Discussion 7
Protecting Human Rights & the Ghosts of Rwanda
a. Case Study: Human Trafficking
While institutionalized slavery disappeared at the end of the nineteenth
century due to the efforts of the first human rights advocates—the anti-slavery groups
—slave-like practices of forced labor and trafficking in persons continue today. The
scope of human trafficking owes much to the rapid pace of globalization that opened
doors to the free flow of capital and trade as well as to illicit industries like human
trafficking. Many of those trafficked are women and children lured by promises of a
better life and held against their will only to work long hours and suffer other abuses.
It is estimated that around 12 million people worldwide may be victims of
human trafficking. The varying definitions of what constitutes trafficking and the
clandestine nature of the problem make the number uncertain, however. Among the
more reliable data sources is the Database on Human Trafficking Trends developed by
the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Drawing on human trafficking
incidences recorded by 113 major institutions between 1996 and 2003 in 161
countries, the data show that the majority are females, three-quarters are trafficked for
sexual exploitation, and one-quarter are trafficked for forced labor and domestic
servitude. Many are illegal migrants.
Trafficking is framed as both a human rights issue and a transnational crime,
with profits in the billions annually. This dual framing has produced two separate
lines of action. Human rights framing means setting standards and securing victims’
rights to legal and rehabilitative remedies where the UN system has long been
involved. The Universal Declaration on Human Rights included the right to be free
from slavery or servitude. In 1951, the Convention for the Suppression of Traffic in
Persons went into effect, prohibiting trafficking in persons for the purpose of
prostitution (even with their consent). In 1956, the General Assembly explicitly
identified contemporary practices that were considered “slave-like,” among them
serfdom, forced marriage, child labor, debt bondage, and trafficking in human beings,
when it approved the Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, Slave
Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery. The ILO banned forced labor
in a 1957 convention and addressed abuses of migrant workers in a 1975 convention.
Other related UN actions include the conventions on women, children, and migrant
workers; the Optional Protocol on Children in Armed Conflict and the Optional
Protocol on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution, and Child Pornography (2002);
and the appointment of a special rapporteur to study the issues.
Framing policy formulation under the rationale and language of criminal
justice means ensuring aggressive prevention and prosecution of traffickers. Several
actions have been taken, including the establishment of the Commission on Crime
Prevention and Justice under ECOSOC, a global conference on transnational crime,
and discussion of the possibility of a new convention on transnational organized
crime. The consensus was that existing UN legal instruments were insufficient. Thus,
in 1997, the General Assembly authorized the drafting of a new treaty.
Early in the drafting of the Convention Against Transnational Organized
Crime, work began on a separate protocol on trafficking in persons. The drafting
process for the protocol, which lasted from late 1998 through 2000, was highly
contentious and drew active NGO advocacy. The most heated tug-of-war concerned
the definition of sex trafficking. One camp, supported by the Coalition Against
Trafficking in Women, insisted that prostitution in all its forms was exploitive and
should be criminalized. The opposing view, advanced by the Human Rights Caucus,
posited that noncoerced, consensual migrant sex work should not be prohibited by the
protocol. The debate hinged on the definition of sex trafficking and “force” as a
required element, as well as on whether “consent” should serve as a delineating
concept between noncoerced sex work and sex trafficking. Both camps sought to
influence the delegates directly as well as national governments. The final language
maintains a distinction between consensual sex work and sex trafficking, but does not
permit the consent of victims to be used as a shield for prosecution if other elements
of exploitation are apparent.
