AFRICA & UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS: DIGNITY FOR ALL

African countries barely existed when the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Paris, France in 1948, three years after the end of the Second World War. It was the first time an internationally agreed document unequivocally said that all human beings are free and equal, irrespective of their colour, creed or religion.

But then, vast swathes of the continent were under Western colonial rules and just four African countries: Egypt, Ethiopia, Liberia and South Africa were members of the United Nations. All but South Africa signed the Declaration.
Yet, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights would later help propel individual territories, starting with Ghana, into nations and inspire the continent’s own Charter of Human Rights aimed at ending abuses and later ushering in democratic states.

Independence
Nearly a decade after its adoption, Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s then-prime minister would echo the Declaration as he celebrated the independence of his country.

“At long last, the battle has ended! And thus, Ghana, your beloved country is free forever!” he told throngs of clamouring revellers at the Old Polo Grounds in Accra, the capital city, on 6 March 1957. The former British colony had just become independent. 

Thus, with his statement, Nkrumah channelled the overall principles of equality, freedom and justice for all people no matter where and who they were, embodied by the Declaration.

Such remains the significance of the event: Ghana’s independence, the first in post-war Sub-Saharan Africa, the country itself and the rest of the African continent, that the ground, located at a walking distance from the rumbling waves of the Atlantic Ocean, has since been turned into a public park hosting a mausoleum where Nkrumah and his wife’s remains are, as well as a small museum dedicated to his role in the country’s fight for self-determination and the continent-wide pan Africanism movement.

Freedom and justice
Underscoring the relevance of the Declaration to the fight of political self-determination in Africa and within months of his country, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (then Republic of the Congo), becoming independent in 1960, Patrice Emery Lumumba, an historical figure of the continent-wide independence movement would emphasise that the question of self-determination in Africa is one of basic human rights for all.

“Let it [the West] today give proof of the principle of equality and friendship between races that its sons have always taught us as we sat at our desks in school,” he said at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria – an intellectual and academic powerhouse in colonial Africa, “a principle”, he added, “written in capital letters in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights”.

As with Nkrumah, he was expressing the thinking of African independent leaders and movements calling for justice because, he proclaimed: “Africans must be just as free as other citizens of the human family to enjoy the fundamental liberties set forth in this Declaration and the rights proclaimed in the United Nations Charter.”

But even as the Declaration was being adopted, it was paradoxical that its most enthusiastic supporters such as Belgium, France, Great Britain, Portugal and Spain, still possessed colonies in Africa where most natives were subjects and not citizens. 

The proclamation of universal equality, freedom and justice would have an impact on the history of the continent by contributing to the independence of former colonies in strengthening the momentum toward self-determination of several western colonies ushering in the emergence of new sovereign countries. It would also inspire several liberation movements, including the ones involved in the fight against apartheid in South Africa.

Courtesy: Franck Kuwonu (Published Biz Community)