Health, Human Rights and Intervention EQ3 - Interventions and human rights

Question 1

What is intervention?

Answer 1

The action of getting involved in order to help another country

Question 2

What are the mechanisms of geopolitical interventions used to address development and human rights issues?

Answer 2

• development aid
• economic support (trade embargoes)
• military power (aid/indirect or direct military action)

Question 3

What are some possible motives behind geopolitical interventions?

Answer 3

• offering development aid to poorest/least developed countries
• protecting human rights
• encouaging education and healthcare
• accessing resources
• increasing global/regional influence
  (humanitarian, mutual benefit and self seeking)

Question 4

What is the difference between direct and indirect military support?

Answer 4

Direct = providing soldiers to fight or direct use of weapons. More forceful and politically challenging
Indirect = providing weapons or training troops. Still politically challenging but may be done more covertly

Question 5

What are the 2 main delivery routes of development aid and how do these affect the donor country?

Answer 5

Bilateral aid - delivered on one to one basis between a donor and recipient country. Allows donor to pursue its own agenda and target aid at its own objectives
Multilateral aid - aid given by donor countries to international aid organisations (e.g. World Bank). In theory donor country has no control, but many powerful countries do control and influence IGOs

Question 6

What is the ODA?

Answer 6

Official Development Assistance
A term used by the OECD to measure aid, widely used as an indicator of flows of international aid

Question 7

Why is technical assistance better to receive as development aid than loans?

Answer 7

For borrowing country, loans attract interest and have to be repaid - spiral of increasing debt.
Technical = transfer of expertise, technology and education, which can contribute more to human development.

Question 8

What two types of intervention drive economic development?

Answer 8

Trade - increased trade gives less developed countries a leg up. Embargoes and sanctions can be used to force ‘bad’ regimes to change
Investment - largely undertaken for ulterior economic motives e.g. securing primary resources but has beneficial impacts in recipient country

Question 9

What are the main types of trade intervention?

Answer 9

• tariffs
• quotas
• exchange rates
• trade blocs
• embargoes
• sanctions

Question 10

What are embargoes and sanctions?

Answer 10

Embargoes - bans on trade in specified commodities
Sanctions - restrictions on trade imposed by countries against others for political reasons

Question 11

Who promotes interventions?

Answer 11

• IGOs such as the UN, EU, World Bank, WTO
• NGOs such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch
• national governments

Question 12

Why may intervention not occur despite the case for it being very strong?

Answer 12

There is a lack of consensus - agreement that human rights abuses have taken place, but disagreement on scale of abuse and extent of intervention justification
- NGOs have little power to intervene
- UN has no military forces of its own
- physical geography making intervention difficult
- geopolitical considerations, could intervention lead to wider scale conflict?

Question 13

Who are some of the major NGOs campaigning solely for human rights?

Answer 13

Amnesty International - focused on investigation and exposure of human rights abuses around the world, promotes direct action
Human Rights Watch - constantly on lookout for violations of UDHR, uses media coverage to highlight government issues

Question 14

What is sovereignty?

Answer 14

The legal right to govern a physical territory

Question 15

Why does there need to be strong moral and ethical grounds for intervention?

Answer 15

Intervention breaches the principle of sovereignty, a crucial element of international law and the operation of the UN

Question 16

How do Western governments generally intervene?

Answer 16

Indirectly, via the use of economic levers to apply pressure
- offering aid to help socioeconomic development with conditions attached to improve human rights
- negiotiating trade agreements but on the condition that human rights are improved

Question 17

What are the positives and negatives of Western indirect intervention?

Answer 17

+ve = ethical foreign policy, using power of trade and aid to improve people’s lives in developing countries
-ve = intefering in sovereign affairs, causing them to change policy for their own benefit

Question 18

What is development aid aimed at?

Answer 18

Improving human development via safeguarding human rights and improving human welfare

Question 19

What are the positive impacts of development aid?

Answer 19

Progress in the fight against disease (e.g. malaria)
Improvements in some aspects of human rights (e.g. gender equality and access to primary education)

Question 20

How has development aid helped combat malaria and other diseases?