By 2014, 163 states had become party to the protocol. Because of its link to
the transnational crime convention, the protocol uses the language of criminal law
rather than of human rights. This means that the focus of implementation is not so
much monitoring and promotion but law enforcement. UNODC works to combat
trafficking under the convention, assisting states in drafting policies and providing
training resources. The Geneva-based UN human rights organs have continued their
antitrafficking work. The Human Rights Council (HRC) supports the special
rapporteurs for these contemporary forms of slavery. These rapporteurs monitor and
promote specific human rights by conducting country visits, receiving complaints
from individuals, issuing reports to UN bodies, and communicating with
governments. To generate publicity about slave-like practices, the UN General
Assembly declared the year 2004 as the International Year to Commemorate the
Struggle Against Slavery and Its Abolition and sponsored programs, exhibits, and
educational programs. Likewise, the ILO undertook major studies in 2001 and 2005
of forced labor, including human trafficking, calling for its elimination within a
decade.
In 1991, the General Assembly established the UN Voluntary Trust Fund on
Contemporary Forms of Slavery to provide financial assistance to victims and to
NGOs dealing with these issues. The aid to individuals is based on needs for security,
education, independence, and reintegration and can include various supports such as
legal aid, medical care, food, and counseling. A second source of assistance for all
stakeholders, including governments, business, civil society, and the media, is the
United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking, better known as
UN.GIFT. It was established in 2007 with funding from several UN agencies, the
International Organization for Migration (IOM), the OSCE, and concerned states,
among others. UN.GIFT’s primary focus is on eradicating human trafficking by
supporting partnerships and capacity building of state and nonstate stakeholders.
Particularly striking about efforts to deal with human trafficking is the absence
of a single, dominant NGO coalition such as that formed to deal with violence against
women or that formed to support the International Criminal Court. The two coalitions
active during the drafting of the Palermo protocol have not formed a single network to
coordinate and facilitate anti-trafficking efforts. Anti-Slavery International includes
human trafficking among its activities and works to raise awareness, lobbying
countries to ratify conventions and strengthen their anti-trafficking efforts. Yet many
NGOs prefer to operate independently and often see other NGOs as competitors for
funding and attention, focusing on a particular group being trafficked. Yet, human
trafficking remains a highly lucrative form of transnational organized crime. The
scope of the problem continues to increase. Lack of public awareness of the problem
in countries where trafficking originates (particularly many Southeast Asian and
Eastern European countries) as well as in destination countries, including the United
States, is an obstacle to these anti-trafficking efforts. In 2014, traffickers became
increasingly active in the Middle East and North Africa in moving refugees, asylum-
seekers, and migrants into Europe, posing major challenges for the EU and its
members.
The focus on human trafficking reflects increased attention to human rights
issues since World War II, a trend that Zbigniew Brzezinski (1989: 256) has called
“the single most magnetic political idea of the contemporary time.” That idea and
attention have spurred the development of a broad range of international rights norms
and global human rights governance initiatives.
b. The Roots of Human Rights and Humanitarian Norms
The question of who should be protected—who is human—and how they
should be protected has broadened over the centuries. Beginning with the nineteenth-
century abolition of the slave trade, former slaves were granted nominal rights and
protections. Christians were viewed as a special group needing protection from
mistreatment by the Ottoman Turks, and the rights of those wounded during war were
articulated with the establishment of the International Committee of the Red Cross. In
the mid–twentieth century, colonialism came to an end. As Martha Finnemore (1996a:
173) describes: “Humanity was no longer something one could create by bringing
savages to civilization. Rather, humanity was inherent in individual human beings.”
Asians and Africans now had human “rights,” including the collective right to self-
determination, as well as individual rights.
The Holocaust—Nazi Germany’s campaign of genocide against Jews,
Gypsies, and other “undesirables”—was a powerful impetus to the development of the
contemporary human rights movement. In the 1970s, human rights violations in the
Soviet Union and Eastern Europe drew public condemnation, as did the
“disappearances” of individuals under the authoritarian regimes of Chile and
Argentina. South Africa’s egregious policy of apartheid—systematic repression and
violence against the majority of the country’s population solely on the basis of race—
had a similar mobilizing effect. The dissolution of the Soviet Union and the downfall
of other communist regimes in the early 1990s liberated international efforts to
promote human rights from the ideological conflict of the Cold War. Events in Bosnia
and Rwanda prompted pressure for prosecution of those responsible for war crimes,
crimes against humanity, and genocide, and television pictures of starving children in
Somalia provoked public demands that something be done.
In each case, the revolution in communication technologies has magnified the
horror of the events by broadcasting pictures of genocide, ethnic violence, the use of
child soldiers, and starving populations. In a twentyfour-hour news cycle, the media
report the abuses of governments and suppressed groups, and the Internet, Facebook,
and Twitter are used to mobilize responses. Technology has led to pressure by states
and individuals for a variety of governance activities. The fact that over 100 of the
193 member states of the UN are now democracies magnifies the pressure for human
rights governance. The forces of liberalization and globalization have also contributed
to the erosion of Westphalian state sovereignty and the gradual acceptance of
international accountability for how states treat their citizens. The roots of human
rights and humanitarian norms can be found in all major religions and in widely
divergent philosophical traditions.
Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, and Confucianism all
assert both the dignity of individuals and people’s responsibility to their fellow
humans. Hindus prohibit infliction of physical or mental pain on others. Jews support
the sacredness of individuals, as well as the responsibility of the individual to help
those in need. Buddhism’s Eight-Fold Path includes right thought and action toward
all beings. Islam teaches equality of races and racial tolerance. While the relative
importance of these values may vary, Paul Gordon Lauren (1998: 11) notes that “early
ideas about general human rights . . . did not originate exclusively in one location like
the West or even with any particular form of government like liberal democracy, but
were shared throughout the ages by visionaries from many cultures in many lands
who expressed themselves in different ways.”
Like the world’s religious thinkers, philosophers and political theorists have
conceptualized human rights, although they differ on many specific issues and ideas.
Human rights philosophers from the liberal persuasion traditionally have emphasized
individual rights that the state can neither usurp nor undermine. John Locke (1632–
1704), among others, asserted that individuals are equal and autonomous beings
whose natural rights predate both national and international law. Public authority is
designed to secure these rights.
Key historical documents detail these rights, beginning with the English
Magna Carta in 1215, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789, and the
US Bill of Rights in 1791. For example, no individual should be “deprived of life,
liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Political and civil rights, including
free speech, free assembly, free press, and freedom of religion, deserve utmost
protection according to liberal theories. By custom, these rights have been referred to
as firstgeneration human rights. To some theorists and many US pundits, these are not
only the key human rights but also the only recognized human rights.
Theorists influenced by Karl Marx and other socialist thinkers concentrate on
those rights that the state is responsible for providing. Emerging from Marx’s concern
for the welfare of industrialized labor, the duty of states is to advance the well-being
of their citizens; the right of the citizens is to benefit from these socioeconomic
advances. This view emphasizes minimum material rights that the state must provide
to individuals. Referred to as second-generation human rights, these include the right
to education, health care, social security, and housing, although the amount
guaranteed is unspecified.
Without those guarantees, socialist theorists believe that political and civil
rights are meaningless. Some contemporary writers have focused on human rights for
specific groups. Indigenous peoples have been given special consideration, as have
children, women, migrant workers, the disabled, refugees, and most recently gay,
lesbian, bisexual, and transgender persons. Several UN resolutions also affirm certain
collective rights, including the rights to development, a clean environment, and
democracy. There is much more controversy over these emergent third-generation
human rights. Does the expansion of fundamental human rights actually dilute the
very rights that others are trying to protect?
The contemporary debate revolves around the relative priority attached to
these three generations of rights. In Western liberal thinking, political and civil rights
are clearly given higher status, while in many other parts of the world, priority goes to
economic and social rights or to collective rights such as the right to development.
Such disagreements help explain the lack of political will for international human
rights enforcement and implementation. Just as the West has dominated economic
relations, it has dominated human rights standard-setting. Thus the strongest part of
both international and regional human rights governance mechanisms protects civil
and political rights, while the other two generations of human rights have received
less attention, in part because it is more difficult to establish standards of compliance
for economic, social, and collective rights.
