HR key issues - knowledge flashcards

Dichotomy of sovereignty

One of the biggest challenges faced by the effective protection of human rights is sovereignty. According to the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, states are sovereign, meaning other states are not allowed to interfere in the internal affairs of another state. For example, China has been accused of the systemic oppression of the Uighur Muslims; whilst western governments and human rights groups have accused Beijing of it’s genocide, according to the Treaty, it is not the role of other …

sovereigns to dictate to China what it can and can’t do within its borders. Such a view is popular amongst realists, who would argue that it is neither the role of other states to tell China what they can/can’t do, nor is it necessarily in the interest of other states to do so. Therefore, such HR abuses go unchallenged, and rights are poorly protected because of state sovereignty.

Responsibility to Protect: However, there is a recognition that because of HR abuses and genocides that took place in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the obstacle that sovereignty has on HR must be restricted. Consequently …

states through the UN created R2P to ensure that states are sovereign only if they protect HR. ‘R2P is a concept whose time has come. For too many millions of victims, it should have come much earlier’ - Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary-General. 

R2P seeks to enhance the state’s ability to protect civilians from four mass atrocites: genocide, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and war crimes. The state may have the right to manage affairs within its borders, but it also has the fundamental responsibility of shielding populations within those borders from these crimes. It was first introduced by …

 ICISS in 2001, ICISS being an independent body that works closely with the UN. At the 2005 UN World Summit, world leaders came together to unanimously endorse R2P.

R2P is typically understood in 3 pillars -

• A state’s obligations to protect populations within its own borders

• The international community’s role in helping states to fulfil this

• The international community’s responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic, peaceful or forceful means to protect civilian populations where a state fails to do its role. 

The aftermath of the intervention in Libya has reinforced much of the uncertainty around R2P’s parameters, and contributed to the division within the UN Security Council on the continuing crisis in Syria.  The main point of discord is the vagueness of the use of coercive force to protect civilians. The legitimate use of military force has a number of limitations: It must have a just …

cause, be properly authorised by the UNSC, only be used once all available non-violent options have been exhausted and incur as little violence as possible and do more good than harm. It is difficult, however, for the UNSC to agree on these limitations in practice. Prevention is always the best policy; R2P stresses the importance of early monitoring and assessment of countries at risk, as the international community should act before military force is necessary.  As the genocide in Rwanda demonstrated, timing is everything.

• Western double standards:

Some people argue that the protection of human rights is undermined by western double standards. It is difficult for the West to sanction some states for the abuse of human rights when their allies are accused of similar abuses. For example, in May 2024 the ICC sought arrest warrants for the Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyah and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for HR abuses in its conduct in Gaza. Israel's allies including the US and UK pushed back against the ruling and refused to give their legitimacy to the arrest warrants.

The stance of the UK and USA lead to inevitable and credible accusations of double standards in their undermining of the independent ICC, thereby disincentivising other states from complying with the protection of human rights abuses. Furthermore, states such as the USA have refused to give their mandate to the Rome States, effectively meaning that US citizens are ‘above’ international human rights legislation. The consequence of the USA withdrawing its signature from the Rome Statute was that other states, like Russia, did likewise. This allegation of Western double standards thus provides a strong argument for the weak protection of HR in the global system. 

War on Terror Case Study: (i)

The US and UKs reaction to 9/11 arguably led to HR violations. Military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq resulted in high numbers of civilian deaths and HR failures such as the Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo Bay, a glaring black hole beyond the reach of the US supreme court. A ‘free pass’ has been issued to regimes with poor HR records but who are …

on the right side of the global ‘war on terror’, such as Pakistan. Torture techniques such as waterboarding have been used and the US policy of ‘extraordinary rendition’ has seen prisoners moved to ‘black sites’ where HR are more easily violated. The UK has allowed for extended periods of detention without Charles and the draconian ‘terrorism act’. 

War on Terror Case Study: (ii)

Targeted killings such as that of bin Laden and the increasing use of drone strikes killing AQAP head Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen are highly problematic, representing both threats to sovereignty and …

 ‘ frontier justice’, whereby states are taking the law into their own hands at the expense of recourse to any system of international justice. 

• Selective interventions:

As with the SC veto, any protection of human rights is conditions in the international system on it being in the interest of the state. The protection of human rights through HI is expensive and complex. However, in the words of former British PM, Lord Cameron …

‘just because we can't do good everywhere, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do good somewhere’. Interventions need to be selective, and states will often intervene in places of geopolitical importance or where there are historic ties, such as the French intervention in Mali from 2014 to 2022.

