Making Human Rights a Reality - Brossura

Hafner-burton, Emilie M.

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0691155364 ISBN 13: 9780691155364

Casa editrice: Princeton Univ Pr, 2013

Riassunto

In the last six decades, one of the most striking developments in international law is the emergence of a massive body of legal norms and procedures aimed at protecting human rights. In many countries, though, there is little relationship between international law and the actual protection of human rights on the ground. Making Human Rights a Reality takes a fresh look at why it's been so hard for international law to have much impact in parts of the world where human rights are most at risk.


Emilie Hafner-Burton argues that more progress is possible if human rights promoters work strategically with the group of states that have dedicated resources to human rights protection. These human rights "stewards" can focus their resources on places where the tangible benefits to human rights are greatest. Success will require setting priorities as well as engaging local stakeholders such as nongovernmental organizations and national human rights institutions.


To date, promoters of international human rights law have relied too heavily on setting universal goals and procedures and not enough on assessing what actually works and setting priorities. Hafner-Burton illustrates how, with a different strategy, human rights stewards can make international law more effective and also safeguard human rights for more of the world population.

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Informazioni sull'autore

Emilie M. Hafner-Burton is a professor in the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at the University of California, San Diego, and director of the Laboratory on International Law and Regulation. She is the author of Forced to Be Good and recipient of the Karl Deutsch Award.

Dalla quarta di copertina

"Making Human Rights a Reality is an important book for lawyers, political scientists, activists, and practitioners within the international human rights system. It manages to be unsentimental and committed at the same time, casting a cold eye on the present state of international human rights enforcement while offering a promising and innovative strategy for the future. In the best tradition of international law-international relations scholarship, Hafner-Burton understands and deploys both law and power."--Anne-Marie Slaughter, Princeton University

"Hafner-Burton has developed an ambitious, thought-provoking, and sometimes controversial proposal for reforming the international monitoring mechanisms that protect the rights of individuals and groups. This book is an important contribution to the burgeoning interdisciplinary literature on international human rights law and institutions."--Laurence R. Helfer, Duke University

"Making Human Rights a Reality cogently sums up the case that the standard, dominant approach to human rights promotion is ineffective. More than any other single book, this one lays out the problems and proposes a clear, alternative, and incentive-driven strategy based on targeting carrots and sticks where they will have the greatest impact. Even those who might disagree with Hafner-Burton will profit from her diagnosis and strategic prescriptions."--Jack L. Snyder, Columbia University

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Making Human Rights a Reality

By Emilie M. Hafner-Burton

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2013 Princeton University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-15536-4

Contents

Preface...........................................................ixResearch..........................................................xiiiIntroduction......................................................xv1 The Problem of Human Rights.....................................1Part I The Calculus of Abuse......................................192 Contexts........................................................213 Rationales......................................................29Part II International Law.........................................414 The International Human Rights Legal System.....................445 Scholarly Perspectives..........................................676 Practitioner Perspectives.......................................867 System Reform...................................................116Part III A Stewardship Strategy...................................1358 The Status Quo..................................................1389 Nongovernmental Organizations...................................15110 National Human Rights Institutions.............................16411 Triage.........................................................17612 Making More of Law and Power...................................193Notes.............................................................199Index.............................................................267

Chapter One

The Problem of Human Rights

On June 12, 2009, Iran held a presidential election whose outcome was preordained. The next day, authorities declared the incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the winner. Protests erupted. Millions of people flooded the streets to dispute the results. The world watched while the government responded with sweeping human rights violations.

Plainclothes forces attacked a Tehran University dormitory and reportedly killed student protesters. The government banned foreign journalists from the streets after arresting almost one hundred people, including former government ministers and senior political figures. Among the casualties was Neda Agha, a young bystander killed by riot police who became an icon for the antigovernment movement. Protests continued and the government responded with more violence. Thousands would be arrested over the next few months as the death toll mounted.

Undeterred, President Ahmadinejad was sworn into office for a new term in August. Meanwhile, show trials began against detainees, many allegedly coerced into falsely confessing that they had participated in a foreign-backed attempt to overthrow the government. Security officials shut down the offices of a committee that collected information about torture and other abuses against protesters and detainees. Journalist Ali Reza Eshranghi was sent to prison, followed by scholar Kian Tajbakhsh and other prominent intellectuals, political figures, and journalists. Many were sentenced to death; some have been executed.