Are all these human rights truly universal—that is, applicable to all peoples, in
all states, religions, and cultures? Are they inalienable—that is, fundamental to every
person? Are they necessary to life? Are they nonnegotiable—so essential that they
cannot be taken away? Or are rights dependent on culture? Since the 1970s, some
Islamists have questioned the notion of universal human rights. Two issues—the
rights of Muslims versus non-Muslims and the rights of men versus women—have
posed the most problems, reflecting conflicting interpretations of Islamic teachings
and practice. One approach is to accept the notion of equality but offer reasons why
the principle of equality is not undermined by different rules protecting one group
over another (Mayer 2013). Another was evident at a 2003 conference in Beirut where
Islamic human rights activists, NGOs, and some governments proclaimed the
universality of human rights and rejected the use of either culture or Islam to restrict
those rights.
In the early 1990s, a number of Asian states argued that the principles in the
Universal Declaration and other documents represented Western values that were
being imposed on them and that the West was interfering in their internal affairs with
its own definition of human rights. They also argued that advocating the rights of the
individual over the welfare of the community is not only unsound but also contrary to
different cultural traditions. Much of the debate has been clearly political, taking place
between authoritarian states concerned about human rights intervention in their
domestic affairs, and Western democratic states eager to promote political change.
The debate over universality versus cultural relativism is particularly sensitive,
however, with respect to issues of religion, women’s status, child protection, family
planning, divorce, and practices such as female circumcision.
The Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, adopted at the 1993 World
Conference on Human Rights, stated: “All human rights are universal, indivisible and
interdependent and interrelated.” Regional arrangements, the declaration stated,
“should reinforce universal human rights standards.” Yet even that document included
the qualification that “the significance of national and regional particularities and
various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds must be borne in mind.” Thus,
Stephen Hopgood (2013) argues that while universalism has been the promise of the
past, today it is ill adapted to the diversity of the multipolar world.
Just as human rights norms have emerged and changed over time, so too have
humanitarian norms. Originating in the nineteenth century, humanitarian norms were
developed to save lives and alleviate pain in zones of conflict, without regard to the
underlying beliefs or political allegiance of individuals. Thus humanitarian principles
were apolitical, their proponents maintained, providing relief in an impartial,
independent, and neutral way. Yet as Michael Barnett (2005: 724) argues, during the
1990s those core principles “crumbled . . . as humanitarianism’s agenda ventured
beyond relief and into the political world and agencies began working alongside, and
with, states.” We explore the relationship between humanitarianism and human rights
in more detail later.
c. The Key Role of States: Protectors and Abusers of Human Rights
States, as the Westphalian tradition and realists posit, are primarily responsible
for protecting human rights standards within their own jurisdiction. Many liberal
democratic states have based human rights practices on political and civil liberties,
while socialist states have developed socioeconomic protections. Since the late 1970s,
more than a hundred states have created national and subnational human rights
institutions, independent bodies with the power to promote and protect human rights
domestically. While these institutions have taken different forms (national
commissions, ombudsmen, special commissions), they empower local actors and help
embed human rights norms domestically (Kim 2013). States are also responsible for
protecting against human rights abuses committed by private actors, including
business enterprises acting in their jurisdiction, and for providing redress for those
whose human rights have been abridged.
Some Western states also attempt to take their domestic commitment to human
rights and internationalize it by supporting similar human rights provisions elsewhere.
At US insistence, support for human rights guarantees was written into the new
constitutions in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The EU has required candidate members
to show significant progress toward improving their records on political and civil
liberties prior to accession. These states believe that it is in their national interest to
promote human rights abroad, that states sharing those values are better positioned to
trade with, and less likely to go to war with, each other. States are not just protectors,
however; they are also the primary violators of individual human rights. Both regime
type and real or perceived threats to the state are explanations for states’ abuse of their
own citizens. In general, authoritarian or autocratic states are more likely to abuse
political and civil rights, while less developed states, even liberal democratic ones,
may be unable to meet basic obligations of social and economic rights or collective
rights due to scarce resources.
