Health, Human Rights and Intervention EQ3 - Interventions and human rights Flashcards
What is intervention?
The action of getting involved in order to help another country
What are the mechanisms of geopolitical interventions used to address development and human rights issues?
- development aid
- economic support (trade embargoes)
- military power (aid/indirect or direct military action)
What are some possible motives behind geopolitical interventions?
- 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)
What is the difference between direct and indirect military support?
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
What are the 2 main delivery routes of development aid and how do these affect the donor country?
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
What is the ODA?
Official Development Assistance
A term used by the OECD to measure aid, widely used as an indicator of flows of international aid
Why is technical assistance better to receive as development aid than loans?
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.
What two types of intervention drive economic development?
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
What are the main types of trade intervention?
- tariffs
- quotas
- exchange rates
- trade blocs
- embargoes
- sanctions
What are embargoes and sanctions?
Embargoes - bans on trade in specified commodities
Sanctions - restrictions on trade imposed by countries against others for political reasons
Who promotes interventions?
- IGOs such as the UN, EU, World Bank, WTO
- NGOs such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch
- national governments
Why may intervention not occur despite the case for it being very strong?
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?
Who are some of the major NGOs campaigning solely for human rights?
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
What is sovereignty?
The legal right to govern a physical territory
Why does there need to be strong moral and ethical grounds for intervention?
Intervention breaches the principle of sovereignty, a crucial element of international law and the operation of the UN