Soros Gift Should Fund Century of Universal Human Rights

Human Rights Watch should make the George Soros' gift of $100 million -- noted below -- the first installment on a project to make the 21st century the Century of Universal Human Rights.

HRW got the award, I would guess, because it has been scrupulous in viewing human rights through a lens of objectivity, insisting that standards of journalism -- good journalism -- permeate their extensive reports.

The fringes of the opinionocracy will pooh pooh this conclusion, but they are the same people who think the Goldstone Report was lies. While they were bloviating, HRW was making painful decisions to ensure objectivity even when such choices amounted to a counsel of perfection. Soros has made a contribution that reflects not politics but moral fortitude.

But the Soros money is a drop in the bucket if we believe that a vast cultural war must now be waged to make human rights not something NGOs promote but something families practice, schools affirm, villages honor, towns and cities accept, and governments everywhere observe.

We have the chance to move in this century to what Derrida called the unprecedented, a move beyond the disasters of the 20th century. But we will not get there without a dramatic idea.

Making this the Century of Universal Human Rights is a start.

Some religionists will holler because this upsets priestly prerogatives or apocalyptic fixed ideas. So be it. As T. S. Eliot said, in a moment of informal enlightenment, "Hurry up please it's time."

Soros gives $US100 million to rights group | News | Business Spectator: "NEW YORK - Billionaire financier George Soros is donating $US100 million to Human Rights Watch over the next 10 years, the group has said.

The grant from Soros' Open Society Foundations is the largest Mr Soros has ever made to a non-governmental organisation, Human Rights Watch said in a statement.

The gift is the first in a series of large donations he intends to make, Mr Soros, 80, said in an interview published on Tuesday in the New York Times. 'This is partly due to age,' he said."

Soros Gift Should Fund Century of Universal Human Rights. George Soros' dramatic gift to Human Rights Watch should be used to help make the 21st century a launching pad for huge human rights advances.