider themselves as democratic states where sovereignty lies in the people. North Korea, for example, is notoriously held to be an authoritarian state but it continues to call itself a democracy because the representatives of the Supreme People’s Assembly are chosen through free elections . But the fact remains that the North Korean government consists of a single party, which perpetuates singularity of political thought and dynastic rule. Also, many of the rights set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights including the freedoms of expression, religion and movement are practically non-existent. Many nominal democracies use this designation as a subterfuge in order to validate a totalitarian regime.

This goes to show that, on its own, democracy will never be enough to protect human dignity. There has to exist a set of parameters not only on the powers of the public servants but also on the power of the majority to decide on matters affecting the entire population. These minor variations of representative or direct democracy, federalist or centralized, parliamentary or presidential are not very useful when we talk about human rights protection. The most important element is an express directive on the government to establish a political structure that recognizes, protects and maintains human rights. Under this criterion, it is liberal democracy which ensures the universal respect for human rights.

Liberal Democracy

A Liberal Democracy is a specific form of democracy characterized by rule of law and the protection of human rights.

The rule of law is the principle that every person, even public servants, are bound by law and are held fully accountable for their actions. Albert Venn Dicey in his Law of the Constitution illustrated this principle, thus “... every official, from the Prime Minister down to a constable or a collector of taxes, is under the same responsibility for every act done without legal justification as any other citizen.” Through this principle, the leaders chosen by the people are barred from violating the law with impunity. The rule of law ensures that those entrusted with governance, who acquire their authority and legitimacy from the people, must always act in the interest of populace and never otherwise. It addresses the instinctive tendencies of persons in power to satisfy his or their own personal needs out of public resources. In simple terms, the rule of law pronounces that “no person is above the law and it is law that rules all.”

The protection of human rights, usually set forth in a constitution or a bill of rights, is the guarantee that every person will be accorded the respect and dignity befitting a human being. It is a warranty that persons are free to think, speak or act without prior restraint while holding them fully responsible for any good or evil that might materialize as a consequence of their acts or omissions. It is also a limitation on the exercise of government powers because the inclusion of human rights protection in the law, under the rule of law principle, means that the government, as a subject of the law, is prohibited from breaching these rights.

A closer look at the system will show that people are considered their own rulers and are free to decide their collective fate. This is called self-determination. It is the power to govern and enact laws and polices that are tailored to propel the people toward their common aspirations. Nevertheless, such power is limited by both the rule of law and the protection of human rights. This means that no majority opinion must ever be used to undermine human dignity.

Philippine Liberal Democracy

The Philippines, as a democratic republic, espouses the ideals of liberalism and maintains a system of liberal democracy. The existing system is mainly a representative democracy, but there are procedures that allow direct democracy through initiative and referendum. The president, vice-president, representatives and local government officials are chosen by the people through free and fair elections . There exists a separation of church and state and a separation of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government to admit a system of checks and balances.

The Philippines follows the principle of the rule of law and accountability of public officers. Persons in power may be charged administratively, civilly or criminally for the violation of their duties and the rights of other persons. To reinforce this system of accountability, there exists an independent office of the ombudsman where complaints may be brought, regular courts where ordinary suits may be filed and a special court called the Sandiganbayan where graver offenses by public officers are decided upon.

The Philippines has a written constitution containing a bill of rights where specific rights and protections are enumerated. The constitution also created an independent Commission on Human Rights, which monitors human rights violations and makes recommendations to Congress .

To add to this list of protections, people are allowed to create civil society groups or non-government organizations (NGO’s) for the purpose of promoting, protecting and maintaining human rights. Quite a number of these groups are active in the Philippine islands and they often collaborate in their efforts to protect civil liberties and freedoms.

In the light of all these systematic protections, it might seem that the Philippines is very well-equipped to eliminate human rights abuses altogether. Regrettably, this is far cry from the reality we see today. The laws of the Philippines and the international conventions it has entered into might be sufficient to put and end to any possible human rights violation one can think of, but laws are just pretty words on paper when the government fails to implement them with due faithfulness. Inexcusably, we have failed to do this.

