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Thursday, September 2, 2010
Human Rights Law Centre
Human Rights in Eric Posner's Lawless World
Posner writes:
"Academic research suggests that international human rights treaties have had little or no impact on the actual practices of states. The Genocide Convention has not prevented genocides; the Torture Convention has not stopped torture. The same can be said for the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and a host of treaties meant to advance the rights of women and children. States that already respect human rights join human rights treaties because doing so is costless for them. States that do not respect human rights simply ignore their treaty obligations."
What is Posner's argument here? That laws that aren't followed 100 percent of the time should be disposed of? That genocide and torture shouldn't be illegal? If that is, in fact, what Posner is saying, his complaint isn't with international law, but law in general. After all, murder is illegal in every society, yet murders are still committed everywhere.
Posner goes on to explain:
"The evidence shows that human rights are best in those states that are wealthiest, leading many scholars to speculate that the best way to promote human rights is to promote growth."
Wealthier states are, on average, more likely to respect human rights, but Posner is assuming that economic growth causes states to respect human rights. There is a huge body of literature, including, most famously, Amartya Sen's Development as Freedom, that concludes the exact opposite, that respect for human rights -especially freedom of expression- enables disaster-prevention, poverty reduction, and economic growth.
Then, there are the glaring examples of developed and wealthy countries showing little respect for the rights of people residing within their borders. Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Singapore might all be developed, but they're hardly paragons of good human rights policy. Economies can boom and skylines soar on the labor of exploited, brutalized underclasses, and in spite of authoritarian denials of civil and political rights.
However, countries like Singapore, representing the so-called "authoritarian development" model, and rentier states like Saudi Arabia -regimes that survive on income from natural resources- are exceptions globally. Most undemocratic countries are dismally poor.
As law, human rights have instrumental value to people campaigning for equality, exposing cruelty, and taking cases against their abusive and feckless governments to national and international courts.
Whether it entails locating mass graves or litigating on behalf of slum residents, human rights work outside the democratic world often places advocates and their loved ones in mortal danger. International human rights law isn't always honored, and it certainly cannot bring the dead back to life, but without the law itself on their side, threatened human rights defenders in places like Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, and Russia would be even worse off than they are now.
If nothing else, human rights law gives some wronged parties recourse and a focus for the future. It has allowed Chechen village mothers whose sons were forcibly disappeared to take the Russian state to the European Court of Human Rights and, in doing so, say to the world, "Our government must account for its actions, and acknowledge our suffering." That alone is a powerful -and empowering-thing.
About which Eric Posner has nothing to say.
I wouldn't expect an arch-realist to address norms, but not addressing the instrumental value of human rights law is sheer intellectual laziness.
If Posner is correct about anything, it's that the world we live in is too often still one in which a person's birthplace, rather than humanity, dictates the rights she or he may enjoy. But that's not an argument for less international law, that's an argument for more and better human rights advocacy.
Side note: Posner's worldview is, ironically, best represented by this Amnesty International ad -minus the last line, of course.
International Human Rights Law Clinic
International drug crime measures 'lead to executions
The United Nations, the European commission and individual states including Britain are flouting international human rights law by funding anti-drug crime measures that are inadvertently leading to the executions of offenders, according to a report seen by the Guardian.
The International Harm Reduction Association (IHRA), a non-governmental organisation that advocates less punitive approaches to drugs policy globally, says it has gathered evidence revealing "strong links" between executions for drugs offences and the funding of specific drug enforcement operations by international agencies.
It says programmes aimed at shoring up local efforts to combat drug trafficking and other offences are being run "without appropriate safeguards" that could prevent serious human rights violations in countries that retain the death penalty.
The report concludes that the UN Office on Drugs and Crime ( "are all actively involved in funding and/or delivering technical assistance, legislative support and financial aid intended to strengthen domestic drug enforcement activities in states that retain the death penalty for drug offences.
"Such funding, training and capacity-building activities – if successful – result in increased convictions of persons on drug charges, and the potential for increased death sentences and executions".
