Human Rights and International Politics

ER 11, Spring 2012

Late 1941

The Rallying Point: Atlantic Charter• off Newfoundland, August

1941

• self-determination, improved labor standards, economic advancement, social security, “freedom from want and fear”

• Declaration by United Nations, Jan 1, 1942; signed by 26 nations against Axis

Also in January 1942: Wannsee Conference

Equality among races not assured

• “Why be apologetic about Anglo-Saxon superiority –we are superior.”

• “I have not become the King’s First Minister to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.”

• Also: detention of Japanese-Americans

Dumbarton Oaks, Fall 1944• Meeting of representatives

from US, SU, Britain, China to prepare UN Charter

• security council

• HRs not supposed to play major role

• worried about sovereignty

San Francisco, June 1945

• resistance of smaller powers – HRs had to be given prominent role in Charter

• NGO also played major role

Charter: Self-Determination, Human Rights, Territorial Integrity

Article 1The Purposes of the United Nations

are: (…)

2. To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples (…)

3. To achieve international cooperation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights (…)

Charter: Self-Determination, Human Rights, Territorial Integrity

Article 2

(…)

4. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state (…)

7. Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter (…)

International Politics: Three Values

• self-determination -- of peoples

• territorial integrity -- of states

• Human rights – of individuals

Commission on Human Rights• Charged with adding Declaration of Human Rights –

international Bill of Rights

• Started deliberating in Jan 1947

• Had to be acceptable to members from rather different cultural backgrounds

• Massive momentum: lots of debate, reactions, exchange

Long-winded process of wrestling with formulations

No single drafter

compare Declaration of Independence

Involved political struggles and philosophical inquiry

Much more work of intellectuals than politicians

Chair: Eleanor Roosevelt

Unsung Hero and Drafter: John P. Humphrey, Canada

• Law professor at McGill

• UN functionary

• Major writer of UDHR

Charles Malik, Lebanon

• Harvard philosophy PhD

• Professor, intellectual, diplomat, politician

René Cassin, France

• French judge, later on European Court of Human Rights

• Got Nobel Prize for work on UDHR in ‘68

Peng-Chun Chang, China

• Columbia PhD

• Chinese playwright, diplomat, “Renaissance man”

• “East Asian voice on committee”

Hansa Mehta

• Indian educational reformer

• Freedom fighter

Read Declaration Again!!

Bindingness

• passed by General Assembly; not legally binding

• International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights

• Accepted by UN in 1966 (cold war!); went into effect in 1976

Six core human rights treaties

• The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, adopted in 1966 and which entered into force in 1976

• The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, adopted in 1966, entered into force in 1976

• The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965, 1969)

• The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979, 1981)

• The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984, 1987)

• The Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989, 1990)

Convention on Prevention and Punishment of Genocide

• Oldest human rights convention

• Adopted immediately before UDHR

• Raphael Lemkin

Term appeared in indictments in Nuremberg trials, 45/46

Genocide ConventionArticle 2In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following

acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the

group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life

calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Other episodes of Genocide/”Holocausts”

• Armenian Genocide – in scale, central coordination, and systematic implementation first truly “modern” holocaust

• Stalin’s terror: Gulags, ethnic cleanings, relocations, mismanagement

• Cambodia: Khmer Rouge, relative to population, perhaps worst genocide in recorded history

• Bengal/Bangladesh 1971: 1-3 million

• Rwanda – hurricane of death in 1994, killing rate per day more than five times of Nazi holocaust

Other episodes of Genocide/”Holocausts”

• Armenian Genocide – in scale, central coordination, and systematic implementation first truly “modern” holocaust

• Stalin’s terror: Gulags, ethnic cleanings, relocations, mismanagement

• Cambodia: Khmer Rouge, relative to population, perhaps worst genocide in recorded history

• Bengal/Bangladesh 1971: 1-3 million

• Rwanda – hurricane of death in 1994, killing rate per day more than five times of Nazi holocaust

Other episodes of Genocide/”Holocausts”

• Armenian Genocide – in scale, central coordination, and systematic implementation first truly “modern” holocaust

• Stalin’s terror: Gulags, ethnic cleanings, relocations, mismanagement

• Cambodia: Khmer Rouge, relative to population, perhaps worst genocide in recorded history

• Bengal/Bangladesh 1971: 1-3 million

• Rwanda – hurricane of death in 1994, killing rate per day more than five times of Nazi holocaust

Other episodes of Genocide/”Holocausts”

• Armenian Genocide – in scale, central coordination, and systematic implementation first truly “modern” holocaust

• Stalin’s terror: Gulags, ethnic cleanings, relocations, mismanagement

• Cambodia: Khmer Rouge, relative to population, perhaps worst genocide in recorded history

• Bengal/Bangladesh 1971: 1-3 million

• Rwanda – hurricane of death in 1994, killing rate per day more than five times of Nazi holocaust

Other episodes of Genocide/”Holocausts”

• Armenian Genocide – in scale, central coordination, and systematic implementation first truly “modern” holocaust

• Stalin’s terror: Gulags, ethnic cleanings, relocations, mismanagement

• Cambodia: Khmer Rouge, relative to population, perhaps worst genocide in recorded history

• Bengal/Bangladesh 1971: 1-3 million

• Rwanda – hurricane of death in 1994, killing rate per day more than five times of Nazi holocaust

Paris 2012

Questions: • Does Atlantic slavery count as

genocide?

• Do colonial disasters such as the Belgian oppression of the Congo count?

• Or else is not the use of the term distracting from the magnitude of evil inflicted on these other occasions?

• Native Americans?

Questions: • Does Atlantic slavery count as

genocide?

• Do colonial disasters such as the Belgian oppression of the Congo count?

• Or else is not the use of the term distracting from the magnitude of evil inflicted on these other occasions?

• Native Americans?

Some facts about American reaction to Holocaust

• Roosevelt assigned no priority to rescue of Jews; never even spoke up about it forcefully

• Did establish War Refugee Board, but took little interest in it

• Democrats knew they had Jewish vote, which created little incentive

• US tightened immigration procedures; influenced Latin American countries to do the same

• Important individuals with access

to the president did not make this a priority

• Eleanor Roosevelt thought best way to help Jews was by winning war quickly

• Little interest in the public, and not much done to change that

• Information unavailable to the public until mid-1944

• People thought reports were exaggerated

• once information was available, people refused to believe it

Death Camp Entrance (Auschwitz-Birkenau) – liberated Jan. 27, 1945