Editor's note: Abu Naser Al Farabi is a Dhaka-based columnist and analyst focusing on international politics, especially Asian affairs. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily those of CGTN.

Numerous Western governments and West-funded NGOs produce reports on human rights conditions in countries all around the world. These reports have three common features: labeling the developing countries as major violators of human rights; depicting themselves as the guardians of those rights worldwide and inserting those countries, which are their strategic rivals or perceived as enemies according to the definition of the Western "axis of evil" narrative. A "Countries of Concern" statement by the U.S. Department of State on December 2 carries testimony to that proposition.   

But another salient feature that remains less discussed is those reports' excessive focus on the political section of human rights issues. Those reports sideline the social and economic sections, thus ignoring the broader spectrum of issues the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) incorporates.

It's not to deny that human rights conditions in some developing countries are bad considering their lower economic conditions and more non-inclusive political environment. But one cannot deny that every country, regardless of its development stage, must fall short if appraised under a comprehensive human rights report dealing with the state of each 30 articles incorporated into the UDHR. These reports address common political issues such as freedom of speech, assembly, and association; arbitrary detention and mistreatment; security forces; freedom of the press, etc.

Economic and social factors are more implicative in promoting human rights and emphasized across the UDHR, while the Western governments and NGOs formulate their reports. Instead of adopting a comprehensive approach to analyzing human rights conditions, Western human rights reports limit their coverage to a few specific violations and judicial actions taken in developing countries against people suspected of committing crimes. The intentional omission is dubious.

Western governments and so-called human rights organizations sketch a torrid image of human rights conditions in light of their prejudiced perceptions about developing countries, and that helps them to camouflage their sordid systemic human rights violations. Typically, due to the lack of state capacity, resource constraints, and long-lingering security concerns – such as terrorism, drug trafficking, and internal insurgency – developing countries struggle to maintain their internal security. These situations require them to employ heavy-handed approaches in dealing with criminal or terrorism concerns.

On the other hand, a "national security state" in the developed world with higher state capacity and the absence of perennial security menaces such as terrorism gives the West an edge over developing countries if human rights reporting is focused on the political spectrum.     

Meanwhile, human rights reporting with the inclusion of additional articles, including societal and economic dimensions, would expose systemic, less visible but grimmer human rights conditions in the Western world. For instance, article 2 of the UDHR deals with "freedom from discrimination" – rights regardless of sex, race, language, religion, social standing, etc. But ever-escalating racial discrimination, systemic exclusion, and racial offensives in the forms of hate crimes, targeted mass shootings and gun violence would certainly put the West, the U.S. in particular, at a grisly trajectory of human rights violations.

According to a study by the Pew Research Institute in 2019, about six-in-ten Americans (58 percent) say race relations in the U.S. are bad, and of those, few see them improving. Such racial split and revulsion reflect across the economic, legal, social, and political landscape. According to ongoing analysis by Washington Post, police in the United States shoot and kill about 1,000 people every year, with black Americans getting shot at a disproportionate rate. The poor status vis-à-vis this article and consequent outcomes across the state spectrum infringe on several other human rights enshrined in the UDHR-like, right to life (article 3), right to recognition before the law (article 6), right to equality before the law (article 7), access to justice (article 8) and right to a fair trial (article 10).

Article 23 of the UDHR deals with the right to desirable work and to join trade unions. But for decades, labor union membership in the United States has fallen, with private sector union membership declining from 24.2 percent in 1973 to 6.1 percent by 2021. A set of legal, semi-legal, and illegal restrictive measures; and coordinated political strategy by both the Republicans and Democrats over the decades toward breaking up labor unions have resulted in a condition that 90 percent of American workers are un-unionized today.

Accordingly, it has infringed on the human rights of millions of American citizens. The United States can also be held responsible for violating other articles of the UDHR, such as the rights to equality, freedom from discrimination, the freedom of peaceful assembly and association, the right to free and fair elections, the right to an adequate standard of living and the right to take part in community culture.

Therefore, the West's selective approach to human rights reporting is in line with their agenda to keep the hitherto concealed but violations of human rights committed both inside and outside of their own countries out of global sight; and simultaneously to wield their ethical-grandstanding weapon over the developing countries to goad them into their geopolitical strategic lines.  

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