The Philippines boasts of being the “first true democratic republic in Asia”, yet critics from within the country and without say that this title is merely an illusory shroud used to legitimize widespread corruption and substandard governance. Up until this very date, there continue to be reported cases of child labor, domestic violence, graft and corruption in every level of government, cheating in elections, extrajudicial killings, systematic censorship of media, land-grabbing, inhumane jail conditions, disappearances, torture, child prostitution, discrimination against women, abuse of migrant workers and many other occurrences that are plainly unacceptable under Philippine and international law.

Many people think that the worst has come to pass after the end of the Marcosian dictatorship , but these human rights violations always seem to continue to reproduce themselves today as legacies of the dismal Philippine past and its many failures. In spite of the non-stop efforts of civil society in trying to quell these abuses, progress has been too slow.

And so we beg the question – what must we do?

This writer modestly admits that he himself is bewildered by this constantly-repeated question. In any event, it is clear that nothing short of a complete attitudinal change is needed. We Filipinos must learn to assert our individual and collective rights in all levels of society. In order to do this, there has to be a total abandonment of fatalism, the que sera sera mentality that we have held on for too long. It is not about abandoning faith in the divine, but including in this endless search for truth, a faith in humanity.

Once upon a time, we showed the world the true meaning of democracy and peaceful popular rule through our self-styled People Power. In truth, democracy is merely the form we use to harbor the substance, which is human dignity. Our form is already complete. Do we dare to stop midway and lose sight of the most important thing?

Claim your humanity. Own thyself.

1. CONVENTION ON THE PREVENTION AND PUNISHMENT OF THE CRIME OF GENOCIDE (1951); CONVENTION ON THE ELIMINATION OF ALL FORMS OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION (1969); CONVENTION ON THE ELIMINATION OF ALL FORMS OF DISCRIMINATION AGAINST WOMEN (1981); CONVENTION AGAINST TORTURE (1984); CONVENTION ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD (1989); ROME STATUTE OF THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT (2002).
2. Encyclopædia Britannica Online, Democracy, at http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-9029895 (last accessed Aug. 27, 2006).
3. As a matter of fact, only select few were allowed to vote. Historians peg their estimate to only ten percent of the population (Ibid.).
4. Which was the justification used by Medieval monarchies for retaining their power.
5. MILL, JOHN STUART, ON LIBERTY 12 (1885).
6. Id. at 25, 182.
7. Encyclopædia Britannica Online, Korea, North, at http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-236884 (last accessed Aug. 28, 2006).
8. Widespread fraud and dishonesty in national and local elections render this statement highly debatable.
9. THE 1987 CONSTITUTION OF THE REPUBLIC OF THE PHILIPPINES. art. III.
10. Many debates have been made on whether to grant prosecutorial powers to the Commission on Human Rights.
11. This was the period in Philippine history from 1972 to 1986 when Ferdinand Marcos ruled over the Philippines under a de facto dictatorship and widespread human rights violations were committed

Works Cited

Encyclopædia Britannica Online, Democracy, at http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-9029895 (last accessed Aug. 27, 2006).

Encyclopædia Britannica Online, Korea, North, at http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-236884 (last accessed Aug. 28, 2006).

MILL, JOHN STUART, ON LIBERTY 12 (1885).

THE 1987 CONSTITUTION OF THE REPUBLIC OF THE PHILIPPINES.

Works Consulted

Encyclopædia Britannica Online, Dicey, Albert Venn, at http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-9030328 (last accessed Aug. 28, 2006).

Encyclopædia Britannica Online, Human Rights, at http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-9106289 (last accessed Aug. 27, 2006).

Encyclopædia Britannica Online, Philippines, at http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-9108539 (last accessed Aug. 29, 2006).

Encyclopædia Britannica Online, Philippines, at http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-9108539 (last accessed Aug. 29, 2006).