By law, none of this should have happened. International customary law prohibits extrajudicial killing and torture. And since 1975, Iran has been a party to the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a global treaty that prohibits torture as well as cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment. The treaty requires fair public hearings by competent, independent, and impartial tribunals established by law. It also mandates that everyone have the right of peaceful assembly.

Iran is not alone, of course. Most governments swear to pursue, promote, and protect human rights. They make legally binding promises, which they break when convenient.

While the data aren't perfect, organizations have been building records of human rights abuses. Figure 1 summarizes what they show worldwide since the 1970s for a wide array of abuses—murder, torture, political imprisonment, and forced disappearances along with other violations of political rights and civil liberties, including censorship and the suppression of political association as well as workers' rights. The dotted lines depict the total number of countries that have ratified the principal treaty outlawing these crimes, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, thought to be one of the most effective international legal instruments for protecting human rights. The striped boxes show every year that a number of those countries, despite belonging to this treaty, were alleged by credible sources to engage in these prohibited acts.

There is unabashedly good news in one category—disappearances are declining from their peak two decades ago. That effect stems mainly from democratization in Latin America, which removed from power military dictators who made a habit of disappearing their political opponents. On all the other rights shown in figure 1, the rise in global membership in this human rights treaty has run in parallel with a rise in measured abuse. Countries are good at joining treaties, but bad at honoring commitments. The same patterns are evident in other human rights treaties as well. In spite of the expanding international legal system outlawing these acts, reports of human rights abuse endure.

Why do countries legally devoted to human rights on paper so often break the law? More important, what can be done to close the gap between paper and practice? This book aims to answer those questions. It looks at whether more international legal instruments and procedures would be helpful while probing the actions that states can take in tandem to the large and increasingly elaborate international human rights legal system.

Ever since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights more than six decades ago, it has been clear that the world needs to do more to respect the human rights that are integral to life with dignity. That's not the issue. Instead, today the questions concern strategy. What's the best strategy for promoting respect for human rights?

Governments and NGOs have created a system of international law and procedures based on universal principles. Membership is growing across a wide array of international treaties and institutions. That approach articulates a powerful vision for the promotion of human wellbeing everywhere. It already has made significant achievements. The approach has shifted the goalposts for what is acceptable and also motivated foreign policy on human rights. But for many victims of tyranny, brutality, discrimination, and deprivation, the results of that universal approach have been underwhelming. For some, the approach is alienating because the system of international norms and procedures is at odds with accepted local cultures and social practices. A fresh look at how the system works—and its troubles—is overdue.

Understandably, a sober appraisal of the human rights promotion system is not a popular activity. Legal scholar Makau Mutua ventures an explanation for why this is so. Until recently, he suggests, "human rights scholars and activists have been reluctant to ask uncomfortable questions about the philosophy and political purposes of the human rights movement. Such questions are often taken as a mark of disloyalty to the movement, or an attempt to provide cover and comfort to those states that would violate its norms.... The result is a paucity of good critiques about one of the most powerful ideologies of modern times."

Given how much is at stake, critical evaluations of efforts to promote human rights are essential. Improving human rights requires a clinical assessment of why people commit human rights abuses. It demands assessments of when the international human rights system functions well and when it falls short. Analysis is also needed of the many ways, in addition to legal instruments, that states can promote human rights effectively. No single field has all the answers. I look to research in anthropology, criminology, economics, history, law, political science, psychology, and sociology—along with a large dose of practical insight from the people in the field who work to promote human rights. Bringing all those insights to bear on the human rights challenge is the goal of this book. Along the way, I hope to help these different communities learn about work in other fields. I aim as well to offer a strategy for stewardship that could be influential in making human rights more of a reality.

The Argument in Brief

While this is a large book that examines a wide array of human rights issues and examples, I make three central arguments.

First, the evidence and analysis I present here suggest that the current system of international human rights law corresponds well with protecting human rights only in special circumstances—generally in the settings where the worst human rights abuses are least likely to occur. Despite that evidence, much of today's policy efforts focus on creating more international treaties and implementation procedures as well as expanding the number of countries that sign and ratify those agreements. I will assert the opposite.