Answer 20

Development aid has done much to make both anti malarial drugs and mosquito nets freely available, mortality rate has come down.
Teaching basics like personal hygiene and the need for proper sanitation can contain contagious diseases like cholera and typhoid.

Question 21

What are the concerns surrounding development aid?

Answer 21

• encourages dependency (especially economic - hindering progress)
• promotes corruption (money siphoned off into the pockets of the elite at the expense of human rights and minority groups)
• capital grants/loans could be considered inappropriate - better to donate technical assistance and skills training

Question 22

What were the impacts of development aid post Haiti earthquake 2010?

Answer 22

+ve = £12 billion in aid pledged
-ve = 5 years after earthquake, only half of promised aid had been delivered, unequal distribution of aid, aid programme focused on emergency relief and reconstruction and never moved onto dealing with longer term objectives like serious human rights abuses, corruption, poor governance and poverty.

Question 23

What are the negatives of economic intervention for economic development, which groups does this affect?

Answer 23

TNCs and superpowers have economic development focused on primary sector which has very serious impacts on environment in which minority groups live - disregarding their human rights to their land and culture

Question 24

How is oil production in the Niger Delta impacting the environment/health, minorities and human rights?

Answer 24

Nigerian gov earns some £10 bil a year from oil
Environment/health - thousands of oil spills cause pollution (550 in 2014 AI) widespread damage to forests and wetland region. Human health threatened by gas flares and frequent fires
Minorities - oil drilling by foreign TNCs generates conflict with local indigenous people, who suffer from negative impacts of oil industry only
Human rights - rising tensions, new militant groups putting pressure on government to compensate for loss of farmland, violent protest and bombings, kidnappings, shootings

Question 25

What are the factors causing serious impacts for the environment, minority groups and human rights in the Niger Delta?

Answer 25

Combination of weak governance, epidemic disease, overreliance on oil revenue and risk of armed conflict – TNCs take advantage of this situation and exploit it. People becoming more aware of this situation and attempting to take action/a stand.

Question 26

What is land grabbing?

Answer 26

Acquisition of large areas of land in developing countries by domestic and transnational companies, governments and individuals

Question 27

How has land grabbing occurred in Kenya, what impacts is this having?

Answer 27

Post colonial era of land grabbing – orchestrated by political elites keen on regaining power post-independence. President Moi started land grabbing during his long term of office (1978-2002) as a resource to use as bribes.
Impacts = loss of land for local subsistence farming, 88% of the population have access to less than 3 hectares of land, minority groups are excluded from land ownership, economic instability

Question 28

What motive is often used to justify military intervention, what are the real reason behind this?

Answer 28

Defending human rights is used as a persuasive motive (puts interventionist on moral high ground), but often intervention is due to global strategic interests.

Question 29

What are superpower motives for providing military aid?

Answer 29

• country’s location has a strategic value in a wider power struggle
• dealing with incursions that threaten a country’s stability and allegiance
• ensure access to valuable resources

Question 30

What are the ways of giving military aid?

Answer 30

• training personnel
• weapons sales

Question 31

What are the controversies of military aid?

Answer 31

It can often be used to support countries that themselves have questionable human rights records

Question 32

What are the 3 major concerns motivating the international military campaign agianst ISIS?

Answer 32

• political stability of the Middle East
• safeguarding access to the region’s great oil reserves
• serious abuse of human rights

Question 33

What is rendition?

Answer 33

The practice of sending a foreign criminal or terrorist suspect covertly to be interrogated in a country where there is less concern about the humane treatment of prisoners

Question 34

Why are surveillance and intelligence gathering an important role in the war on terror?

Answer 34

Subversive nature of terrorist organisations such as ISIS - plays as critcial a part as overt military action

Question 35

What controversies does the ‘war on terror’ raise against the UDHR?

Answer 35

• Western countries undermining their own attitude towards UDHR via violations through use of torture: but is this to protect national security
• demonising all Muslims and creating a permanent cultural divide and mistrust between Western and Muslim countries

Question 36

What is an example of how a combatant state has responded to the war on terror defying the declaration of human rights?

Answer 36

USA post 9/11 where 3000 innocent civilians killed. Imprisonment of suspects without trial at US base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba