Planet earth and democracy

In 2006 the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) began publishing research results on “the state of democracy worldwide in 165 independent states and two territories” (Democracy Index 2001. The China challenge. The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 2022. 3. eiu-democracy-index-2021. pdf).

The EIU suggests a broad definition of democracy “as a set of practices and principles that institutionalize, and thereby, ultimately, protect freedom” (ibid. 65). 60 indicators are used to measure the five categories: electoral process and pluralism, functioning of government, political participation, political culture, and civil liberties, “each category has a rating on a 0 to 10 scale, and the overall Index is the simple average of the five category indexes. (ibid. 67).

According to their index value, the countries are placed within one of four kinds of regime:

Full democracies (scores greater than 8, 2) respect basic political freedoms and civil liberties; their political culture enhances democracy, the government functions well, media are independent and diverse; “There is an effective system of checks and balances. The judiciary is independent and judicial decisions are enforced” (ibid. 68).

Flawed democracies (scores greater than 6, and less than or equal to 8, 3) have free and fair elections with minor problems like infringements on media freedom, and basic civil liberties are respected (ibid.). Significant weaknesses include “problems in governance, an underdeveloped political culture and low levels of political participation” (ibid).

Hybrid regimes (scores greater than 4, and less than or equal to 6, 4) have substantial irregularities with elections “that often prevent them from being both free and fair”, “government pressure on opposition parties and candidates may be common” (ibid.). “Corruption tends to be widespread, and the rule of law is weak. Civil society is weak. Typically, there is harassment of and pressure on journalists, and the judiciary is not independent” (ibid.).

Authoritarian regimes (scores less than or equal to 4) often are outright dictatorships. If there are held elections, they are not free and fair. “There is disregard for abuses and infringements of civil liberties. Media are typically state-owned or controlled by groups connected to the ruling regime. There is repression of criticism of the government and pervasive censorship. There is no independent judiciary”. (ibid. 68).

In 2021, 21 of the 167 countries and territories representing 6,4% of world population, are rated as full democracies and 53 countries, representing 39,3% of world population, as flawed democracies. 34 countries, 17,2% of world population are rated hybrid regimes and 59 countries, 37,1% of world population are rated authoritarian regimes.

Although, democracy has not been in robust health for some years, in 2021 authoritarian pandemic responses are undermining democracy all over the world for a second successive year (ibid. 5). The covid-19 pandemic “has resulted in an unprecedented withdrawal of civil liberties among developed democracies and authoritarian regimes alike, through the imposition of lockdowns and restrictions on travelling and, increasingly, the introduction of “green passes” requiring proof of vaccination against covid-19 for participation in public life” (ibid. 3).

In early 2022 the EIU prognoses pandemic fatigue and protests as reactions to these authoritarian responses (ibid. 5). EIU was right: In December 2022 the dictatorship of the Communist party of China had to lift its strict zero covid-19 policy because of massive popular protests (https://www.eiu.com/n/campaigns/democracy-index-2022/.4). In 2021 there is a sharp decline in public trust in political parties and government institutions in Europe, the US, and Canada (EIU 2021, 27) also because of the unsatisfactory handling of the covid pandemic. “Citizens increasingly feel that they do not have control over their governments or their lives” (ibid.). The decline in public trust continued in 2022 and still grows in 2023, although the reasons for the decline are now high inflation, rising prices for food, energy and living due to the Russian violent aggression of Ukraine.

In 2021 the EIU focuses on the consequences of the economic miracle of the past 40 years of authoritarian China’s capitalist economy. Even though there are no political and almost no civil liberties, “China will be the leading economic power in the world within a decade and developing countries will look to it for leadership” (ibid. 19).

According to the EIU’s measure of democracy, in 2022 almost half of the world’s population live in a democracy of some sort (45,3%). Only 8% reside in a full democracy, 37,3% reside in a flawed democracy. This is a tiny improvement compared to 2021. 17,8% of world population live in hybrid regimes. “more than one-third of world’s population live under authoritarian rule (36,9%) (Democracy Index 2022. 3. eiu-democracy-index-2023.pdf).