All states threatened by civil strife or terrorist activity, including democratic
ones, are apt to use repression against foes, domestic and foreign. State security
prevails over individual rights in such situations. In fact, the International Covenant
on Civil and Political Rights acknowledges that heads of state may revoke some
political and civil liberties when national security is threatened. The United States, for
example, has faced allegations of human rights violations concerning the continued
detention at Guantanamo Bay of persons linked to the 9/11 attacks, and China has
faced regular criticism for infringements of freedoms of assembly and expression as
well as for its suppression of Uighurs and Tibetans. Poor states or states experiencing
deteriorating economic conditions are apt to repress these rights, in an effort by the
elite to maintain power and divert attention from economic disintegration.
Economically developed states may also have difficulty meeting the demands of
economic and social rights for all citizens. And in some cases, those rights may be
deliberately undermined or denied due to discrimination on the basis of race, creed,
national origin, or gender.
Finally, high degrees of fractionalization along ethnic, religious, or ideological
lines in societies tend to exacerbate social tensions and bring out some of the worst
abuses against marginalized groups. Such divisions often lead to conflict,
discrimination, and systemic violence, as majority groups or those in power may
oppress or marginalize minority populations to maintain control. These societal
fractures can undermine social cohesion, erode trust in institutions, and lead to
widespread human rights violations.
For example, Iraq's Shiite-dominated government has faced numerous
accusations of committing abuses against the country's Sunni Arabs, Kurds,
Turkmens, Christians, and other minority groups. These allegations include
discriminatory policies, arbitrary arrests, and extrajudicial killings, which have fueled
sectarian violence and deepened divisions within Iraqi society. The Sunni population,
in particular, has often felt marginalized and excluded from political power, leading to
periods of intense conflict and the rise of extremist groups such as ISIS, which
capitalized on Sunni discontent.
In addition to the political and social marginalization, these minority groups
have also faced economic disenfranchisement. Limited access to resources,
employment opportunities, and public services further entrenches their vulnerable
status. For instance, in regions predominantly inhabited by Kurds or Turkmens, there
have been reports of inadequate infrastructure development and insufficient
investment in public services, perpetuating cycles of poverty and underdevelopment.
The situation of Iraq’s Christians and other religious minorities is equally dire.
These groups have been targets of violence and persecution, with many forced to flee
their homes. The destruction of religious sites and cultural heritage has also been a
significant issue, contributing to a sense of erasure and loss of identity among these
communities. The displacement of these populations not only disrupts their lives but
also erodes the cultural and social fabric of the nation.
This pattern of abuse and marginalization is not unique to Iraq. High degrees
of fractionalization and the resulting abuses can be observed in numerous other
countries with diverse populations. For instance, in Myanmar, the Rohingya Muslims
have faced severe persecution and violence at the hands of the Buddhist-majority
government, leading to what has been widely described as ethnic cleansing. The
systematic denial of citizenship rights, coupled with brutal military campaigns, has
forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas to flee to neighboring Bangladesh,
creating a significant humanitarian crisis.
Similarly, in Nigeria, religious and ethnic tensions between the predominantly
Muslim North and the Christian South have led to repeated outbreaks of violence. The
Boko Haram insurgency, which originated in the marginalized northeastern region,
has resulted in widespread atrocities, including bombings, kidnappings, and
massacres. The Nigerian government's response has often been criticized for its
heavy-handedness and human rights abuses, further alienating the affected
communities and perpetuating the cycle of violence.
