Sample Essay: International Drug Trade

OUTLINE

Introduction:

The phenomenon of Human Rights

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Body:

The philosophy of Human Rights

The main points of UDHR

Different Categories of Human Rights

Different Violations of Human Rights

Conclusion:

The State as a Safeguard of Human Rights

Strict Implementation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Human Rights

The iron cage of sovereignty-based international law continued to imprison the legal imagination, its power loosened significantly in the twentieth century. In terms of State actors, the opening out of the system to all `peace-loving’ States leaving aside the arcane language of subjects and objects, a range of entities - States, international organizations, peoples, individuals, transnational corporations, etc., presently participate in international law. This flexibility is reflected only to a limited extent in current articulations of sources of international law. The Charter, incorporating Stagiest and Enlightenment elements, is at the root of modern developments. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948 made the foundation of the modern human rights. The human rights movement is a truly global phenomenon, as individuals around the world cite the declaration and its rights as a way of describing their needs. Human rights movement that followed from it came out of the worldwide revulsion at the atrocities that were committed during World War II. The declaration served as a direct rebuttal of the racist and fascist ideologies that had “disregard and contempt for human rights” at their root and led to “barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind” (UDHR preamble)[1].

International law had made some progress in the formation of human rights norms; it was at a primitive stage at the time of the drafting of the UDHR. Customary norms covered only the most basic of human rights issues (such as the prohibition on slavery) and instruments were selective in both their subject matter (e.g., the Red Cross conventions on human rights during conflict) and the states that were covered by them (e.g., the Minorities Treaties imposed on some of the defeated powers of World War I). Human rights principles represent the contract between the individual and their state that is the basis for this legitimacy. Both agree to abide by rights and obligations that allow the state to protect the interests of all individuals without restricting the rights of any given individual any more than is necessary. For a state to be legitimate, therefore, it has to keep to the contract. If the state breaks it (when there is “tyranny and oppression”), it is no longer worthy of respect and has lost the authority to govern. Taking its cue from the philosopher Thomas Paine, the preamble states that “it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law.” This qualified notion of legitimacy makes human rights scrutiny on the international level compatible with state sovereignty. Human rights are no longer only of concern nationally; they are a global issue, though its principles do not necessarily exhaust the whole of modern international law.

On the first element, Charter principles command respect for sovereign equality, territorial integrity and non-intervention in domestic affairs. The language of the rational, the secular, the democratic and the universal disseminated in key texts such as the French Declaration on the Rights of Man and the Citizen and the American Declaration of Independence eventually found its way into the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Whereas the Dumbarton Oaks `Proposals for the Establishment of a General International Organization’ prepared by the Four Great Powers made only brief reference to `respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms’ in connection with `Arrangements for International Economic and Social Co-Operation’,

In the Charter, human rights figure in the preamble, among the Purposes of the United Nations, and elsewhere - there are seven distinct references to human rights in all, scattered throughout the text. The formulaic provision demanding that the rights be respected and promoted `without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion’ appears in four cases. The promotion and encouragement of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms is listed among the Purposes of the UN, complementing the concern with international peace and security. Article 68 of the Charter provided that ECOSOC shall set up functional commissions in various fields including human rights - a major outcome was the setting up of the Commission on Human Rights, and latterly the Permanent Forum for Indigenous Issues. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed by the General Assembly in 1948 exhibits a content and structure which has conditioned thinking on human rights to a significant degree: as Morsink observes, `there is not a single nation, culture, or people that is not in one way or another enmeshed in human rights regimes’.[2]

The Declaration was conceived by its authors as a new fact in the world, adopted by an assembly of the world community. In the process of drafting, its title was changed from an `international’ to a `universal’ Declaration, drawing attention away from the authors of the document to its addressees. It is possible to read the Declaration as incorporating categories or generations of rights, with civil and political rights granted at least lexical priority. They include basic freedoms such as freedom of thought, conscience and religion, of opinion and expression, of peaceful assembly, freedom from arbitrary arrest, torture and slavery, and rights to equality, nationality, to marry and found a family, and so on. The provisions on economic, social and cultural rights including social security, work, rest and leisure, an adequate standard of living, education and participation in the cultural life of the community more clearly require the provision of resources by the State. However, all human rights consume resources, since even the successful prohibition of torture requires information campaigns, administration, training of officials, and monitoring of their conduct in case bad habits of physical and mental abuse have become ingrained in routines and practices. Solidarity rights of a universalistic kind are intimated in Article 28 which provides that everyone `is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized’.[3] Further, everyone is entitled to the rights in the Declaration `without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status’. Human right as a whole, the Universal Declaration is sometimes portrayed as a hymn to individualism.