The restoration of individual freedoms that had been temporarily curtailed by the covid-19 pandemic did not lead to post-lockdown revival but to stagnation in the state of global democracy (ibid. 5). “Strikingly, the situation in two countries that are home to more than 20% of the world’s population, China and Russia, took a decisive turn for the worse in 2022” (ibid. 4).

“Russia recorded the biggest decline in score of any country in the world in 2022” that is from a score of 3,24 in 2021 to 2,28 in 2022 in the scale from 0 to 10 (ibid. 4). Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “was accompanied by all-out repression and censorship at home”, “and is now acquiring many of the features of a dictatorship” (ibid.).

China’s repressive approach to all manifestations of dissent did not change after abandoning the zero covid policy – “fearing the spread of mass protests more than the spread of the disease”-, resulting in a further decline in China’s already low score in the Democracy Index of 2,21 points in 2021 to 1,94 points in 2022 (ibid.).

The 2022 Democracy Index focuses on Ukraine’s example for democracy, on Russia’s war in Ukraine and “its importance for the future of democracy in Europe and globally” (ibid. 10): “The commitment of the Ukrainian people to fight for the right to decide their own future is inspiring. It shows the power of democratic ideas and principles to bind together a nation and its people in the pursuit of democracy. If it was not immediately possible to identify a coherent Ukrainian national identity at the time of the Maidan protests in 2014” – the year the Russians occupied the Crimea -, “when the country was still divided between west and east, in 2022 Ukraine’s fightback against Russian domination has strengthened national sentiment and demonstrated the incontrovertibility of Ukrainian nationhood” (ibid.).

As threatening factors for democracy EIU identifies in 2022 “drug traffickers, insurgents, warlords, cyber hackers”, “private armies, Islamist and other insurgencies, and hackers committing cyber-attacks. Powerful drug cartels in Latin America and the Caribbean challenge state control over territory” and “the security of ordinary citizens” (ibid.13). “In many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, especially the Sahel and west Africa, the writ of the state no longer runs across the country as militant Islamist groups establish control over territory and terrorize the inhabitants” (ibid.).

Democracy and the media

The modern state under the rule of law - as designed for example by Rousseau in the 18th century - gradually was developed in the 19th century. The functioning of the state under the rule of law according to the law is ensured by independent control-institutions like courts that systematically and constantly evaluate the juridical and executive branch of government. Because of the importance of liberty and freedom for the citizens the state under the rule of law is realized in a constant process that strives for an ideal of the right and the state. Right and justice are to be the foundations of the states. The legislative, judiciary and executive powers must be kept separated at all levels and each power is effectively balanced and checked by other institutions at the same level of the same power. Although not directly part of the political system, there is a fourth power, the Fourth Estate, that refers to the press and other media. Ideally, the media observe the functions of a state in freedom and independence. The media investigate and document the functioning and malfunctioning of the state under the rule of law. They watch and evaluate what is correct and what is not correct with the electoral processes and pluralism, with the functioning of government, political participation, political culture, and civil liberties. The public influence of the media and the press constitutes an effective contribution to the checks and balances that guarantee the functioning of the state under the rule of law.

Authoritarian governments do not like a free and independent press. In authoritarian states and dictatorships media are typically state-owned or controlled by groups connected to the ruling regime, there is repression of criticism of the government and pervasive censorship (Democracy Index 2021. EIU 2022. 68). Flawed democracies pressure the media with infringements on media freedom, hybrid regimes step up the pressure and harassment of journalists (ibid.). Journalists organize on the whole world to promote press freedom worldwide. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is one of the many independent, nonprofit organizations that “defend the right of journalists to report the news safely and without fear of reprisal” (https://cpj.org/about/). A high number of journalist deaths covering the Ukraine war and a sharp rise in killings in Latin America, especially in Mexico, are responsible for an almost 50% increase in journalists’ and media workers’ deaths from 2021 to 2022 (Deadly year for journalists as killings rose sharply in 2022. Jennifer Dunham. CPJ. January 24, 2023. https://cpj.org/reports/2023/01/deadly-year-for-journalists-as-killings-rose-sharply-in-2022/). “At least 41 journalists and media workers were killed in direct connection with their work” the death of 26 others are still investigated (ibid.). “Their deaths underline the extent of threats faced by the press around the world, including in countries with democratically elected governments” like Brazil, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Columbia and local politics in Turkey and the United States (ibid.).

