Human rights

The notion that human beings have rights because they are human beings and not because they are citizens of state X or state Y is, in terms of the practice of international relations, a relatively new one. Traditional thinking has it that international law is concerned primarily with states rights - in particular rights associated with post-Westphalian ideas about sovereignty and its corollary, non­intervention. Human rights, in so far as they were acknowledged, were subsumed under states rights, conventional wisdom being that international law was law between states whereas municipal law was law between individuals. Although the distinction has never been quite as clear as this - the rights of aliens and foreign nationals have long been a matter for concern, for example - orthodox accounts of international politics and law have always been more or less state-centric in this way. However, the distinction between the two has become increasingly blurred and contemporary world politics has witnessed a dramatic upsurge in the question of human rights and their place in the state-system. It may be said that whereas the innovation of the seventeenth-century world politics was the creation of a society of states, the revolution of the twentieth century is the creation of a prototype world society in which individuals have equal standing with states and where states themselves acknowledge that issues connected with the fundamental rights of human beings are as legitimate a part of foreign policy concerns as the more traditional preoccupations with peace, security and economic well-being. This process was formally heralded by the establishment in 1946 of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, and on 10 December 1948 (which was designated Human Rights Day) the General Assembly passed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This was unopposed, although South Africa, Saudi Arabia and the Soviet bloc abstained. The Commission worked on two covenants designed to give substance to the general declaration: the first was on economic, social and cultural rights and the second on civil and political rights. The first was passed by the General Assembly in 1966 (although it did not become operative until ten years later) but the second covenant has had a much more difficult ride and the investigatory Committee established has constantly run up against recalcitrant governments insisting on the overriding principle of states rights (Israel, for example, refused to cooperate with its investigations into possible violations in occupied territories after the Six-Day War). Thus, the international system has clearly laid down a code of established human rights and attempted to create judicial machinery, which can investigate infringements, but the problem of enforcement remains a thorny one. States can and do ignore them. Yet as a statement of principle, and perhaps of positive world morality, these proposals clearly have an effect on world public opinion and the standard they set is used as a yardstick to measure, and also beat, states which consistently fail to comply. Rhodesia and South Africa, the Soviet Union and China have borne this brunt most often in recent times.

On a regional level, as distinct from the international, provision for human rights implementation has been more successful. The European Convention on Human Rights (1953) sought not only to delineate these rights but also enforce them. A commission and a court of human rights have been established to which individuals can bring action against their own governments. In the American continents there are similar developments. The American Convention on Human Rights (1978) created a commission and a court which again contained provision for individuals to present grievances. In Africa the Banjul Charter on Human and People's Rights (1981) is somewhat weaker than its European and American counterparts, mainly perhaps due to the different African conceptions of human rights - a conception which stresses the rights of collectivities and groupings ('peoples') rather than individual rights as such. In all these incidences, whether provision for enforcement is present or not the power of public opinion is an important sanction in the conflict between individuals and the sometimes overbearing power of the state. Other regional innovations have not been as successful as those in Europe or the United States. The 1975 Helsinki Accords, which included provision for human rights, has not so far made much headway in the Soviet bloc partly because Helsinki is not legally binding on its signatories. The Arab Commission on Human Rights (1969), too, has made little progress mainly because in Islam the rights of the community come before the rights of the individual; for Muslims duty to God, from whom all human beings emanate, is logically prior to obligations to individuals.

Of the non-governmental institutions concerned with this issue Amnesty International (founded in Britain in 1961) stands out. This group actively specializes in seeking to obtain freedom for prisoners of conscience and has been instrumental in campaigning for the rights of thousands of unfortunates on a world-wide basis. Other specialist organizations in this field are the Minority Rights Group, the Anti-Slavery Society and the International Committee of the Red Cross - all of which are concerned with specific aspects of individual rights.

Clearly, although the twentieth century has seen a greater movement towards acceptance of human rights as an integral part of world politics than at any other time, there is a great deal of debate as to where the emphasis should be placed. In the West the rights of individuals to be free from the interference of others is paramount, whereas in the East economic and social rights took precedence over civil and political rights. Liberty in socialist states was expressed primarily in social and economic terms: in liberal states it is largely a civil and political affair. Therein perhaps lies an important dimension of the tension between the two systems, and because of its emphasis on economic development rather than the legal protection of civil liberties the Third World tends to prefer the socialist view. After all, subsistence and basic needs are often a more immediate and pressing concern than constitutional niceties and protective legal procedures (R. J. Vincent, 1986). Whatever ideological differences can be delineated, though, no one doubts that the human rights issue has altered, probably for ever, the classical conception of international relations.

Assignment 15. Translate into Ukrainian.