Human Rights Education Today
October 2011
Banner photo: Leicester, UK [© Justin Jin/Panos Pictures]
A Personal Vow
The following is excerpted from SGI President Ikeda's 2011 Peace Proposal, "Toward a World of Dignity for All: The Triumph of the Creative Life."
I am currently engaged in a serialized dialogue with the American historian Dr. Vincent Harding, who was a close friend of American civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and has dedicated himself to the struggle for human rights for many years. I was struck by his observation, which I believe is highly germane in this context, that the term "civil rights movement" is inadequate to describe the movement that he, Dr. King and others had been involved in. He expressed his concern that subsequent generations might consider it simply a matter of past history, seeing the process as completed with the adoption of various laws banning discrimination. He asserted:
If, instead of referring to the movement as the "civil rights movement," we spoke in terms of "the expansion of democracy," then each new generation would recognize that they have a responsibility to expand democracy beyond the way they found it. This duty is an ongoing task that each new generation must accept.
Here it is necessary to emphasize that it is not because they have been codified into law that human rights have value. The spiritual wellspring that supports the law is found in the struggle to gain and realize our rights. The brilliance of human rights lies in the endless succession of courageous individuals who arise to take up the challenge of extending and expanding them as heirs to that spirit.
Inexhaustible Energy
As seen in the examples of Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who both became active in their 20s, many human rights struggles have been initiated and sustained through the power and passion of youth. The importance of the role of youth in challenging seemingly intractable social realities and creating a new era cannot be overstated.
Near the end of his life, Dr. King addressed these words to young people: "When an individual is no longer a true participant, when he no longer feels a sense of responsibility to his society, the content of democracy is emptied."
The same principle applies to the work of building a culture of human rights. As Dr. Harding stressed in our dialogue, a strong and unbroken intergenerational succession of people dedicated to human rights is essential. In view of the ongoing processes of globalization, it is vital that in addition to national efforts there also be strengthened and expanded endeavors for human rights education on a regional basis, including various opportunities for direct exchange.
As Gandhi said: "Non-violence is not like a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our very being."
It is only when the norms of human rights are elevated to a personal vow--the sense that unless I hold to this I can no longer be myself--that they become a source of inexhaustible energy for social transformation. This is not to suggest, of course, that only religion can provide an ethical foundation. There are many other sources, such as the Hippocratic Oath that guides the actions of medical practitioners, that encourage people in the fulfillment of their responsibilities, and these will only increase in their importance going forward.
But as the theologian Paul Tillich (1886–1965) pointed out, religion has in its depths an orientation toward the pursuit of meaning framed by such soulshaking questions as, "To what end do we as human beings live?" In this sense, religions have a great contribution to make. It is through the effort to identify a more noble state of life that religion can unleash the vitality that, in Tillich's words, "is the power of creating beyond oneself without losing oneself."
Read the full text of the proposal at www.sgi.org/sgi-president/proposals.html