I am grateful to the journalists who document and denounce violence and injustice around the world and give me the chance to take at least notice and express my respect for the many innocent women, men and queer suffering from oppression and persecution because of revenge for their courageous protests. I want to remember the suffering women, men and queer and the journalists who wrote about the victims of violence and brought their lives into the light of the public.

I feel deep solidarity with Mukhtar Mai, the Pakistan woman who courageously campaigns for justice for herself and other women who are victims of rape and violence. She was burdened and burdens herself with very much responsibility in the fight for justice for women in a society that institutionally holds women in conditions of injustice, suppression and without basic rights. I read in Daily Pakistan: “Mukhtar, 50, and her children were in shock as officials revoked her security without prior notice. The gang survivor from Southern Punjab was gang-raped by five men in 2002 as punishment after her 12-year-old brother was accused of adultery. The incident shocked the nation as well as the world, but she ignored taboos in campaigning to get her attackers convicted (Mukhtar Mai terrorised with death threats after security withdrawn. Daily Pakistan. 23 December 2021. en.dailypakistan.com.pk).

I deeply respect the courage of farmer Fu Xiancai who dared to express his doubts about the benefits and positive effects of Three Gorges Dam project that spans the Yangtze River, the largest hydroelectric river dam in the world. After an interview with a German television crew in the year 2006 he was brutally beaten by Chinese police and prepares for a life in the wheelchair. He is not able to afford the therapies he still needs; he is not able to pay the hospital bill and reporters are still discouraged by the police to visit him. Fu Xiancai’s freightless determination to continue his fight for a just retribution for the one to two millions of people who were relocated by the government to make place for the dam is admirably unbroken (BBC News. 13 June 2006. Three Gorges activist 'beaten up'. http://news.bbc.co.uk/). Hopefully the German television reporter further succeeds to raise funds from the viewers to sustain the life of Fu and his family.

In March 2007 BBC News reports on the arrest of 32 women activists protesting outside a courthouse in Teheran for the right to freedom of peaceful assembly. Five women were arrested and have been charged for “taking part in an illegal gathering” after protesting the discriminatory Islamic laws on polygamy and child custody a year earlier. Parveen Adalan, one of those on trial, told reporters of the intimidations suffered by the police to stop their activities in the women’s movement in Iran.

In June of 2008 about 3, 5 million people in Somalia suffer in emergency of food aid. Contributing to the crisis are fighting rival militias, successive droughts, sharply rising food prices and a collapse of the Somali currency. Somalia has had no effective government since 1991. A transitional government backed by Ethiopian troops threw out Islamists from the capital Mogadishu in December 2006. But since then, Islamist insurgents have carried out almost daily attacks. The Islam practiced in Somalia has traditionally been moderate and tolerant. But the young Islamist fighters known as al-Shabab, the military wing of a group of Sharia courts, who controlled Mogadishu and much of southern and central Somalia, in 2006 are neither moderate nor tolerant. Their goal is again to have Sharia as the permanent law of Somalia and to get the infidels out of the country, a commander of a cell of al-Shabab fighters told BBC World Services’ Rob Walker who documents the suffering of a 25-year-old mother, who did not want her name revealed, in late 2006. Al-Shabab had closed a cinema near her house. A young boy who was a relative staying with her family spoke out against the decision. As a result, al-Shabab soon came to look for him. His mother tells: “They said, bring the boy out of the house. I said: The boy is not here. They said: Bring him out. I told them: He’s not here. Then they started kicking me, they kicked me to the ground. Then they started shooting. They shot me three times in the legs – one into my right leg then two into my left. It was terrible, my mother was in the house and she shouted: ‘Why are you shooting my girl?’ They started beating her. They threw my mother on the ground and they kicked her.” Rob Walker testifies that the legs of the young woman are still badly wounded; they have been infected for a year and a half; he concludes in 10 years of visiting Somalia what is really striking is not just the growth in extremism in the country but the fear among ordinary Somalis to talk about it (BBC News. Rob Walker. 28 April 2008. Meeting Somalia's Islamist insurgents. http://news.bbc.co.uk/).

