ABSTRACT
Since the term “human rights” was moved to the center of American political stage by candidate Jimmy Carter during the 1976 presidential campaign, it has lost some of its nobility and gained a measure of tawdriness. Human rights advocates have long deplored financial assistance to dictators on the ground that such assistance provides both the material and the moral support without which repressive regimes cannot function. The reports of the human rights nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), with rare and inadequate exceptions, are strong on political and civil rights, but virtually silent on “vital human needs.” Vital needs are, in fact, human rights; derived, as all rights are, from the concensus of human aspirations and from the increasingly common cultural and philosophical heritage of humankind. The realization of the new international economic order is an essential element for the effective promotion of human rights and fundamental freedoms and should also be accorded priority.