The rights are for `all human beings’, not for particular groups; they are for `everyone’, `all’; prohibitions of torture, slavery, etc., require that `no one’ will be subjected to such. Apart from the trite fact that the rights are addressed to a class of persons, there seems to be little space for communitarian notions. Closer examination suggests more nuanced readings. The preamble refers to `peoples’ and `nations’; Article 21 provides that `The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government’; Article 1 states that all human beings should `act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood’ - a gendered expression of human solidarity. The non-discrimination principle and its more truncated expression in the UN Charter - carries the implication that violations of human rights direct themselves, against In a UN canvassing of the views of States on the meaning of `community’ in Article 29, many responses referred merely to the State as the community intended, but some asserted that this could be communities other than the State, including `social groups’.[4] However, the UN Special Rapporteur’s summary of `community’, while it refers to groups, the family, the neighborhoods, cities, villages, social units, societies, regions, countries, states and nations.

Nevertheless, communities of whatever stripe complement personal right-holders in the Universal Declaration and other general rights texts. In a perceptive critique based on general theory and the texts of international human rights, Leary distinguishes between principles and doctrines based on `persons and personalism’ which place `an emphasis on the intrinsic links between persons and community’ and those that deal in the currency of `individuals and individualism’.[5] Leary claims that international human rights reflect the former concept rather than the latter. The standard setting Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the paradigm of individual rights is implicated in her critique.[6] Thus, while there is no explicit drawing out of a community right in the Declaration, communitarian inflections in the human rights field is no novelty. Beyond the Declaration, resolution 96(I) of the GA had already pointed to a group right to existence in the context of genocide.  Communities, it seems, dwell in the normative heartland of human rights.[7]

The hugely increased normative ambitions of international community are no where more visible than in human rights and democracy. The relationship between ruler and ruled, state and citizen, should be a subject of legitimate international concern; that the unfair treatment of citizens and the absence of democratic governance should trigger international action; and that the external legitimacy of a State should depend increasingly on how domestic societies are ordered politically.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was followed by the international covenants on Civil and Political Rights and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. While the Charter does not attempt to list or categorize potential holders of rights, the inclusion of the non-distinction/discrimination formula endured it not improbable that bodies of law could be developed for racial groups and ethnic minorities, women, speakers of languages and adherents of religions International organizations have also carried through that programme with a vengeance, adding rights of children, the disabled, migrant workers, refugees, women etc. Besides categories of persons, international law has developed rules and principles about particular `practices’ and `conditions’ including apartheid, genocide,  torture, slavery and statelessness. The human rights production-line has also fabricated a raft of texts on specific rights, including the right to development. If we add the multiple productions of regional intergovernmental bodies - the OAU, the OAS, Council of Europe, etc., to those of the UN, we may arrive at some conception. of the scale and scope of the human rights project.[8]

The corpus of instruments includes treaties and declarations, politically binding agreements, myriad varieties of `soft’ and `hard’ texts, customary law, or fundamental principles of non-derivable law. The texts inscribe, restate and supplement basic principles of State responsibility. They have greater difficulty in reaching through the `capillarity’s of power’ to engage the responsibility of private persons and groups, though some branches of principle have considerable impact on the `private/public divide’ notably in the development of women’s rights, when the right to privacy is interpreted according to one critic as `protecting from scrutiny major sites for the oppression of women: home and family’. On the international recognition of the rights of women, and the need to address the evils of racial discrimination and apartheid, Falk observes that each of these undertakings `represented the crystallization of particularly intense demands that took shape at a given time for an acknowledgement of rights, as a collective and formal expression of the urgency and seriousness of the claim and the grossness of the abuse’. He also notes that in the case of the individuation of rights particular categories, `the prohibited behavior could analytically have been subsumed under a broader group of preexisting rights or demands’.

The search for fresh articulations of rights can be prompted by diverse considerations; among them could be some widely shared perception of a need, of a pain which is not being addressed. This has spawned international concern about the condition of `vulnerable groups’. Rights claimants may self-identify and impress the international constituency through determined articulation of their point of view. A crisis such as that in the former Yugoslavia may present the world with new horrors and/or contribute to the realization that a particular practice such as terrorism/genocide through rape needs a specific remedy. International concern with human rights does not justify forcible action against recalcitrant States: the strength of human rights is in its discourses, rather than the armed divisions which, like the Pope, it does not possess. Unilateral action against human rights violators is still outside the legal pale, as is forcible action in support of self-determination. Intervention in support of human rights was not sanctioned by the International Court of Justice.