Omda a woman victim of violence in Darfur answers Barbara Kits from the Netherlands on BBC June 5, 2008: “My dream is to sleep and to wake up and find the Darfuris are living in peace and good situations. I hope all the people around the world feel what we are going through.”

In June 2014 I read from India: Two cousin girls had gone out late at night to the fields. “According to a Reuters report, when the two girls did not come back, the father of one went to report the missing children to the police. The constable on duty slapped him and sent him away. If the father had not been from a less privileged class, if the police had searched for the girls, they might have been found before their assailants hanged them from the tree on the village common. The media frenzy around the deaths in Badaun, and the outpouring of public anger, marks a return to the reporting of gender and caste violence in India. The preceding months had seen their full freight of witch-burnings, caste rapes and other caste-driven acts of terror against men, women and children, domestic violence cases and dowry deaths. But the Badaun crimes highlighted two factors common to many similar atrocities: the refusal of the chiefly privileged caste police officers to intervene in time to save the lives of victims from less powerful castes, and the determination of the local community, however underprivileged, to force a response from an indifferent state and civil society” (Nilanjana S. Roy, BBC News, India.11 June 2014. Viewpoint: India must stop denying caste and gender violence). These communities in their turn are often exposed to threats and violence. Indians who are not directly at risk of harm – protected by the privilege of caste, affluence of power – are not expected to care about those who lack these protections. “India has a long history of overlooking or dismissing the deliberate sexual violence inflicted on women in religious riots, and an equally long history of ignoring the torture, lynchings and murders of men, women, and children from less privileged castes across the country” (ibid.). Even if the figures of 2012 given by the National Crime Records Bureau are grievously under-reported, they are revealing: 651 cases of murder, 3855 cases where people were hurt, 1576 cases of rape, 490 cases of kidnapping and abduction, and 214 cases of arson (ibid.).

Violence and injustice versus justice and peace

I owe to science reporter Victoria Gill from BBC News the knowledge about recent anthropological evidence found of 430,000-year-old human violence (Victoria Gill. BBC News. 28 May 2015. Evidence of 430,000-year-old human violence found. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-32890697).

There is a strange and bewildering evolution of the agency of culturally mediated violence in woman- and mankind from the human remains from a cave in northern Spain that show evidence of a lethal attack 430,000 years ago, till the lethal nuclear capability of self-extinction of woman- and mankind in the 20th century.

An international research team examined one skull from a site called the Pit of Bones, which contains the remains of at least 28 people, and concluded: “Cranium 17 recovered from the Sima de los Huesos Middle Pleistocene site shows two clear perimortem depression fractures on the frontal bone, interpreted as being produced by two episodes of localized blunt force trauma. The type of injuries, their location, the strong similarity of the fractures in shape and size, and the different orientations and implied trajectories of the two fractures suggest they were produced with the same object in face-to-face interpersonal conflict. Given that either of the two traumatic events was likely lethal, the presence of multiple blows implies an intention to kill. This finding shows that the lethal interpersonal violence is an ancient human behavior and has important implications for the accumulation of bodies at the site, supporting an anthropic origin” (Sala N, Arsuaga JL, Pantoja-Pérez A, Pablos A, Martínez I, Quam RM, et al. (2015) Lethal Interpersonal Violence in the Middle Pleistocene. PLoS ONE 10(5): e0126589. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0126589).

The cave, known in Spanish as Sima de los Huesos (SH), suggests that the long vertical shaft of this cave was a place where these ancient people – representatives of the Neanderthal lineage? – deliberately deposited deceased members of their social groups. The researchers conclude: „Thus, the interpretation of the SH site as a place where hominins deposited deceased members of their social groups seems to be the most likely scenario to explain the presence of human bodies at the site. This interpretation implies this was a social practice among this group of Middle Pleistocene hominins and may represent the earliest funerary behavior in the human fossil record” (ibid.).

