wfn.org | NCC Urged to Address Affects of Globalization on Human Rights

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National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA
Office of News Services
Email: news@ncccusa.org
Web: www.ncccusa.org
Contact: NCC News, 212-870-2227
	50th Anniversary Newsroom - Nov. 8-12, 1999 call 216-696-8490

   NOLDE LECTURE: GLOBALIZATION AFFECTS HUMAN RIGHTS

Nov. 11, 1999, CLEVELAND, Ohio - - Globalization has negatively affected 
the cause of human rights throughout the world, but there are signs that 
the world community is becoming increasingly alert to its dangers, two 
noted scholars said here Thursday in delivering a joint O. Frederick Nolde 
Memorial Lecture on Human Rights.

Speaking at a forum as part of an ongoing National Council of Churches 
(NCC) effort entitled "Pillars of Peace for the 21st Century," Dr. Janice 
Love and Dr. Charles Amjad-Ali warned of globalization's threat to 
establishing a more equitable world.

The term "globalization" has multiple meanings but in the realm of 
economics refers to the lifting of government barriers on international 
trade and finance in an internationally based economic system. One effect 
of economic globalization, said Dr. Love, a professor of government and 
international studies at the University of South Carolina, has been the 
creation of what amounts to a "global sweatshop" in which millions "toil 
without receiving a living wage."
But another consequence is globalization's effect on policy debates and 
theological discussions -- stifling debate and discouraging a rethinking of 
ethical or moral values, particularly about economics.

"Anyone who (recently) has asserted the premise that democracy within the 
political realm requires some degree of democracy within the economic realm 
(has been) dismissed, ignored, or like Rasputin, deemed to have been asleep 
or even on another planet for a long time," Dr. Love said. "No longer could 
we even discuss publicly what economic foundations human community might need."

In the face of what Dr. Love called globalization's "ideological overload," 
progressive thinkers "who hold dear the values of social, economic and 
ecological justice (have) seemed to be at something of a loss to imagine 
alternatives. We could critique but we could not constructively offer 
viable options."

But that environment is changing, Dr. Love said, partly as a result of 
threats to the global economic system, as witnessed by recent financial 
crises in Asia, Russia and Brazil. She said the Jubilee 2000 campaign - in 
which the NCC and other faith and non-governmental organizations have been 
urging a forgiveness of debt by large international lending organizations - 
has helped shift debate and demonstrated "the power of moral authority."

Indeed, the process of political and cultural globalization  -- in which 
groups have found common cause across national and cultural barriers - have 
helped reassert a vision of "the indivisibility of human rights" around the 
globe, Dr. Love said.

While addressing the issue of globalization, Dr. Amjad-Ali, who is the 
Martin Luther King Jr., Professor of Justice and Christian Community at 
Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minn., spent much of his lecture examining the 
long history of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

"It must be recognized that universal claims made in the name of all are 
often, in practice, claims on behalf of deprived groups," Dr. Amjad-Ali 
said, noting the document's continued relevance to the contemporary world.

Calling the Universal Declaration something of a sacred text to what writer 
Elie Wiesel has called "a world-wide secular religion," Dr. Amjad-Ali 
reminded his audience that the declaration was in large part the result of 
the international reaction to the Holocaust.

  "The Holocaust laid bare what the world actually looked like when natural 
law was abrogated, when pure tyranny could accomplish its unbridled will," 
he said. "And because of the Holocaust, there could be no unconditional 
faith in the declaration, either."

The "Pillars of Peace for the 21st Century" program is an effort by the 
NCC's International Justice and Human Rights Office to renew support by 
U.S. churches for the United Nations, as well as to build effective 
institutions for global governance in the 21st century.

The Nolde Lecture was named after Dr. O. Frederick Nolde, a long-time 
ecumenist and dean at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. 
Dr. Nolde was among those who worked with Eleanor Roosevelt and others to 
draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Lutheran Theological 
Seminary sponsored Thursday's Nolde Lecture.

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