International Relations Theory Human Rights Formal - Term Paper Example

Human rights are relevant in many different ways. They influence us both directly and indirectly, in terms of what we understand our human rights to be and how we use them to shape the kind of society we live in. Human rights form an important part of our collective consciousness; they provide us with basic standards by which we can identify and measure inequality and unfairness. Relatively, the establishment and development of universal human rights standards in international human rights instruments over the past 50 years have heightened awareness around the world about issues concerning human rights. The fact that our rights are enshrined in numerous instruments, many of which are legally binding, is testament to the weight with which they are accorded and the high esteem in which they are held by the international community. These instruments set universal standards against which national governments and individuals alike can measure their own compliance and compare it to that of others. Even when there is disagreement over the precise meaning, nature or scope of a particular human right, the fact that such a dialogue exists at all demonstrates the widespread recognition of, and concern for, fundamental universal human rights. According to Conlon in 2004, human rights were among the more powerful ideas to emerge from the U.N. Charter along with peace, national self-determination, and development. After the drafting and adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, to which all the countries of the world subscribe, at least rhetorically, the modern international human rights system developed slowly within the constraints of the Cold War. While there remains much to celebrate about the Universal Declaration and collateral human rights treaties, there have also been substantial complications in managing the political organization of such international obligations. Within the U.N., until the 1980s, the issue of human rights was essentially an ideological football, kicked back and forth in a match between West and East (Schwarz, 2004). Western players prioritized political and civil rights, and their Eastern counterparts (usually backed up by southern reserves) economic and social rights. The divide was part of Cold War competition, which left little room for the possibility of joint promotion. Nevertheless, a wide range of international norms have been enshrined in legally binding international human rights instruments, and in a growing web of customary international law. Protections were established by treaty for those subjected to torture, for victims of racial discrimination, for children, and for women (Conlon, 2004). As neither the United States nor the Soviet Union deferred fully to this system during the Cold War, the protection of human rights remained more nominal than actual. The sovereign prerogatives of the superpowers trumped rights enforcement, with the U.N. system accepting non-compliance on many occasions. At present, the most promising avenues for the immediate actualization of global justice involve sensitive adjustments to variations of state and society makeup, as in the numerous peaces, reconciliation, and accountability procedures established in a number of countries (Gandhi, 2000). Also encouraging are various collaborations between transnational social forces and those governments that are more value-oriented and sensitive to the claims of global justice, as opposed to those that define their role according to the maximization of power, wealth, and influence. Such projects include a push for treaties that prohibit antipersonnel landmines, outlaw reliance on nuclear weaponry, and establish an international criminal court. Each of these initiatives has its own distinct character, but all of them disclose a new form of global politics in which states are more motivated by values and human solidarity than by narrowly conceived national interests. Such encouraging developments treat global security as based on a demilitarizing respect for law in relation to effective international institutions that are constitutionally oriented. It is also important to acknowledge the contributions being made within regional frameworks, particularly the European Union. European regionalism in relation to economic cooperation and the protection of human rights is undoubtedly the boldest world order experiment currently under way (Machan, 2005). If the European Union is perceived as successful in other parts of the world, it could rapidly lead to the extension of a regional approach to neglected instances of injustice. Especially in view of the current mood of disillusionment with the United Nations, it seems likely that, institutionally and substantively, regional arenas will provide the most promising opportunities in the near future to pursue global justice in contexts beyond the boundaries of territorial states. The idea of a just society of sovereign states was initially embedded in the medieval universalism of the Roman Catholic Church. It was also embodied in the shared Christendom of European states, which established the modern system of world order in the mid-seventeenth century (Amnesty International, 2007). The concept of justice coexisted with the idea of sovereignty, which in effect relegated most dimensions of justice to the internal relations between state and society. With the separation of church and state that accompanied the rise of the modern state, the notion of justice assumed a specifically and predominantly secular character that could no longer be interpreted merely as an extension of religious thought. Two developments are crucial to the framing of global justice: the idea and practice of sovereignty at the level of the territorial state, and the increasing secularization of the most influential forms of speculation about the nature of justice (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 2007). At the same time, various schools of natural law associated with Catholicism and other formulations of rights and laws rested on divine revelation, the timeless intuitions of rationality, and the objective order of the universe. These approaches persisted as minority counter traditions that challenged the view of justice as socially constructed by human will in the specific settings of historical societies. It is arguable that the positing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a moral and legal foundation for political, social, economic, and cultural behavior amounts to the reassertion of natural law as a legitimate underlying arrangement of governance. A series of prominent jurists tried to make