The Face of Human Rights, by Walter Kalin, Judith Wittenbach, Lars Muller (Eds.)

English
Published by: Lars Muller Publishers, Baden
2004, 720 pages

This is a book that makes you rejoice in humanity. This is a book that makes you despair at humanity. Both are true, by turns, in the hundreds of examples and commentaries in this unique and magnificent book.

The book is organised in sections on thirteen different human rights. But within that structure there is a highly eclectic mix of analysis, commentary and reportage, which the reader is guided through with the help of literature, philosophy and photography, thanks to designer Lars Muller. The contributors are sometimes lawyers or experts (such as editors Walter Kalin and Judith Wittenbach), but just as often writers or cultural commentators (Ryszard Kapucsinski, Susan Sontag). It is in some ways a reference book, in other ways a coffee table book to ‘pick up and dip in’. It has something to say about almost every country in the world and about every abuse of human rights, detailing how difficult life can be. Yet the book is also not afraid to celebrate the joy of being human and to recognise that this can be a matter not of philosophical calm, but also of plain old superficial fun – as demonstrated superbly by the picture of elderly American ladies enjoying Monte Carlo, or in the cheeky grin of the Nicaraguan girl passing a stall of vegetables in her party dress.

Since it is so difficult to give a summary or overview of the book’s diverse and unending contents, I propose instead to open it in three random places and tell you what I find.

One. Pages 160-161. Two photos. One shows Colin Powell’s wife reading her book, ‘America’s Promise’, to a group of schoolchildren in Washington DC. Below it, a quote from Hannah Arendt about equality. On the facing page, a picture of men and women queuing separately in Kabul to receive food distributed by the United Nations. Below it, a quote from Voltaire about equality.

Two. Pages 440-441. Two pages of text and a graph. The title is ‘Not Enough Education for the Poor - Not Enough Education for Girls’. There is a statement from UNESCO Director General Koichiro Matsuura about world-wide adult illiteracy; an excerpt from a Forum Asia report (showing that achieving universal primary education in all developing regions would cost no more than the amount that Europeans spend on mineral water each year); another excerpt from a UN report on children excluded from education; and a UNESCO chart detailing illiteracy rates in the regions of the world.

Three. Pages 590-591. ‘Every Prisoner Has the Right to Be Treated Humanely’. Excerpts from a Human Rights Watch report, and from two European Court of Human Rights cases, Peers v. Greece and Kalashnikov v. Russia; the relevant parts of the Convenant on Civil and Political Rights; two quotes from prisoners in the United States about male rape in prisons; and a quotation from Dostoyevski’s House of the Dead.

There is no heavy-handed commentary to tell you how to interpret or connect the photos, quotations or facts. The book just provides images within a context. Make of it what you will.

I finish with a recommendation. Spend some time with this book. Go for a coffee with it. It might make you angry and fire you up to change the world. It might make you grin widely, or cry, or sigh. It will most certainly make you feel very, very alive.

Liz Barrett is a political consultant living in Budapest