Lead researcher Dr Nohemi Sala from the Salud Carlos III Institute in Madrid told BBC News: "This individual was killed in an act of lethal interpersonal violence.” Sima de los Huesos is “a window into an often-invisible aspect of the social life of our human ancestors." "Intentional interpersonal violence is a behaviour that accompanies humans since at least 430,000 years ago," commented Dr Sala, "but so does the care of sick or even the care of the dead. We have not changed much in the last half million years" (Victoria Gill. BBC News. 28 May 2015). Professor Debra Martin is an anthropologist from the University of Nevada, who studies ancient human cultures, including evidence of violence. She told BBC News that she found the researchers' conclusions "completely compelling" and added: "I suspect the farther we push back and find straight up forensic evidence such as these authors have, we will find that violence is culturally mediated and has been with us as long as culture itself has been with us" (ibid.). In this context of lethal violence, we must not forget the fact that Sima de los Huesos possibly represents also the earliest funerary behavior in the human fossil record and thus gives testimony to the human capability of empathy with the dead that is called piety. Let me claim in 2023: Since violence is a cultural mediated agency let us create a culturally mediated agency of peace through enhancing our empathy capabilities with our fellow humans, women, men and queer when they are still alive and let us not wait with piety till the living are dead.

Cranial and postcranial trauma among Middle and Upper Pleistocene hominins constitute precious artefacts and documents for the knowledge of prehistoric anthropological research. The historian is interested in written testimonies of women, men and queer to reconstruct their history. Therefore the venerable but much criticized and soon forgotten historian Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975) does not remember hominins of the Pleistocene in his narrative history of the world (Toynbee, Arnold. Mankind and Mother Earth: A narrative history of the world. Oxford University Press. 1976). Nevertheless, he starts his history of the world wondering about the existence of the biosphere, the possibilities for life on a small grain of sand like planet called earth which is to be found in a universe that extends to limits unknown and unseen; life possibilities are bound to very strict and sustainable variables of this universe and all of these are given. Only after this short kind of meditation that is not part of the scientific discipline of history, Toynbee turns to the written messages of the first civilizations: Sumerian civilization took form in the Uruk period in the 4th Millennium BC. The Sumerian culture was the first on this planet to organize agriculture on the construction of irrigation systems between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris. The Sumerians left testimony of their life in messages written on thousands of clay tablets that archaeologists saved from the sands during the last two centuries. In the third Millennium the cultures of Egypt followed. Similar cultures in India and China came relatively late. For most of the history of the last five thousand years streams of nomads coming from the steps of Eurasia kept alive the changing rhythms of settlers getting conquered but passing their culture on to the invading nomads. Apparently only the Mongols resisted the Chinese culture after having conquered their land. In Greek-Roman antiquity the inhabited part of the world was called oikumene. Looking in 1973 on the oikumene Toynbee reasons that for the first time Neolithic men and women with nuclear power and industrialism’s toxic wastes can extinguish themselves (Toynbee 1976).

Toynbee tries to present a causal explanation for the emergence of organized human violence: The technological achievements of the fourth millennium BC needed and produced specialists - miners, blacksmiths, engineers – for planning and organizing big public projects like drainage and irrigation systems. The contribution to the surplus in food production was more significant than the contribution of the mass of unskilled labourers. An unequal distribution of the profit therefore seems inevitable and probably justified. Differences by time grew to intolerable gaps that passed on to the next generation by heredity. Social injustices and war were the consequences. These two original sicknesses of civilization keep plaguing men and women till our days (Toynbee 1976). Well, when there is human civilization in the fourth Millennium BC, there is structural human violence in human societies. Artefacts of hominin lethal violence seem to date already from the Pleistocene.

What causes cultures to flourish and perish? Whenever on the cultured lands of the planet the rift between bureaucrats and farmers got too large the affected reign or kingdom was condemned to decline and fall (Toynbee 1976). Toynbee may be right concluding that only the building of a government that concerns all communities on earth will be able to make an end to the sickness of wars and barbarism. At the same time his negative conclusion that the development of the social skills of empathy, respect and love of men and women did not grow with men and women’s technical capacities forgets about the non-stoppable strive of seeking justice by women, men, and queer all along of human history.