The report claims there is evidence of "complicity in acts that violate international human rights law", undermining the Council of Europe's commitment to abolish the death penalty, the United Nations Charter and UNODC's stated opposition to the penalty for drugs offences.
The 33-page report lists a series of case studies it says illustrate how efforts to garner convictions for drugs offences across borders have resulted further down the line in executions. International law does not prohibit the death penalty but does limit its use to the "most serious crimes". The meaning of "serious" is challenged by some states with the death penalty.
Rick Lines, deputy director of the IHRA and co-author of the report, said: "Many people around the world would be shocked to know that their governments are funding programmes that are leading people indirectly to death by hanging and firing squads." He said agencies and countries were not intentionally funding programmes that led to people facing the death penalty but that it was "a fact" that executions were happening.
The report comes soon after the execution by firing squad of Ronnie Lee Gardner in Utah, America, that once again highlights human rights concerns about capital punishment. However IHRA's focus on the persistence of capital punishment in other "retentionist" countries for drugs crimes is likely to resonate this week. Saturday is UN International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, organised to highlight that some states, including China, have always executed drugs offenders to make a public example of them.
An IHRA report published last month revealed that of the 58 states that retain the death penalty, 32 permit it for drug-related crimes. Some use it more readily than others. The estimated overall number of executions including those for drugs-related offences in 2009 was 714, according to Amnesty International, although this does not account for potentially thousands more executions that are not disclosed by China.
Commenting on the IHRA report, Rebecca Schleifer, advocacy director of Human Rights Watch, said that while UNODC in particular has recently "taken steps in the right direction" to account for the human rights implications of its programmes, its drug enforcement activities, and those of other organisations and countries, continue to "put them at risk of supporting increased death sentences and executions in some countries".
Sebastian Saville, director of Release, a British drugs and human rights charity, said there was an urgent need for political leaders in Britain and the US to rethink their "disastrous 'war on drugs' policy and tacit support for regimes that continue executing people for relatively minor offences".
A UNODC spokesman welcomed the report for drawing attention to capital punishment, saying it raised "legitimate concerns" about how actions designed to deal with drugs crimes "may indirectly result in increased convictions and the possible application of the death penalty". He said UNODC had taken "concrete steps" to implement human rights assessments as part of "all drug enforcement activities". The IHRA report makes a number of recommendations including that European governments, the European Commission and UNODC urgently leverage their influence with countries that retain the death penalty "to restrict or abolish the death penalty for drug offences."
Rohingya People of Burma
Brief history of Burma’s Rohingya Minority
The Rohingya are a Muslim ethnic minority living in northern Arakan state in western Burma. They face religious discrimination at the hands of Burma’s military regime, which doesn’t recognize the Rohingya as citizens of Burma. The regime does not consider the Rohingya people as one of 135 legally recognized ethnic minority groups in Burma, leaving the Rohingya stateless, homeless and rights-less.
The first Rohingya people arrived in Burma as early as 7th century. These early migrants were known to be Arab sailors and merchants who traveled to Burma for economic pursuits. These Muslim settlers came to Burma in a total of three waves: from 7th to 13th century, in the 15th century and from 1826 onward throughout the British colonial rule. Today this day, Burma’s military regime maintains that the Rohingya immigrated to Burma from India while under British colonial rule, flagrantly omitting their earlier arrivals and settlements in the region.
With time, these Muslim settlers married into the local culture and made permanent settlements in western region of Burma. Today, Rohingya Muslims constitute 1/3 of the total population of Arakan State, and the rest belongs to Buddhist Arakanese.
International Human Rights Academy 2005
54 participants from 43 different countries took part in the IHRA 2005, varying from judges, medical doctors, lawyers, NGO-workers and government officials.
Courses included the Universal System of Protection of Human Rights, the Regional Systems of Protection of Human Rights, International Criminal Law, International Humanitarian Law and Transitional Law. Furthermore, specific topics such as social & economic rights, children's & women's rights, minority rights, refugees, torture, universal jurisdiction, human rights & foreign policy, human rights from an Asian & Arab perspective, etc. were also included. Lectures were given by prominent academic and non-academic speakers from all continents.
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