Is State Sovereignty Absolute - Essay Example

? Unit Journal for International Relation Total Number of Words 961 Question one: Is sovereignty absolute? Since the era of globalization, alot of political, social, and economic changes took place. By eliminating global barriers to international trading; multinational companies in developed countries relocated their businesses in developing countries (Sun, 2009)i. With regards to political matters, the United Nations (UN) was established in order to facilitate the cooperation between two or more countries particularly on issues related to international peace and security, socio-economic development, human rights, and humanitarian affairs by implementing the international laws (United Nations, 2012)ii. Because of these changes, state sovereignty will never be absolute. State sovereignty means that the state has the absolute power to control over its internal affairs that happen within the boundary of its territory, free from outside state interference, and has the complete authority to govern its people (Wang, 2004)iii. Today, each country is obliged to observe the international laws. Therefore, there will always be some instances wherein a sovereign country should seek external assistance from outside sources before it can make a final political decision. For example, before China opened its door to international trading, this country did not bother to establish a close political and economic relations with Europe. Likewise, Europe was not interested in establishing international relations with China. Because of global trading, the is an on-going political and economic relations between these two countries. Therefore, neither one of these two countries should make political, social, and economic decisions that could hurt or weaken the relationship between the two countries (Taneja, 2010)iv. Question two: Define poverty. Can it be eradicated? The basic human needs are not limited to food, clean drinking water, and shelter but also education, access to health care services, and work opportunity. Once the basic human needs are not met, poverty is said to be present. With this in mind, poverty is actually referring to a poor living condition wherein people have insufficient basic human needs that are necessary for a higher quality of life (UNDP, 1997)v. Because of the continuously increasing population growth around the world, socio-economic problems related to poverty also significantly increases. Among the few well-know economic concepts that could clearly explain the increase of inequality in terms of income distribution and work opportunities is capitalism. Under a capitalized economy, business people in general gather a group of laborers in exchange with minimum wage. Since businessmen could earn a large sum of profit out of the lower income population, the gap between the rich and the poor increases over time (Botha, 2003)vi. Through education, poverty rate can be reduced but not totally eradicated. According to Bhalla (2006, p. 23), India and China are two of the biggest countries around the world that chose not participate in the global economy started to open its market outside the country since 1980s. Eventually, the active participation of Chinese and Indians in the global market resulted to a significant reduction on the number of people who are experiencing poverty. Since a lot of people who used to live below the poverty line were given the opportunity to work, the number of people who were experiencing poverty was significantly reduced from 1.3 billion in 1980 down to 500 million in 2000 (Bhalla, 2006, p. 22). Question three: Identify and explain the challenges for policy makers when dealing with population growth. Policy makers are facing challenges when it comes to controlling the population growth. One of the most common challenges involves the cultural and religious controversy with regards to the use of birth control methods. In line with this, Boadu (2002)vii revealed that the Catholic, Mormons, and Baptists religion are strongly against the use of artificial contraceptives. In some cases, gap in the knowledge, attitude, and practice of the people with regards to the use of effective birth control method also serves as a challenge on the part of the policy makers (Casterline and Sinding, 2000)viii. Richard Muga was the Director of Medical Services in Kenya back in 2000. According to Muga (2000)ix, there are still some people in Kenya who are currently practicing ineffective traditional methods for family planning. In general, the use of norplant implants, sterilization, and IUCDs are considered more effective types of contraceptives as compared to other traditional methods like the coitus interruptus a.k.a. withdrawal method and rhythm method a.k.a. the calendar method (Muga, 2000). Even though the use of norplant implants, sterilization, and IUCDs are effective in terms of avoiding unwanted pregnancies, the use of these methods can be very costly on the part of the poor families. Due to the lack of financial resources and/or ignorance of the poor families with regards to the risk of engaging in coitus interruptus or withdrawal method, it is more difficult to motivate the poor families to limit the size of their family circle as compared to families who belong to the average or above average status. Question four: What is food security? How best might agriculture serve to enhance it? Food scarcity is similar to food shortage. It means that food scarcity is present in case the