But since then, like twins separated at birth, the two sets have travelled on very different paths. Decades into their adoption, the non-political set remains the stunted one, while its politically-focused twin brother has been over-fed into something hardly recognizable.
More tragically, the overgrown one is increasingly being turned against its weaker sibling.
Cubans, a people that decided to choose a government to their own liking, have been punished for this by the US with a decades-long embargo. As a result, COVID patients are left gasping for air without hopes of a ventilator. Syringes are a luxury as well.
Ethiopians, while trying to sort out their issues, were slapped with US sanctions disguised as a helping hand. The impact was not visible on ending the conflict, but painful on 200,000 Ethiopian workers struggling to make ends meet on clothes and leather production lines.
Syrians, in the process of finding their way forward as a nation, have been held back by debilitating US sanctions. Ninety percent of the population are in extreme poverty as of January 2023, according to UN figures. When the recent mega earthquake was toppling buildings and lives, US determination to keep its sanctions largely in place stood unwavering.
At the ongoing session of the UN Human Rights Council, small island developing states (SIDS) and low-lying nations urged immediate action to tackle climate change. It’s an existential crisis for them. Brazil appealed for help for the Amazon forest, where they are seeing “the sky falling in”. Belarus lamented “a hierarchy of human rights … in favor of the unconditional supremacy of individual civil and political freedoms”.
But the real problem is not neglect.
It’s the systematic suppression of the economic, social and cultural rights of the Global South by the US, using civil and political rights as a fig leaf.
by Yi Xin, an international affairs commentator based in Beijing