Chapter 25
Human Rights
By Jack Donnelly
Introduction
The global human rights
regime
The bilateral politics
of human rights
The non-governmental
politics of human rights
Human rights and IR
theory
Conclusion
Reader's Guide
Thuggish dictators, like Robert Mugabe in
Zimbabwe and the Kim dynasty in North Korea, violently repressing their people
and pushing many to the edge of starvation. Women not even allowed to drive a
car, let alone vote, in Saudi Arabia. Nearly 50 million people (15 per cent of
the population) in the United States without access to basic health care
coverage. Indigenous peoples in Amazonia forced off their land to make way for
mines, ranches, and farms. Men and women attacked on the streets in Brazil
because of their sexual orientation. Workers with no viable choice but to
labour in dangerous conditions for near-starvation wages. More than 20,000
children dying each day of preventable diseases.
Although states and citizens regularly and
forcefully speak out against such abuses, international action, as we shall
see, can provide little direct help to most victims. It can, however, support
local people in their struggles. International pressure can also help to keep
the issue alive and to build a foundation for future action. And most people
today agree that states and citizens have a duty not to turn a blind eye and
silently tolerate systematic violations of human rights.
This chapter examines the multilateral,
bilateral, and transnational politics of human rights in contemporary international
society. It also examines international human rights from four theoretical
perspectives presented in Chapters 6, 7,
9, 10, 11, and 12.
What are Human
Rights?
Human Right is a right that is believed
to belong justifiably to every person.
("a flagrant disregard for basic human rights")
They are commonly understood as
inalienable fundamental rights "to which a person is inherently entitled
simply because she or he is a human being," and which are "inherent
in all human beings" regardless of their nation, location, language,
religion, ethnic origin or any other status.
Seventy-five years ago, human rights were
not a legitimate international concern: how a state treated its own nationals
on its own territory was a protected exercise of sovereign rights, however
morally repugnant that treatment might be. Particular injustices that we today
consider violations of human rights, such as slavery and the terms and
conditions of industrial labour, were addressed internationally only as
exceptional and discrete issues, not as part of a larger set of human rights.
Even the notoriously ‘idealistic’ Covenant of the League of Nations fails to
mention human rights.
The end of the Second World War and
growing awareness of the horrors of the Holocaust loosed a flood of
governmental and civil society reflection and activity that culminated in the
United Nations General Assembly adopting the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights on 10 December 1948. (Most countries thus celebrate 10 December as Human
Rights Day.) This gave human rights a permanent place on international agendas
and provided the foundational norms of the global human rights regime.
The global
human rights regime
An international regime is conventionally defined as a set of principles, norms, rules, and
decision-making procedures that states and other international actors accept
as authoritative in an issue-area (see Ch. 15). The global human rights regime
is based on strong and widely accepted principles and norms but weak mechanisms
of international implementation, producing a system of national implementation
of international human rights.
International human
rights norms
The Charter of the United Nations, signed
in San Francisco on 26 June 1945, identified promoting respect for human rights
as one of the principal objectives of the new organization. It also created a
Commission on Human Rights (which was replaced in 2006 by a new, and
potentially stronger, Human Rights Council).
The principal initial work of the
Commission was drafting the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, a
succinct yet comprehensive list of internationally recognized human rights. Civil and political rights provide legal protections against abuse by the state and seek to ensure
political participation for all citizens. They include rights such as equality
before the law, protection against arbitrary arrest and detention, and freedoms
of religion, speech, assembly, and political participation. Economic, social, and cultural rights guarantee individuals access to essential goods and services, and seek
to ensure equal social and cultural participation. Prominent examples include
rights to food, housing, health care, education, and social insurance.
International law treats these two sets of
rights as indivisible. Rather than an optional list from which states may pick
and choose, the Declaration holistically specifies minimum conditions for a
life of dignity in the contemporary world. Internationally recognized human
rights are also interdependent. Each set strengthens the other and makes it
more valuable; one without the other is much less than ‘half a loaf’. These
rights are also universal, applying equally to all people everywhere.
Internationally recognized human rights
have been further elaborated in a series of treaties (see Box 24.1). The six
principal international human rights treaties (two International Human Rights
Covenants, on economic, social, and cultural rights, and civil and political
rights, plus conventions on racial discrimination, discrimination against
women, torture, and rights of the child) had, by December 2012, been ratified
(accepted as legally binding) by, on average, 173 states—an impressive 88 per
cent average ratification rate. Box 24.2 lists the rights recognized in the
Universal Declaration and the International Human Rights Covenants, which
(along with the Charter provisions on human rights) are often called the
International Bill of Human Rights. For the purposes of International
Relations, ‘human rights’ means roughly this list of rights.
Multilateral
implementation mechanisms
The principal mechanism of multilateral
implementation of these international legal obligations is periodic reporting.
Supervisory committees of independent…
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