Who has the right to be human?

Human rights. Everybody heard the phrase and they might even be able to give a few examples of those rights. Like the right on food and clean water. Good education and health care. To most people who read this it will seem commonly accepted, but it is not. To many people in this world human rights are not universal. Did you ever wonder how this is possible?

The problem with human rights is the fact not every person is qualified as a human. Children are being drowned in the wet concrete of a building, to please the gods. Simple because they are children. They are too young to hold any real value. Since they are thought of as replaceable and disposable, they make the perfect sacrifice. And this is not the only way children are devalued. They are bound or caged in their houses without any contact outside their family. Sometimes children are even dumped on their own without anybody to talk to. Mostly because they are mentally or physically disabled.

During my time in Uganda I met a girl who was found by the police in a dog cage. She could only bark, eat of the ground and walk on her hand and feet like a dog. She was no human, she was a dog. So the police did not help her, they send her to the child prison where she kept behaving like a dog. In the care centre where I visited her they had given her love and attention. Step by step she regain her value and became a human again.

So you see the line between being a human or not is thin. We saw throughout history that the transit from slaves to cattle is easily made. And the difference between a human and monster becomes vague in war. Is it a victim or a victory?

Fortunately we are better. Where we live we do not dehumanize people like this. Most people have food and water, education and health care. And if they do not, we help them. We sign a petition, raise money or we call the right organizations to help them out. But do we truly treat all humans as human?

No, we do not.

Even though I am quite certain we do not keep people from their right of water or education, I think we do tend to forget the prime human right. The right of being human. Even though it might be only a fraction of the terror I described earlier, I do not think we should take it lightly. We qualify persons on their success in material or emotional context. The most shallow way might be bullying people on their appearance. ‘You do not wear the right jacket? Oh, then you are not like us.’ You can become less of a human due to your social status. Your appearance and your behavior seem to qualify you as how much of a human you are. And if you are doing it wrong you are not worth to be called a human.

These days  more and more newspapers report about teenagers committing suicide because they cannot handle the bullying anymore. It shocks us and we are the first to protest against all injustice we see. People should not be bullied because of their appearance or sexuality. They should not be discriminated due to their skin color or gender. That is true, but I think if we get stuck with those lines we will miss the main point. It was neither about their appearance or sexuality nor about their skin color or gender. Their bullies were hateful and hurtful, but the words did not break them. It was their loss of the right to be human.