The USA as a rogue state: (i)

It has never been a full signatory to the ICC. President Clinton signed the Rome Statute, but stated that, as the treaty was fundamentally flawed, whilst the Bush administration effectively 'unsigned' the treaty in 2002, and took concerted steps to reduce the United States exposure to ICC jurisdiction by negotiating BIAs  with as many countries as possible, under which neither party would transfer citizens of the other country to the jurisdiction of the ICC. Over 100 BIAs have been negotiated. In March 2019, …

the US government announced a ban on visas for ICC staff intending to travel to the United States in the course of investigating possible war crimes committed by US troops, or by allied personnel, including Israelis. In 2021, President Joe Biden's incoming Democrat administration lifted the visa ban, but reaffirmed opposition to any investigation of US or Israeli forces by the ICC Significance: 

The USA as a rogue state: (ii)

But the refusal to have its troops tried at the ICC also presents major problems for the United States in its claim to be a leading state in terms of the international legal system. In recent wars, US troops have been suspected or proven to have committed offences that might be tried before the court, were the country a signatory. Afghan citizens, as well as NGOs including Human Rights Watch, have argued that US forces, including CIA operatives, may have broken the laws of war …

in the 20-year conflict in Afghanistan. Eg. as the US was withdrawing the its troops from Afghanistan in 2021 it launched a drone strike that killed 10 ten civilians, 7 of whom were children. When such cases are addressed by the United States at all, it is in the form of its own investigations. Contradictions around the US' relationship to the ICC resurfaced in 2022 when Biden administration officials strongly supported a potential ICC investigation into alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine, including the indictment of Putin himself, leaving it open to accusations of wanting one law for themselves, another for everyone else.

• Neo-Colonialism: (i)

What is right for one society may not be right for other societies, a position that suggests that the outside world should respect the choices made by individual nation states. Postcolonial theorists often portray the values of human rights as a form of cultural imperialism. Attempts to highlight the cultural biases that operate through the doctrine of 'universal' human rights have been prominent in Asia and the Muslim world. The Asian critique of human rights emphasizes the …

 existence of rival Asian values, such as social harmony and respect for authority, which supposedly reflect the distinctive history, culture, and religious backgrounds of Asian societies. From an Asian values perspective, political legitimacy is more closely tied up with economic and social development than it is with democracy.

• Neo-Colonialism: (ii)

The 1993 Bangkok Declaration adopted by Asian ministers in the run-up to the Vienna World Conference attempted a delicate balancing act by recognizing both the distinctiveness of Asian cultures and the interdependence and indivisibility of human rights. The Chinese government often responds to criticism of its human rights record by arguing that collective socio economic rights are more important than civic and political rights, highlighting its success in relieving an estimated …

300 million people from poverty. Islamic reservations about human rights have been evident since Saudi Arabia refused to adopt the UN Declaration in 1948, on the grounds that it violated important Islamic principles, notably its rejection of apostasy.

• Neo-Colonialism: (iii)

The basis of the Islamic critique of human rights, as outlined by the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam (1990), is that rights, and all moral principles, derive from divine, rather than human, authority. Islamic critiques suggest that rights derive from divine law, not human reasoning, and that Western human rights promote secularism and excessive individualism. The West is …

morally decadent, and through the idea of human rights is in danger of foisting its moral decadence on the rest of the world. Nevertheless, the Islamic critique is not so much a form of cultural relativism as a form of alternative universalism, as Islam, like liberalism, contains supposedly universal codes that are applicable to all cultures and all societies.

• Philosophically:

Universalist liberalism has been challenged by communitarianism and postmodernism. Communitarians argue that liberalism wrongly views individuals as isolated and independent, when in reality people are shaped by their social and cultural contexts. As a result, …

rights and justice cannot be universal but must reflect specific communities. Postmodernists similarly reject universal human rights, on the basis that all claims to objective truth are unreliable. They argue that reality is fragmented and pluralistic, so human rights are merely one ‘metanarratic’ and should only be applied in limited, context-specific ways. 

Challenges to HR

• Intervention breaches international law. It assumes a respect of state sovereignty and any breach of this is at least questionable.

• Intervention often takes place based on a western view of human rights = cultural imperialism.

• Double standards exist where intervention is concerned. There are examples where intervention is concerned. There are examples where intervention, arguably, should take place but doesn’t because of political considerations or a lack of national interest eg. UK and Bahrain

• Strong vs weak. Only weak states are intervened in - where was the intervention in Ukraine, Crimea, Russia over the worst piece of breach of sovereignty conducted since the 1991 Gulf War? Wouldn't the west have been stronger had that been one poor state annexing a part of another?

• Intervention can make matters worse. It frequently doesn't seem to produce good long term outcomes.

• Realist critique - it's not our responsibility. Not right that the western has the burden of being ‘the world's policeman’. Where was the Arab response to Syria or its refugee crisis?

• States have ulterior motives for intervention.

Costs:

When western states look to protect rights, they must be mandated to do so by their electorate, who will ultimately carry the burden of the cost through taxation. The cost of intervention is more than just a financial burden, with potential loss of life. They are typically more successful where the aims are …

limited and the mandate is strong eg. the aims of the 2000 UK Sierra Leone intervention were limited and broadly supported by the public to a limited political and financial cost. However, there is often reticence among Western policymakers to actively intervene to protect rights due to the high political costs.