NATO action in Kosovo, ostensibly undertaken for reasons of human rights, does not set a precedent. However, the UN Security Council has increasingly incorporated elements of human rights into its official security concerns, in which respect Security Council resolution 688, condemning `the repression of the Iraqi civilian population in many parts of Iraq, including most recently in Kurdish populated areas’,  may have been a turning-point. International organizations have chosen to develop programmes of implementation of human rights by softer methods than the use of force. International standards are backed up by varying qualities of implementing mechanisms: mandatory reports of States to international supervisory bodies, systems for dealing with individual claims and accusations of rights violations, systems for inter-State claims, procedures for mass violations of rights, courts, and other types of tribunal, committees and commissions, working groups for monitoring. States or practices and rapporteurs for the same, assisted and complemented by complex rights bureaucracies of international organizations, programmes of technical assistance, programmes of conflict prevention through solidifying human rights within States, preventive diplomacy and just diplomacy in general, and so on.

Conclusion

The State stands in an ambivalent position on human rights from an international law perspective. On the one hand, the State is the major guarantor of rights; on the other, it is a major violator. The point was made earlier that sovereignty is not what it was - or assumed to be - in previous centuries. To the diffusion or dissenting of sovereignty attributed to the growth of supranational organizations and sub-national groups, including indigenous peoples, may be added the effects of globalization. The term incorporates a range of contested meanings, at the core of which. While human rights can be viewed as part of the globalizing process, `globalitarians’ focus largely on the economic and social, favorably contrasting global `capital, space, history and the power to transform’ with the local values and sites of labor and tradition. I personally think the United Nations who themselves introduced the charter have been largely unable to implement and keep a check on the violation of human rights in different countries, so therefore it is necessary that a strict check and actions are taken against states violating Human Rights, the global phenomena of Human rights should be implemented as it is the basic right of any Human being to live in a safe and peaceful environment, so therefore violations of Human Rights around the world should be dealt with strictly and all the Articles of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights should be implemented in the true spirit as it has been developed by the States  themselves.

References

1. Shelly Wright International Human Rights, Decolonization and Globalization: Becoming Human. Routledge. London. Publication 2001.

1. Adamantia Pollis, Peter Schwab Human Rights: New Perspectives, New Realities. Lynne Rienner. Boulder, CO.: 2000

1. Alan G. Smith Human Rights and Choice in Poverty: Food Insecurity, Dependency, and Human Rights-Based Development Aid for the Third World Rural Poor. Praeger. Westport, CT.: 1997.

1. Rebecca J. Cook Human Rights of Women: National and International Perspectives University of Pennsylvania Press. Philadelphia. 1994.

1. Michael J. Perry The Idea of Human Rights: Four Inquiries. Oxford University Press. New York. 1998.

1. Richard Falk Human Rights and State Sovereignty. Holmes & Meier Publishers. New York. 1981.
2. George W. Shepherd Jr., Ved P. Nanda Human Rights and Third World Development..: Greenwood Press. Westport, CT.: 1985.
3. Jean-Marc Coicaud, Michael W. Doyle, Anne-Marie Gardner The Globalization of Human Rights. : United Nations University Press. New York. 2003.

[2] Morsink, `Cultural genocide, the universal declaration, and minority rights’, Human Rights Quarterly 21 (1999), 1009-60.

[3] UN Doc. A/C.3/SR.162, 729-30.

[4] Morsink, Universal Declaration, p. 248

[5] Cf. T. Franck, The Empowered Self: Law and Society in the Age of Individualism (Oxford University Press, 2000).

[6] V. A. Leary, `Post liberal strands in western human rights theory: personalist communitarian perspectives’, in A. A. An-Na’im (ed.), Human Rights in Cross Cultural Perspectives: A Quest for Consensus (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), pp. 105-32, at p. 106.

[7] The phrase of Tore Lindholm, `Prospects for research on the cultural legitimacy of human rights: the cases of Liberalism and Marxism’, in An’Naim, Human Rights in Cross-Cultural Perspectives, pp. 400 ff.

[8] See United Nations, Manual on Human Rights Reporting under Six Major International Human Rights Instruments (Geneva, United Nations, 1997) for reporting procedures under six main treaties.