Human Rights Midterm Flashcards
Active Citizenship
-civic engagement and collective deliberations as a way to exercise and protect human and legal rights
-active citizenship, or ‘right to have rights’
-right (moral) to have rights (legal) as a
person
-right to belong to, and participate in a political community
-Hannah ardent’s critique of human rights
Convention
- it is an international human rights instrument. Many of the human rights conventions mirror, or are built upon principles outlined in the universal declaration of human rights. That are then sent into law and further defined in various conventions (especially ICESCR and ICCPR). Laws are further defined, applied and developed in subsequent conventions (e.g. CEDAW, CRPD)
- economic, social, and cultural rights (ICESCR, 1966): right to adequate food, housing, education, health, work, social security, safe water and sanitation, and to take part in cultural life. These are the universal rights laws that outline the conventions.
- Convention of the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination (ICERD, 1965): eliminates racial discrimination, outlaw hate speech, criminalize membership in racist organizations
- convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women (CEDAW, 1979): eliminates discrimination, sex stereotypes and trafficking, women rights into the public sphere; establishes committees to monitor and report on state procedures.
- for conventions to work they need to be ratified, implemented and monitored
Louise Arbour
In 1996, she was appointed by the united nations as chief prosecutor for the international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda for 1996 to 1999, where she began was given the mandate to investigate war crimes and to bring indictments against individuals involved in atrocities in these two jurisdictions. After convicting jean Kambanda and the indictment of Slobodan Milosevic, she returned to Canada and took a role in the supreme court of Canada, later returing to united nations in 2004 to be appointed the first Canadian to take on the position as the united nations high commissioner for human rights, created by the general assembly in 1993. As a high commissioner for human rights, she monitors the human rights situations in countries where she is deployed and provides assistance to governments to support human rights.
Lester B. Pearson
He is known to be Canada’s 14th prime minister, who introduced the current Canadian flag and the Canadian pension plan and medicare. Pearson contributed to human rights regimes in two areas: the founding of the united nations in 1945 and the creation of the united nations emergency force. He was awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 1957 for his role in establishing the UN emergency force, which ended the Suez crisis in Egypt and became the first peacekeeping mission by the UN. He remains the only Canadian to ever be awarded this honour and he also served an important role during the founding of the North American Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1948.
Natural Law
- One out of 3 universalist theory of human rights. Natural law is based off of morality and religion. It regulates our interactions and provides a sense of order in the universe. We ought to not disturb the natural order, otherwise there will be chaos. It is the moral, political and legal framework from christian teachings.
- Thomas Aquinas was a christian monk who’s theory on natural law was that God has made us to be moral and gave us the commandments as laws to follow.
- John Locke’s theory is where people created a social contract where they would give up some of their sovereignty in order to elect an official that would prevent their rights from being threatened.
Rationalism
the second origin of the universal human rights. Jeremy Bentham believed that in a democratic setting, individual rights had to yield to the goals and priorities defined by the majority of the population. John Stuart Mill believed that bantams utilitarian perspective could easily lead to the oppression of both minorities and dissenting individuals by majority groups. Therefore Mill’s theory gravitates towards the need to protect the rights of minorities and individuals from the tyranny of the majority. Mill states two principles that were necessary to guarantee basic freedoms of speech, assembly, and constitution. first, individuals were to hold complete complete sovereignty over themselves and secondly, the state were to only intervene on that sovereignty in order to prevent harm and threat.
Legalism
the third foundation of universalism. stems from international treaties and documents that have been signed. These documents play a critical role in the creation of the current international system of human rights laws. Including, the universal declaration of human rights (UDHR), the international covenant on civil and political rights (ICCPR), and the international covenant on economic, social, and cultural rights (ICESCR). All countries that have signed the agreements, regardless of geographic location, religious practices, or cultural background, must comply with the legal provisions contained in these documents
Deontological Ethics
- moral obligation to our duty; focus on rules/commands
- describes islamic morality
- sharia
- people need rules, laws and regulations to guide them
- the aim is to produce a person that is obedient to God
Virtue Ethics
- primary guides are people who exhibit moral excellence/ ideal character
- Hierarchical but not according to class. You are not born into a class, you achieve it. Nobility of virtue through education in classics, however you need to be wealthy to access that education. there are five bonds: ruler to ruled, father to son, husband to wife, elder brother to younger brother, friend to friend.
- Aim:harmony of society; development of individual potential and best society through ritual
- best describes confucian morality
- classical education
- proper meditation will lead us to do the right thing
- the aim is to produce social harmony; person who serves need of society
Formalist Approach
- Rights as legally institutionalized norms
- seeks to enforce what the law actually says, rather than what it should say
- sees laws as set of rules and principles independent of other political institutions
- implementation of abstract principles
- products of official institutions
Inalienable
- means something cannot be taken away
- the universal declaration of human rights cannot be taken away because they are rights held by all human beings by virtue of being human and held regardless of race, gender, class, nationality, etc
- human rights are inalienable meaning that although they may be violated, a person’s rights cannot be surrendered or erased.
Realist International Theory
- A world where rules are regularly broken, and agreements last only as long as they benefit the contracting parties.
- the diplomacy of rights is ‘just talk’
- human rights are very low on the list of national policy goals
- double standards in international diplomacy: political leaders play lip service to protecting human rights while at the same time allowing these principles to be undermined by the pursuit of other goals
- human rights are unrealistic
- competition for power is a primary concern, no room for human rights as a central concern
Constructivism
- all social phenomena, including human rights, are collectively agreed upon ideas
- intersubjective understanding of our world, beliefs, identities, norms, values
- these shared meanings established social facts
- we need to understand how human rights are shaped and portrayed by society
- argue that there is no necessary tension between the interest of the sovereign states and the moral principles associated with the promotion and protection of human right
- if states reject universal values, they will have to pay a price: this can take the form of condemnation, exclusion, or possible coercive measure aimed at enforcing a new standard of legitimate statehood
Liberalism
- develops out of western tradition of thinking in which the individual has the rights that public authorities must respect
- central idea is that that individual has basic rights to free speech, fair treatment in terms of judicial process, and political equality enshrines in a political constitution
- liberals look to locke and kant
- Kant builds a theory of international liberalism in which all individuals have equal moral worth and in which an abuse of rights in one part of the world is felt everywhere
- emphasizes pursuit of individual freedom and material progress with limited rile for government
- human rights are not only moral and good, but they are a means of safety and stability
- human rights are an extensions of natural and inalienable rights. States have a duty to protect rights- if they fail to do this their sovereign status is in the question
- human rights regimes and institutions are vital for monitoring compliance.
- human rights is linked to the promotion of democracy and good governance
Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs)
-non-profit, voluntary associations created by citizens
-the purpose is to pressure government officials to take positions on social, political, or economic
Amnesty International: created in 1961 by British Lawyer Peter Benonson who denounced imprisonment of citizens who did not share the views of their government, focuses on the promotion of civil and political rights, an advocacy organization(does not intervene directly to provide assistance to victims), the strategies include letters and emails to the governments infringing on basic human rights; pressure governments to release individuals jailed, they work close with UN agencies to advance cause
-Human rights watch was founded in 1978, methodology is naming and shaming abusive governments through media coverage and direct exchange with policy makers, played a crucial role in adoption of the 1997 landmine ban; the 1998 creation of international criminal court and criminal tribunals for former Yugoslavia and Rwanda