supply of the available food is not enough to support its demand for consumption. The problem with having food scarcity is that the market prices of food could significantly increase (Koning et al., 2008)x. Eventually, increase in the market price of food would mean that people who are living below the poverty line will have more difficulty purchasing food. Thus, result to hunger. In relation to food scarcity, food security is all about ensuring that there is an abundant the supply of food for the local consumption whole-year round. There is a limitation as to how the agricultural sector in each country could provide food security. In general, the success of agricultural activities is subject to a lot of external and uncontrollable environmental factors such as drought, flood, reduced rainfalls, and global warming, etc. (Ramsundar and Jaydeb, 2011)xi. To avoid food scarcity, Ibnouf (2012)xii strongly suggest that women should actively participate in food processing techniques (i.e. drying or fermentation) and storage activities. By processing vegetables and fruits when the supply is abundant, it is possible to promote food security. Aside from promoting the practice of stocking agricultural food supplies (i.e. rice, flour, etc.), the government should control and discourage the local farmers from participating the production of cash crops (i.e. producing oil seeds, corn, and food grains for bio-fuel purposes) more than food crops (Ramsundar and Jaydeb, 2011). Question five: To what extent is HIV/AIDS an international security issues? There is an on-going argument as to whether or not HIV/AIDS should be considered as one of the most important issues on international security. Back in July 2000, the UN Security Council mentioned that the Security Council argued that HIV/AIDS can be a serious threat to international peace and security (Elbe, 2005)xiii. Despite the arguments made by the Security Council, Rushton (2010)xiv revealed that the extent in which HIV/AIDS is considered as one of the international security issues remained unclear for a long period of time. First of all, the Council doubted that HIV/AIDS is a real threat to international peace and security. Furthermore, the General Assembly, UNAIDS, and the Economic and Social Council mentioned that the rumor behind the link between HIV/AIDS and international security has not yet formalized nor was there a final decision made for it to be considered a serious threat to international peace and security (Rushton, 2010). In general, HIV/AIDS can trigger a lot of health, social, and economic long-term consequences. In fact, a high prevalence of HIV/AIDS can destabilize the socio-economic order of each affected countries. For this reason, Altman (2003) explained that the presence of HIV/AIDS is even worse than having a war on terrorism. Since 2000, the United Nations and other similar international agencies acknowledge the health and socio-economic consequences of HIV/AIDS. Even though HIV/AIDS does not impose immediate threat to some less infected countries, the fact that HIV/AIDS is becoming pandemic increases the need for international security (Altman, 2003)xv. This explains why the Security Council is considering HIV/AIDS as a serious threat to international peace and security (Elbe, 2005). Question six: Identify and explain the challenge of managing unauthorised migration. In most cases, it is the unauthorized migrants who are at risks of becoming a victim of different forms of violence. Since the UK government accepted the ratification of the UN Convention on Refugees in 1954, it becomes their duty to protect all migrants regardless of their race, nationality or religion among others (Robinson, 2010)xvi. To protect the welfare of the unauthorized migrants, the European migration officers are facing a lot of challenges when it comes to managing unauthorized migration. According to Freedman (2012)xvii, one of these challenges includes the incoming of thousands of unauthorized female migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa to Europe via Morocco. Basically, most of this group of unauthorized migrants normally travels from Africa to Mediterranean coast using small boats. For this reason, it is an on-going challenge on the part of the European Union (EU) to negotiate with the government of North Africa and Morocco to impose a strict monitoring on their transit migration to prevent the unauthorized migrants from leaving the coasts (Freedman, 2012). By doing so, the European government will be able to have more power in controlling the influx of illegal migrants coming from Sub-Saharan Africa. Unauthorized migrants are entering their target country illegally. Therefore, the European migration officers should focus on identifying possible entry points before implementing migration control strategies to ensure that any person who will be entering the country illegally will be immediately deported back to their country. Likewise, migrants can enter the country legally until such time that their working visas had expired. To avoid such cases, the European migration office should enact new laws and policy that will impose penalties on migrants with expired visas (Wongboonsin, 2003, p. 83)xviii. By doing so, it will be easier on the part of the European migration officers to control the growing number of illegal migrants. References Altman, D. (2003). AIDS and Security. International Relations, 17(4), pp. 417-427. Bhalla, S.S. (2006). 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