I want to demonstrate this perpetual search for justice with the story of an individual writer from ancient Africa. The author of the story tells about the social realization of justice because of the tireless protest of a single farmer against the injustice he had suffered (Jeffers, Chike. 2013. “Embodying Justice in Ancient Egypt: The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant as a Classic of Political Philosophy.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 21 (3): 421–442. doi:10.1080/09608788.2013.771609).

The Egyptian text The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant was written during the time of Egypt’s Middle Kingdom (twenty-first to seventeenth century BC) during the 12th Dynasty (twentieth to eighteenth century BC) (Jeffers 2013: 422). The tale itself plays out during the intermediate period (twenty-second to twenty-first century BC), namely between the Old and the Middle Kingdom:

A peasant named Khunanup from an oasis near Cairo is on his way to the capital and runs into Nemtinakht, a subordinate of the High Steward Rensi. Nemtinakht wants to rob Khunanup of his trading goods. To create a pretext, Nemtinakht narrows the small path by putting his barley in the way of Khunanup and arranges a seemingly just legitimation to rob the peasant. Khunanup tries to travel the small path between the river and the barley crops of Nemtinakht, when one of Khunanup’s donkeys eats a bit of the barley. Nemtinakht takes the donkey, Khunanup protests and Nemtinakht takes all his donkeys for having committed the transgression of eating from his barley. Khunanup protests and is beaten. He goes to Rensi to protest again. Rensi is impressed by Khunanup’s speech and goes to King Nebkaure. Khunanup makes eight more speeches before the High Steward. Since Rensi remains unresponsive, even after the ninth petition, Khunanup despairs “that justice will never be done” (ibid. 423). Rensi - who at the king’s demand only pretended not to do anything about the petition - presents the recorded petitions to the king, who tells Rensi to judge the case. The judgment awards Khunanup all of Nemtinakht’s property (ibid. 424).

There is a pre-existing tradition of thinking about morality and politics in ancient Egypt and this literary genre is called “instructions” (ibid. 425). Jeffers insists that these pieces of advice encourage people “to behave in this or that way, on moral grounds, on an everyday basis” and that people simply react to a concrete situation. They “need not reflect on the fundamentals of a moral life” (ibid.). The egalitarian aspect of the advice is a second hypothesis. The point Jeffers wants to make is the importance of a concrete situation, a concrete social realization, in the narrative. The Instruction Addressed to King Merikare - written between 2100 and 1800 BC - starts with advice concerning the identification and suppression of the rebellious. The instruction changes from how to keep power and maintain power, to what is just. The old king advises his son and successor Merikare to “advance your officials so that they act by your laws” (ibid. 426). The nine speeches of Khunanup illustrate the difficulties the powerless peasant encountered when unabashedly seeking justice from a powerful official. Khunanup starts to praise Rensi, then turns to make a general complaint and direct accusations against Rensi (ibid. 427). Khunanup demands that the political authority fulfill its leadership duties, that is be a “leader, safeguard, and creator of good” (ibid. 429). Safeguard means to be “father to the orphan, husband to the widow, brother to the divorced, and motherly figure to the motherless” (ibid.). “The task of political authority is to steer society in the direction of right” and if the authority fails, there is lack of leadership (ibid. 430). Khunanup accuses Rensi of “failing to set an appropriate example”, because the creation of good is more than to “simply avoid and eliminate harm.” In the seventh petition Khunanup explains that by the creation of good he understands “the positive task of producing a better, fuller life for people” (ibid. 431). Concerning this better and fuller life for the people, Khnunanup vividly defends the importance of education and the need to make education more widely available (ibid. 431). It is clear to Jeffers that Khunanup claims that bad authority is not the absence of authority, but the dysfunction of authority, and that the whole of society, not just the individual, starts to suffer from injustice (ibid. 433). Jeffers establishes a link to the dysfunctional argument of Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice. 2009): Khunanup just as Sen prefers to look at concrete situations of the social realization of justice or the lack of the social realization of justice in societies and not at ideal settings of justice (ibid. 434). It is important that the subject of the peasant’s speech is the Egyptian concept of Ma’at (ibid. 435). Jeffers asks: What do we miss, if we translate it only with “justice”? And he describes some uses of the concept. In the third petition, Khnunanup speaks of Ma’at as the stability of the land (ibid. 437), in the eighth petition as justice and truth (ibid. 438). Since justice is seen by the Egyptian as a social realization that has to do with truth, and since truth is described as being embodied in our actions and we are also empowered “to embody through our choices to speak, the doing of justice,” Jeffers pleads that Ma’at not be translated at all (ibid. 438).

