International Bill of Human Rights: Article 12

Article12 of the International Bill of Human Rights was appealing to me right off the bat. The purpose of article 12 is to protect individuals from interference in his/her private life, family, reputation, etc. This article shows the importance of reputation to all societies. It is of upmost importance for an individual to keep private and public life separate from one another. As an intelligent species, we have created a world in which an individual’s skills are traded for currency. Without a clean reputation, a skilled individual will not succeed in this kind of world, because “customers” may believe a dirtied reputation is an indication of ability. More specifically, I am talking about a skilled individual who may have undisclosed information about his/her life because others may assume this negative information is related to the skilled individual’s ability to complete a task, no matter how unrelated the two are. Also, I believe this article is to prevent individuals from applying false and negative information to others.
In the United States, we have laws to protect citizens from defamation, slander, and libel. Defamation is “the communication of a statement that makes a false claim, expressly stated or implied to be factual, that may give an individual, business, product, group, government or nation a negative image”. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slander_and_libel) Also, we have laws to protect a citizen’s privacy. With some of the research I just did, I get the sense that a lot of countries do this to some extent, or more.
I found one article about a human rights activist who was arrested in China for “defaming” a police officer on the internet. Even though the allegations the journalist made against the police officer may be true, the journalist was arrested. (China has a larger gap in status or rank compared to the United States, as well with many other countries.
Another article I found is occurring presently. Tapeshwar Vishwakarma is suing those associated with the movie Slumdog Millionaire because the word “slumdog” is defamatory to Mumbai slumdwellers. I may be way off here, but this is what I was thinking about this article.


Police Detain Dissidents: Human Rights Group (Number 14 on the page)
http://museums.cnd.org/CND-Global/CND-Global.01-05-17.html

Slumdog Millionaire
by Ted Frank on January 22, 2009
http://overlawyered.com/tag/libel-slander-and-defamation/

RECENT TEXAS DEFAMATION CASES FROM TEXAS COURTS OF APPEALS LIBEL CASE LAW
http://www.texas-opinions.com/law-defamation-libel-slander