People obey laws when the rules coincide with how they would act without the laws in place (coincidence), when they fear punishment or other consequences for lawbreaking (coercion), or when they come to believe laws have legitimate authority and value (persuasion). For all these reasons, international legal principles factor into the calculus of abuse in a number of settings that are ideally suited for international law to work; examples fill the pages of this book. But the biggest abuses arise in contexts where the incentives for protection are weak and the international legal system probably can't have much immediate impact.

My first contention is that the tendency to swell the list of countries that are members of international human rights agreements along with the list of rights themselves makes the bureaucratic challenge of promoting rights harder to solve. That is because it is difficult to enforce the law by threatening punishments alone—there isn't enough coercive capacity to deter every act of defiance. Authorities also need a lot of willing compliance—because laws coincide with what countries will do anyway or because societies have been persuaded that laws are legitimate. More laws and members erode legitimacy if they lead to lower levels of compliance. Lower compliance makes it hard for abusing countries as well as the many different actors in the international human rights system to know which laws they should take seriously. Reforms to the international human rights legal system should dampen its tendency to swell in size and ambition while refocusing efforts on better protection of core rights. The system needs reform and legitimacy before expansion.

Second, solutions require relying heavily on the actors that can have the largest impact on patterns of abuse. States are at the center of this problem and the solution. I focus especially on the countries that have a strong national interest in advancing human rights abroad: the steward states. Stewardship is not an entitlement; rather, it's a description of a foreign policy decision that any state can make to promote human rights in another country. Stewards tend to have pretty good human rights records at home and also face public pressure to advance human rights overseas. They are the government engines of international human rights promotion, and with the correct strategy they can do a lot more. Steward states can give perpetrators of abuse a reason to act differently even when legal procedures don't have much influence on their reasoning. The evidence presented in this book will show that the international human rights legal system is associated with significant improvements in human rights mainly in a narrow subset of countries. For the rest, including countries where the most severe abuses take place, laws need backing with power. That's where the steward states are so vital—by deploying their power and other resources to advance human rights in the settings where international law, on its own, won't have much impact. Over time, these efforts fail unless they build legitimacy and help persuade perpetrators that respecting human dignity is appropriate and not just cost-effective.

To be successful, steward states must also be aware of the many limitations and risks as they wield power around the globe. Foreign pressures won't have much impact on human rights inside countries unless foreign policies are "localized," by which I mean vetted, translated, and supported by local "norm entrepreneurs." Those entrepreneurs, intermediaries between locals and foreign actors, can tailor outside pressure so it is more legitimate and effective in the local setting. Successful stewardship requires working with NGOs and national human rights institutions (NHRIs) over sustained periods. Done well, which is not easy, this approach can lend power to the service of international law so that both law and power work in tandem.

Third, stewards can become more strategic in how they allocate their resources. Human rights promotion is costly, and the needed resources don't grow on trees. Scarcity demands priorities, and the setting of priorities requires assessing the consequences of alternative strategies. Human rights promotion calls for hard choices about which promotion efforts actually work, rather than relying on aspiration, publicity, or public outcry. What's needed is a decision-making process of triage. Like the brutal medical process of triaging battlefield wounds, it requires concentrating resources where actors can make a difference. Making triage effective requires collecting the data needed for the careful and constant reassessment of priorities.

The stakes are high. As UN secretary-general Kofi Annan once said, "We will not enjoy security without development, we will not enjoy development without security, and we will not enjoy either without respect for human rights." He was right. What's needed is a strategy that links that aspiration to the clinical data and practical experience about what really protects human rights.

Step by Step through the Book

The challenges in human rights promotion are many and complex. I start by looking at what's known about why people (notably leaders of governments and their envoys) commit abuses. That's part I, and it's important because instruments for promoting human rights won't work well unless they are based on knowledge of why people commit abuses and the social contexts that encourage abuse.

In part II, I look at the international human rights legal system that has emerged over the last six decades. That system both declares a growing number of rights and aims to hold governments (and sometimes individuals) accountable. One of my chief concerns about that system is that it has led to an explosion of rights and procedures without eliciting much compliance from states. One of the chief challenges for more effective rights promotion is to slow the swelling; doing that requires understanding why legalization of rights has exploded in the first place.