The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant testifies to the unceasing and tireless struggle of the peasant for the social realization of justice and truth, in his case with Nemtinakht. It took almost 4,000 years for humanity to finally succeed in realizing the rule of law, to institutionalize that the state is also subject to the rule of law and to realize that the government has a duty to effectively protect the equality of every citizen before the law.

Due process of law is not mentioned in the covenants or conventions on international human rights law as for example the United Nations Covenant on International Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the basic treaty for international legal rights, and the Covenant on Economic and Social Rights (ESCR) that were adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1966 and entered into force in 1976 (Gibson, John S. 1996. Dictionary of International Human Rights Law. The Scarecrow Press: London. 105). “Due process of law is the exercise of the powers of government to provide protection to one accused of violation of the law and to afford the accused of his or her rights of protection if or until a determination of an accusation is made by judicial authority” (ibid.). United States Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter affirms: “The history of liberty has largely been the history of the observance of procedural safeguards” (ibid. 106). “The foundation rights of Legal Rights are basic to the enjoyment of due process of the law. The five categories of due process rights are arrest, detention, trial, post-trial, and punishment” (ibid.).

In 1914 Wittgenstein suggests in his Notebooks to compare the construction of a sentence to the way a judge views the evidence and constructs the case: “In the sentence a world is, as it were, put together experimentally. (As when in a law-court in Paris a motor-car accident is represented by means of dolls, etc.)” (Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1961. Notebooks 1914–1916. Edited by G. H. von Wright and G. E. M. Anscombe with an English translation by G. E. M. Anscombe. New York: Harper & Brothers.7e). Developing structures and procedures to assess the facts of the case in a case of law is not of the least cultural achievments of civilization.

Gibson lists the following rights: civil rights - such as the right to assembly -, legal rights - such as due process of law -, political rights - such as the right of petition to government -, economic rights - such as the right to work -, social rights - such as the right to health -, cultural rights - such as the right to take part in cultural life -, collective rights - such as peoples’ right to self-determination -, declaratory rights - such as the right to development - and rights for all categories - such as the right to non-discrimination (Gibson 1996: 7). According to the Economist Intelligence Unit in 2022 only 8% of the world population reside in a full democracy, 37,3% reside in a flawed democracy. 17,8% of the world population live in hybrid regimes. “More than one-third of the world’s population live under authoritarian rule (36.9%), with a large share of them being in China and Russia” (Democracy Index 2022. Frontline democracy and the battle for Ukraine. The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 2023. 3. eiu-democracy-index-2023.pdf). Since more than half of 171 states that adopted in 1993 the United Nations Vienna Declaration on Human Rights are hybrid regimes, under authoritarian rule or outright dictatorships, it is no surprise that the Vienna Declaration did not find consensus and does not mention the Human Right of Due process of law.

I am thankful for the literary figure Khunanup. To my knowledge the author of The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant used for the first time the words “way” or “path” as a metaphor for conduct or lifestyle. The expressions “the right way” and “the right path” entered the moral discourse of women, men and queer and are taught and learned to speak about the right way to live one’s life.

