By Ramesh Thakur

Covenants in 1966 added force and specificity, affirming both civil-political and social-economic-cultural rights, without privileging either set. Together with the declaration, they mapped out the international human rights agenda, established the benchmark for state conduct, inspired provisions in many national laws and international conventions, and provided a beacon of hope to many whose rights had been snuffed out by brutal regimes.

A right is a claim, an entitlement that may neither be conferred nor denied. A human right, owed to every person simply as a human being, is inherently universal. Held only by human beings, but equally by all, it does not flow from any office, rank or relationship.

The idea of universal rights is denied by some who insist that moral standards are always culture-specific. If value relativism were to be accepted literally, then no autocrat - Hitler, Stalin, Idi Amin, Pol Pot - could be criticized by outsiders for any action.

Relativism is often the first refuge of repressive governments. The false dichotomy between development and human rights is usually a smoke screen for corruption and cronyism.

Relativism requires an acknowledgment that each culture has its own moral system. Government behavior is still open to evaluation by the moral code of its own society. Internal moral standards can comply with international conventions. But because moral precepts vary from culture to culture does not mean that different peoples do not hold some values in common.

Few if any moral systems proscribe the act of killing absolutely under all circumstances. At different times, in different societies, war, capital punishment or abortion may or may not be morally permissible.

Yet for every society, murder is always wrong. All societies require retribution to be proportionate to the wrong done. All prize children, the link between succeeding generations of human civilization; every culture abhors their abuse.

The doctrine of national security has been especially corrosive of human rights. It is used frequently by governments, charged with the responsibility to protect citizens, to assault them instead. Under military rule, the instrument of protection from without becomes the means of attack from within.

An argument sometimes invoked for a policy of ''See nothing, hear nothing, do nothing'' is that an activist concern would worsen the plight of victims. Prisoners of conscience beg to disagree. It is important to them to know that they have not been forgotten. Lack of open criticism is grist to the propaganda mill of repressive regimes.

The United Nations - an organization of, by and for member states - has been impartial and successful in a standard-setting role; selectively successful in monitoring abuses, and almost feeble in enforcement. Governments usually subordinate considerations of UN effectiveness to the principle of noninterference.

The modesty of UN achievement should not blind us to its reality. The universal declaration embodies the moral code, political consensus and legal synthesis of human rights.

The world has grown vastly more complex in the 50 years since. But the simplicity of the declaration's language belies the passion of conviction underpinning it. Its elegance has been the font of inspiration down the decades. Its provisions comprise the vocabulary of complaint.

Activists and nongovernmental organizations use the declaration as the concrete point of reference against which to judge state conduct. The covenants require the submission of periodic reports by signatory countries, and so entail the creation of long-term national infrastructures for the protection and promotion of human rights. United Nations efforts are greatly helped by nongovernmental organizations and other elements of civil society. NGOs work to protect victims and contribute to the development and promotion of social commitment and to the enactment of laws reflecting the more enlightened human rights culture.

Between them, the United Nations and nongovernmental organizations have achieved many successes. National laws and international instruments have been improved, many political prisoners have been freed and some victims of abuse have been compensated. The United Nations has helped also by creating the post of high commissioner for human rights.

The most recent advances on international human rights are the progressive incorporation of wartime behavior and policy within the prohibitionary provisions of humanitarian law. Last year's Ottawa treaty banning anti-personnel land mines subordinated military calculations to humanitarian concerns about a weapon that cannot distinguish a soldier from a child. This year the world community established the first International Criminal Court. The U.S. absence from both shows the extent to which human rights have moved ahead of their strongest advocate in the past.

Both examples illustrate the rise of nongovernmental organizations as actors with real influence on global issues that arouse public passions. Recognizing this, skillful governments engage civil society, and work in partnership with the organizations and the United Nations. The transition from the barbarism of atrocities to the culture of human rights requires no less.

The writer, vice rector of the United Nations University in Tokyo, contributed this personal comment to the International Herald Tribune.

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