9: Non-State Actors - The Case of HR

Question 1

definition of HR

Answer 1

vague and broad umbrella
- twistable definition

Hunt describes HR as characterised and requiring 3 interlocking qualities: natural, equal and universal

immense and ongoing debate of how to periodise the trajectory of HR
- progressive teleological interpretation as a beginning and constant development/improvement

attempts to expand the parameter of HR that continued throughout the long post-WWII age
- fundamental rights constantly redefined/rethought

Question 2

why was there a brief HR moment during and after WWII?

Answer 2

HR as moral vocabulary in times of crisis
- natural to mobilise and invoke fundamental rights against a political/geopolitical/ideological project that explicitly rejected one of the key pillars (equality)

elements of continuity in the interwar period

• one of the key issues in Europe as the rights of national minorities within a given nation-state
• if a given group couldn’t have their own state, they had to be granted some fundamental rights

legacy of WWII
- immense sacrifices that further legitimised and in a way crystallised some kind of WWII narrative as a struggle between Nazi fascism and freedom/liberty

Cold War competition
- language of rights in the struggle for hearts/minds

complement to national welfarism

• universal code somehow complementing economic/social policies and the attempt to expand basic economic rights, which took place on the national level
• HR applied exclusively in the political sphere but when it came to the social economic sphere, there was no universal project

Question 3

HR in 1941-1950

Answer 3

FDR’s 4 freedoms

• end of 1941 which epitomised the opening of a new age in HR
• expansive and novel definition of freedom and therefore rights

UNRRA (UN relief and rehabilitation administration)

• issue of how to manage the plight of refugees
• immediate and practical issues to deal with, but also the problem outlined by Arendt where rights are connected to citizenship

IL and law of war

• administration created centres for displaced people and provided aid
• massive humanitarian operation
• new states introduced to provide and protect basic rights

Question 4

what was the impact of the Cold War on HR?

Answer 4

different definitions of the 2 superpowers

• empire of liberty vs. empire of justice/equality
• both spoke a language of universal rights

domestic pressures and embarrassments

• both practised this universal language incoherently
• in the US, alleged universalism of rights clashed with racial discrimination and segregation
• in the USSR, the language of the empire of justice/equality was one that could be extremely and violently repressive of political dissent and political pluralism

contradictory effects
- constant tension in geopolitics between national security imperatives and the ideological dimension of the Cold War competition

modernisation: collective rights vs rights of the individual
- violent top-down population control policies in the name of a higher good
- politicise taken in the name of modernity/modernisation clashed with defence and respect for individual HR

issue of sovereignty: decolonisation and self-determination vs. HR

• self-determination as a group right and not individual right
• new groups self-determining themselves violated individual rights while state entities did nothing
• tension between key fundamental principle of universal IR (self-determination and HR

Question 5

why did the 1970s represent a crucial turning point for HR?

Answer 5

morality and rejection/delegitimisation of maximal visions of political transformation

• large collective destiny projects of the 50s and 60s were rejected/delegitimised by massive failures in modernising crusades undertaken by the USSR and US which ended up in failures
• major failures of the big, ambitious, universal projects of the 1950s and 1960s

new and last utopia (Moyn)

return of anti-totalitarian discourse
- used against the USSR to denounce violation of fundamental individual HR (first and foremost the right to dissent)

crisis of self-determination

• many post-colonial realities became corrupted authoritarian regimes so self-determination began to be challenged
• self-determination was individual and not collective now
• HR age centred on the rights of the individual and intrinsic power for the individual

politics of images and information

• transformation of HR as the politics of the information age
• HR now embraced in global campaigns by famous public figures

Question 6

HR in the 1970s-1990s

Answer 6

bottom up mobilisation

• creation of transnational networks with NGOs and HR groups
• influential, provided expertise, legal knowledge, etc.

further weakening of the UN and micropolitics
- micro-political level where activism took place

lobbies, particularly in the US

• political uses for HR but not instrumental
• HR offered a new universalistic code replacing the discredited universalistic code of modernity and progress

Question 7

why and how did the international context facilitate this change in HR between the 1970s and the 1990s?

Answer 7

detente and resurrection of memory of WWII
- 1970s as a period of bipolar detente and led many to engage with key issues that had been forgotten/conveniently removed

Helsinki and CSCE

Carter’s presidency

• HR used against long-standing authoritarian fascist allies of the US
• movement outside a Cold War frame of mind (cannot tolerate authoritarian regimes only because they are allies, cannot tolerate HR violations by allies)

new Cold War and attack to Soviet totalitarianism

• HR used by Reagan against USSR
• HR still central in anti-communist interpretation and pervasive

neoliberalism and triumph of individual notion of rights

• individual rights and freedoms, neoliberal economics could stay together
• sort of cultural dimension and frame of the era that was somehow conducive to the interpretation of individual rights that could be applied to economics and international political economy as well as to HR

Question 8

conference on security and cooperation in Europe (CSCE)

Answer 8

negotiations in Helsinki from 1972-1975

key international conference with the objective to formalise true agreements in the post-WWII territorial settlements

Question 9

the post-Cold War age as a triumph of HR?

Answer 9

full triumph of a HR-shaped and informed international agenda

• from a practical point of view, humanitarian wars
• from a legal point of view, the creation of international tribunals
• from a theoretical point of view, creating specific doctrines on how to enforce new definitions of HR

humanitarian interventionism and its contradictions

from HR to human security?
- further attempt to expand the meaning, understanding and pliable parameter of HR

international legal regime vs. war crimes

• attempts to expand meaning have gone hand in hand with the attempt to expand the international legal regime operating against basic violations of HR, beginning with war crimes
• ad hoc courts and ICC with global jurisdiction

R2P
- definition of R2P obligation of the international community

Question 10

what were the main limits and paradoxes of the politics of HR?

Answer 10

prevailing civil/political definition of rights

• definition of rights focused and centred predominantly and at times exclusively on the civil, political definition of HR
• age of HR also as the age of inequality

HR as a way to transcend politics
- has morality become more important than politics?

dual standards
- north/south divide, geopolitical convenience, sovereignty vs. rights

is the hegemon or rising power bound by the same constraints?

• US never joined ICC, Russia withdrew, etc.
• HR violated even by countries that are in theory the most convinced as HR defenders (US in 9/11, Guantanamo Bay, etc.)
• rising powers like China where there are multiple violations of HR