I ask myself what contribution I could make to teaching and educating women, men and queer to know and take possession of their human rights? My doctoral students from Africa, India, the People’s Republic of China, Indonesia, and the Ukraine listened with attention and interest to my presentations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). For most of these graduate students it was the first time they were confronted with the concept of equal dignity, freedom, and rights. Only one or two of the thirty students were willed integrating some illocution with the UDHR in their thesis. Most of these young men were Catholic priests, and the institutions of the Roman Catholic Church usually are not listening to claims that follow from the concept of equal dignity, freedom and rights for all women, men and queer.

The fight for the social realization of justice is far from being won yet. I read the feature “Pushing forward: Protesting women’s rights abuses in Iran” (https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-32890697): On 16 September, 2021, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in the custody of Iranian police. She had been arrested three days earlier for an alleged violation—described by authorities as an “improper” hijab—of the strict dress code imposed by law on Iranian women. Iranian women and girls have faced decades of systemic oppression, Mana Shooshtari says. “They can’t wear what they want to wear. They can’t say what they want to say. [And] they are not going to stand for it anymore.” In the months since Mahsa’s death, more than 300 protesters have been killed by Iranian authorities. Thousands have also been arrested—many of them women and children; at least 51 of them journalists. Those indicted face charges punishable by death. “If these women, and the men who are standing in solidarity with these women, are risking their lives by simply saying, ‘I don’t want to live like this anymore,’ I think the very least we can all do is say, ‘I support you’” Mana emphasizes (ibid.).

The UN published this small report on 23 November 2021. The daily headlines of the media on the mass protests and the abuse of women’s rights in Iran gave place to other headlines since the beginning of 2023. The Iranian American feminist activist Mana Shooshtari is still right, we must remember the dead protesters and the protesters alive because “the very least we can all do is say, ‘I support you’” (ibid.).

The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant plays out during the First Intermediate Period of Ancient Egypt that is from the twenty-second and twenty-first century BC. This period between the Old and the Middle Kingdom “was believed for a long time that it saw massive pillaging, iconoclasm, and destruction. But recent scholarship has modified this opinion, and the era is now seen as more of a period of transition and change marked by a trickling down of power and customs from the monarchy to the common people” (Ariadne Argyros. 21 September 2020. https://www.thecollector.com/first-intermediate-period-of-egypt/). How would we characterize the period we are living in right now in 2023? I would describe our period that is the Anthropocene as the period that demands a plurality of social choices for change in human behavior in the best interest of “human wellbeing within planetary boundaries” (Earth for All. A Report of the Club of Rome. Written by Sandrine Dixson-Declève, Owen Gaffney, Jayati Gosh, Jorgen Randers, Johan Rockström, Per Espen Stoknes. New Society Publishers. 8).

At the end of the last Ice Age, about 11,700 years ago, a stable and mild climate rapidly helped emerge agriculture-based civilization; for 10.000 years the favorable climate sustained the development of civilization (ibid. 15). This geological epoch could have lasted a further 50.000 years, if men, women, and queer on earth would have respected the limits of natural resources and the boundaries of growth (ibid.). People are ready for change and support economic systems change that truly values wellbeing for everyone (ibid. 25). People all over the world “have been impacted by frequent economic crisis, pandemics, wars, floods, fires and heat waves. … Even in the richest societies the world has ever known, many feel economically insecure, left behind, or constantly worried about being left behind” (ibid.). If we speak about the social realization of the democratic rule of Human Rights law, we must follow a systematic effort that considers five turnarounds:

First, we have to end poverty because “As a result of inequalities within countries, social tensions are likely to rise toward the middle of the twenty-first century” (ibid.: 5). Second, we have to adequately respond to the climate and ecological emergency, otherwise “the impacts of crossing climate and ecological tipping points are likely to last centuries to millenia” (ibid.). Third, “transforming gender power imbalances” which “requires empowering women and investing in education and health for all” (ibid. 20). Fourth, “to transform agriculture, diets, food access and food waste”, creating a food system that is regenerative and nature positive by “storing vast volumes of carbon in soils, roots and trunks” (ibid.). Fifth, “we must transform energy systems to increase efficiency, accelerate the rollout of wind and solar electricity, halve emissions of greenhouse gases every decade, and provide clean energy to those without (ibid. 20, 21).