Part III examines what governments themselves are doing to advance human rights abroad. It is fashionable today to look beyond governments to other actors, notably nongovernmental organizations, that promote human rights. Those many nongovernmental actors are important, but governments are essential. In part III, I especially focus on the governments that have proved most crucial in backing human rights when the international legal system, on its own, can't elicit compliance with the law. These steward states all use their power and other resources to advance human rights overseas. Key to the better deployment of that power is localization and triage of scarce resources.

Part I: The Calculus of Abuse

The ultimate goal of this book is to understand when and how international law and state power can protect human rights. For scholars, those questions are important because the broad field of human rights is one of the most heavily legalized areas of international relations. For practitioners this is significant because human rights abuses are pervasive and more effective policy strategies are needed. Choosing better policies requires understanding, first, the many, complex, and often-veiled motivations for acts of abuse. That is the task of part I, which brings together insights from criminology and psychology on why people (as individuals or working in groups) commit crimes and other deviant acts. It also examines research in political science and sociology that has revealed the many different contexts that can encourage abusive behavior.

The central idea in this part of the book is that human rights abuses are not the work of socially or mentally abnormal madmen (or madwomen) who can't control themselves, although mental illness and other factors do play roles at times. Instead, abusers are normally ordinary people responding to the incentives and opportunities in their environment. Abuse is abhorrent, but it's typically a calculated act. It reflects deliberate and seemingly reasonable (in the eyes of abusers) calculations of the benefits and costs. Abuse is a gamble that its perpetrators think is worthwhile given the stakes. Once under way, reinforcing factors—such as rationalizations and group incentives—make it hard to stop. This perspective on abuse suggests that the task for law and other policy instruments examined later in this book is to make violators of human rights redo the calculus that guides their behavior.

For students of international law and international relations—like myself—much of the research surveyed in this part of the book will be new. I consider the research from two perspectives.

First, chapter 2 looks at the contexts that lead to abuse. There are some settings that all but guarantee large human rights abuses. Those include pervasive conflict, such as full-blown civil war, where the incentives working on leaders and rebels are short term in nature, and most formal governing institutions have broken down. Illiberal rule is another context that is ripe for abuses since illiberal rulers are not, by definition, broadly accountable to the public. Government institutions that generally are the most ardent defenders of human rights—such as courts and ombudsmen—can't operate independently of the elites who control government. These contexts are major catalysts for abuse, yet extremely difficult to manipulate. Chapter 2 focuses on six contexts that are particularly worrisome.

Chapter 3 looks more closely at individuals and the choices they make. It explores the rationales that allow people to justify their behavior. Usually abusers are not biologically or psychologically abnormal people when they start up. They do what they do because they believe—rightly or wrongly—they will gain something: power or support, a victory over their rivals, information, money, resources, a job, a sense of superiority or satisfaction for following orders, control, or respect. With a sense of the benefits and risks in mind, perpetrators make choices that, to them, appear practical, rational, lawful, and even morally justifiable. The institutions in which abusers are embedded often reinforce such rationales. Abuse usually involves many people, actions, and institutions; it's not a particular problem created by one rogue person, act, or situation. It can, says sociologist of crime Joachim Savelsberg, "involve collective action, with front-line, low-level actors who executed the dirty work as well as leaders whose hands remain untainted by the blood for the shedding of which they bear ultimate responsibility." He was speaking about mass atrocities like genocide. But child labor, discrimination, censorship, tyranny, and election fraud also find their roots reinforced by institutions. Many diverse actors, each responding to local incentives, reinforce such behavior. They convince themselves and their peers that their actions—some of them crimes under law—are acceptable. Stopping the behavior requires disrupting an entire network of group conduct, which is quite a challenge.

(Continues...)

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Dettagli dell'edizione

• Editore: Princeton Univ Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 2013
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0691155364
• ISBN 13: 9780691155364
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 276
• Contatto del produttore: Princeton University Press; https://press.princeton.edu/books; ; 7th Floor, New South Building; PRINCETON; NJ; 8544; U.S.A.
• Persona responsabile: GPSR Kontakt; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Germania