Chapter 12: Human Rights Flashcards
Conceptions of human rights usually follow ______ _____.
Western ideals.
John Locke’s notion of natural rights:
- Primary unit is the individual, not the community. •Freedom is placed above other values
- Focus on political and economic rights
These natural rights are at odds with cultures based on ________ and ________.
community and consensus
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
•International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)
-The right to life, liberty, and freedom of thought and religion
•International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR)
-Right to a living wage and an education
•“International bill of rights”
Why Do States Violate Human Rights?
- Lack of capacity
- Foreign threats
- Sovereignty
- To maintain power
Why sign human rights treaties?
•New democracies seeking to “lock in” their commitments to human rights
•Inducements from other states
-Trade agreements, aid, etc.
•Why do states care about human rights abuses overseas?
•Identification with the conditions of others
•Civil wars that result in repression may spread across borders.
•Domestic groups may lobby for improved human rights overseas
-Example: Labor unions
Optimists hope that treaties will improve human rights over the long term. HOW?
•Treaties can help empower social actors to push for change.
-Vocabulary of judgement
•Human rights NGOs can act as norm entrepreneurs ——–Examples: Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International
Enforcement of human rights treaties
•Gains from cooperation are small, but the costs of enforcement are high
Enforcement Interest
•States that violate human rights have little interest in applying international human rights law against themselves.
•Motives for others to punish human rights treaty violators may be weak, or provide too few benefits.
-Naming and shaming may provoke the target.
-May reduce bargaining leverage on other issues
-Economic sanctions impose costs on the target state as well as the sanctioning states.
Under what conditions are states likely to enforce human rights treaties?
•Domestic demands for action
-TANs
•Action against human rights abusers serves the country’s larger political interests
•Action can be depicted as consistent with the norms of sovereignty and noninterference.
Transitional justice
•Emphasis on noncriminal, nonjudicial forms of reconciliation
•Truth and reconciliation commissions
-Documenting human rights abuses
-Reparations to victims
-Memorials and commemoration for victims
-Institutional reforms, particularly of police and military
-Lustration
—-Limiting members of the previous regime from serving in political roles
-Full or conditional amnesty for perpetrators of human rights abuses
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia
•Civil war killed ~250,000 people between 1999 and 2003
•Commission lasted from 2006 to 2009
•~20,000 statements made
•Commission submitted recommendations for perpetrators to the Liberian legislature, but no action was taken
-Recommend that President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf be barred from politics for 30 years.
-Charles Taylor was convicted of war crimes by the separate Special Court for Sierra Leone.
South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission
- Apartheid 1948-1991
- Chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu
- Perpetrators of human rights abuses by the apartheid regime given conditional amnesty for testimony.
Criminal tribunals
•International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
- Established in 1993 by the United Nations to try cases of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity that took place in the Balkans during the 1990s.
- The first international war crimes tribunal since WWII and the first created by the UN.
- Located in The Hague, the Netherlands
- More than 160 people have been charged
