On Liberty, Identity and Declarations: Magna Carta to Indigenous Peoples

Abstract

Popularly the foundation of modern liberty, the 800-year-old Magna Carta symbolizes humanity’s quest for liberty in a documented form. The succession of several legally, politically and historically resonant/symbolic declarations down to the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIPS), portrays poignant insights on liberty, identity and designations of the ‘human’ in paradigms of class, racial, gendered and cultural inclusion and exclusion. Using an approach hitherto not employed to examine declarations relative to liberty, history, law and meaning, the exclusions, abuses and atrocities occasioned by the usage, context and treatment of human identity in declarations through history is explored, along with how this pattern engendered and justified the proliferation of declarations in the quest for all inclusive liberty. It is argued that particular articulations of identity in given contexts do neutralize claims to universality of declarations through explicit and implicit exclusions of ‘unwanted identities’. This explains proliferations of declarations covering various normative traditions/historical epochs affecting identity: from the 1215 Magna Carta and the 622 Medina Charter before it, to the 1495 Dum Diversas, 1776 Declaration of Independence, 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and intervening periods. It resonates down to the 1948 UDHR and the civil-political, versus socio-economic and cultural rights dichotomies on its heels, the 1990 Cairo Declaration, 1993 Bangkok Declaration, 1993 Vienna Declaration, 1995 Beijing Declaration to the 2007 UDRIPS. The nature of the next generation of declarations could draw relevant lessons relative to identity, its universality-particularity dimensions, and exclusion.