Democracy Promotion:

Democracy promotion can be justified in  4 ways:

1. Democracy is founded on values such as human dignity, individual rights, and equality. Therefore it is a universal good, applicable to all societies regardless of their history, culture, and values. Those who can promote democracy have a duty to do so. 

2. As authoritarian regimes repress opposition and deny citizens the right of political participation, democracy cannot be built through internal pressures alone and needs external support, likely involving force.

3. The 'democratic peace' thesis: democracy increases the likelihood of peace and cooperation.

4. Democracy has the practical advantage that, in widening access to political power, it reduces levels of discontent, helping to counter political extremism and even terrorism.

Democracy promotion is based on specious and self-serving reasoning, providing a high-sounding justification for what in practice amounts to an imperialist project designed to expand Western hegemony and ensure access to vital energy resources. Some argue Arab and wider Muslim populations are not ready for democracy, others suggest that democracy will legitimately take different forms in different parts of the world. A narrow focus on liberal democratic reform is an example of …

Eurocentrism and is likely to fail. Also, the link between democracy and political moderation is not assured. The introduction of multiparty elections in Algeria in 1991 looked likely to result in a sweeping victory for the militant Islamic Salvation Front, before the Algerian army intervened to repress a popularly backed tide of religious fundamentalism. Violating national self-determination to promote political freedom appears to be, at best, a contradictory position.

HI is an abandoned project?

• HI occurred because of highly exceptional international circumstances during the 1990s, linked to the emergence of the USA as the sole superpower and a temporary willingness/weakness of other major powers, notably Russia and China to accept US leadership over such matters. 

• By the early 2000s, the global balance of power had changed in such a way as to make it more difficult to get UNSC support for humanitarian intervention. 

• In the early 2000s the difficulties associated with humanitarian interventions (Libya) and with post-conflict administration once a military intervention has occurred (Iraq and Afghanistan, even if they weren’t done as HIs) has really put states off such interventions. 

HI is an abandoned project?

• Does the world in 2026 look like it is ready to work together on HIs? Russian foreign policy is aggressive and anti-western, Chinese foreign policy is almost entirely based on self-interest, both states are dictatorships … and dictatorships always prioritise state sovereignty over HR … so that no other state thinks it's got the right to overthrow their dictatorship. Trump's America has all abandoned the idea of ‘morality based’ foreign policy. 

  
  

• The more unstable the global situation is, the more states will act in a realist (selfish) way, and worry just about their own or regional situation.

  
  

HI isn’t an abandoned project:

• There has been a permanent shift in terms of expectations of the international community, which now extent to intervening in order to prevent large scale atrocities or violations of human rights

• Although HIs have declined in frequency, they have still continued (eg. vs ISIS in Syria-Iraq 2014-ongoing), if only because of the consequences of not intervening, such as in Bosnia and Rwanda.

• Although intervention in Syria from 2011-24 was limited, the fact it has been done by USA and France, despite the perceived failure in Libya, shows the concept isn’t abandoned. 

  
  

• Frequent terrorist acts in Europe by Islamic extremists could encourage more intervention in the unstable states eg. French in Mali 2014-22 that are the home bases of terrorist training camps.

• Could we see Trump's bombing of Iran by 2026 - which is definitely not HI - nevertheless as partly inspired by the Iranian regime massacring up to 30,000 of its own citizens in early 2026? - Not really??? But perhaps still a moral dimension

  
  
  

Turkey (1)

Freedom of expression: In 2022, 58 journalists and media workers were in prison or serving sentences for terrorism because of their journalistic work or association with specific publications. Thousands face legal punishment each year for criticising the regime on social media

Rollbacks on LGBT rights: Turkey was the first nation to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention in order to appease conservative workers, on the grounds that the Convention ‘normalises homosexuality’.

Turkey (2)

Refugees, asylum seekers and migrants: Around 3.7 million from Syria with temporary protected status, over 400,000 from Afghanistan, Iraq who cannot be legally identified as refugees under Turkish law. Many reports of racism and xenophobic attacks against the foreigners

Key international actors: The EU pays Turkey to restrict entry of migrants and refugees into the bloc.

In 2021, the US added Turkey to its Trafficking In Persons list of countries implicated for use of child soldiers in connection to it backing an armed Syrian opposition group.

Afghanistan (1)

Women’s and girls rights: After the 2021 takeover, Taliban authorities announced a stream of policies which rolled back women's rights: Severely curtailing access to …

employment and education. restricting the right to peaceful assembly, banning female humanitarian workers and dismissing almost all government employees.

Afghanistan (2)

• Freedom of Media, Speech and Assembly: Nearly 70% of all Afghan media outlets closed. Taliban authorities impose wide-ranging restrictions on media and free speech that includes prohibiting  actions on ‘insulting national figures’ 

• Key international Actors: The US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan did not include plans for evacuating the Afghans who had worked for the US and NATO forces. EU members have evacuated some Afghans but none have made commitments to more refugees