the transition to modernity, taking account of the rise of secularism and territorial sovereignty. As the state gained in strength and capability, the notion of some sort of solidarity based on a shared cultural or religious background faded, and more absolute notions of sovereignty prevailed. In an important sense, the establishment of the League of Nations after the First World War, and the United Nations after the Second World War, represented diluted moves in this direction of institutionalized authority. Beset both by problems associated with the unwillingness of states to renounce their own sovereignty (the problem of attainability), and by a concern about the menace of premature centralization of authority (the problem of global authoritarianism), these steps toward creating the structures of global justice disappointed visionaries and disillusioned even those neo-Grotians who took refuge in optimistic expectations associated with an evolutionary view of global political development (Conlon, 2004). At the same time, these moves toward the establishment of an organized international community disappointed world federalists who regarded such steps as far too modest to achieve the goal of war prevention. They also frightened ultranationalists who saw these steps as moving inexorably toward a diabolical world state. But such moves generally satisfied liberal internationalists who, placing particular hope in the eventual prospect of ever greater cooperation of a functional character, believed that progress at the global level could be achieved only by small, incremental steps. The attractiveness of the idea is that it seems empirically grounded and follows the course of history. Also relevant is the liberal idea that support for international human rights creates a just world society that extends its reach beyond the external relations of states to encompass the relations between governments and their citizens. Present in this idea is the expectation that a democratized world community would be able to agree upon far more ambitious institutional arrangements (Schwarz, 2004). This possibility is given added plausibility by the institutionalization of relations in the European regional context, even on sensitive issues of rights and money. The notion of global justice has also been articulated in terms of achieving what could be called "humane governance." This point of view examines positive and negative trends along several main axes of normative concern: security in relation to international and intranational violence; economic well-being in relation to basic human needs and degrees of inequality within and among societies; and the depth and breadth of democratization, including economic and social aspects of human rights and the extent of environmental protection as it relates to present and future conditions. 28 Humane governance is also conceived in relation to "inhumane governance, " a reference to degrees of insecurity, deprivation, exploitation, inequality, marginalization, and environmental decay (Conlon, 2004). An important line of inquiry examines the tensions between "globalization-from-above" (capital-driven market forces seeking a maximally efficient world) and "globalization-from-below" (people-oriented transnational and grassroots social forces seeking a maximally humane and sustainable world). The choice of the term governance rather than government is important for several reasons. First, governance calls attention to various forms of institutional and collective efforts to organize human affairs on a global scale, encompassing the global institutions of the UN system, various regional actors, and transnational and local grassroots initiatives. Second, the specific initiative of The Commission on Global Governance responded to a perceived window of opportunity to improve the world's peace and security infrastructure in the aftermath of the cold war (Schwarz, 2004). Third, the idea of governance was intended to be flexible and analytical, avoiding the anti-sovereignty connotations of "global" or "world" government. And fourth, the focus on global governance addresses a concern that a statist world order framework would no longer capture the reality being created by the rise of market forces and the transnational activities of voluntary civic associations. There is also the related idea that fears and objections associated with world government may be dispelled, or at least mitigated, by thinking in terms of global governance. There is also the related idea that fears and objections associated with world government may be dispelled, or at least mitigated, by thinking in terms of global governance. Obstacles of an ideological and structural character complicate the pursuit of global justice during this early phase of globalization. At the same time, several developments associated with globalization are encouraging to those committed to the promotion of global justice. The most salient obstacles arise from the persisting fragmentation of the world in terms of sovereign territorial states, and the widespread acceptance of efficiency and competitiveness criteria as the basis for assessing economic performance. The most promising developments arise from the plausibility of conceiving the world as a unity and from the beginnings of a global civil society due to the efforts of transnational social forces (Conlon, 2004). The role of institutions is central to all aspects of this inquiry, but it is also ambiguous. International institutions definitely promote and consolidate the ends of global justice in various respects, but they are also vulnerable to manipulation and control by political forces that are responsible for some of the worst forms of injustice, including patterns of domination, exploitation, and victimization. International institutions, while they merit appreciation for their achievements, must also be criticized for their deficiencies. References Amnesty International: Working to protect human rights worldwide. [http://www.amnesty.org] retrieved; 29 June 2007. Conlon, J. (2004) Sovereignty versus Human Rights or Sovereignty and Human Rights Race and Class, Vol.46, No.1, 75-100. Ghandhi, P.R. (ed) (2000) Blackstone's international human rights documents: Blackstone Press: London Machan, Tibor R. (2005). Human Rights and Human Liberties: A Radical Reconsideration of the American Political Tradition. Chicago: Nelson Hall Schwarz, R. (2004) The Paradox of Sovereignty, Regimes Type and Human Rights Compliance. International Journal of Human Rights, Vol.8, No.2, 199-215 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. [http://www.hrweb.org/legal/udhr.html] retrieved; 29 June 2007. Read More