The issue of fractionalization extends beyond religious and ethnic lines to
include ideological divides. In countries like Venezuela, political polarization has led
to severe repression of opposition groups. The government of Nicolás Maduro has
been accused of using security forces to violently suppress protests, imprison political
opponents, and curtail freedoms of speech and assembly. This ideological
fractionalization has deepened the country's economic and social crisis, leading to
widespread suffering and the exodus of millions of Venezuelans.
Addressing the challenges posed by high degrees of fractionalization requires
comprehensive strategies that promote inclusivity, protect minority rights, and foster
social cohesion. Governments must prioritize equitable representation and
participation in political processes for all groups, ensuring that marginalized
communities have a voice in decision-making. Legal frameworks should be
strengthened to protect against discrimination and uphold human rights, and
mechanisms for accountability must be established to address abuses and grievances.
Educational initiatives that promote understanding, tolerance, and respect for
diversity are also crucial. By fostering intercultural dialogue and reducing prejudices,
societies can build a foundation for peaceful coexistence. Economic policies should
aim to reduce disparities and provide opportunities for all groups, addressing the root
causes of marginalization and preventing the exploitation of fractionalization by
extremist elements.
International organizations and the global community have a role to play in
supporting these efforts. Diplomatic pressure, development aid, and humanitarian
assistance can help address the immediate needs of marginalized populations and
support long-term development goals. Multilateral efforts to promote peace, stability,
and human rights are essential in mitigating the effects of fractionalization and
preventing the escalation of conflicts.
In conclusion, the high degrees of fractionalization along ethnic, religious, or
ideological lines pose significant challenges to social stability and human
development. The examples of Iraq, Myanmar, Nigeria, and Venezuela illustrate the
detrimental impact of these divisions on marginalized communities and the broader
society. Addressing these challenges requires inclusive governance, robust legal
protections, educational initiatives, and international support. By fostering a more
inclusive and equitable environment, societies can mitigate the negative effects of
fractionalization and work towards sustainable peace and development.
d. International Human Rights Institutions and Mechanisms
IGOs, in particular the UN, and NGOs have played key roles in the process of
globalizing human rights. They have been central to establishing the norms,
institutions, and activities for giving effect to the idea of universal rights. The
international human rights movement—a dense network of human rights–oriented
NGOs and dedicated individuals—has been responsible for drafting much of the
language of human rights conventions and for mounting transnational campaigns to
promote human rights norms. These groups and individuals and the processes by
which they have persuaded governments to adopt human rights norms demonstrate
the power of ideas to reshape definitions of national interests, a process best explained
by social constructivist theorizing.
Nongovernmental organizations have long been active in human rights
activities, with anti-slavery groups being among the first and most active. In the late
eighteenth century, abolitionists in the United States (Society for the Relief of Free
Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage), Great Britain (Society for Effecting the
Abolition of the Slave Trade in Britain), and France (Société des Amis des Noirs)
organized to promote ending the slave trade. Although these groups were not
powerful enough to effect immediate international change, the group in Great Britain
was strong enough to force Parliament in 1807 to ban the slave trade for British
citizens. Less than a decade later, in 1815, the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna
included an Eight Power Declaration that the slave trade was “repugnant to the
principles of humanity and universal morality” (Lauren 1996: 27). Willingness to sign
a statement of principles, however, did not mean states were ready to take specific
measures to abolish the practice.
Many human rights and humanitarian NGOs formed around specific issues
either during or immediately following wars. The ICRC was established in the 1860s
to protect wounded soldiers, prisoners of war, and civilians caught in war. During and
after World War I, numerous NGOs formed to protect women and children from the
devastation. With World War II, humanitarian relief organizations grew in number,
including groups like Catholic Relief Services, originally formed in 1943 as War
Relief Services, to provide emergency aid to refugees fleeing conflict in Europe. Later
its mandate expanded to include providing humanitarian relief to the poor, the
displaced, and individuals suffering from natural disasters. CARE and Oxfam
followed.
In the late 1970s, after the two international human rights covenants went into
effect, the 1975 Helsinki Accords were signed to promote human rights in Eastern
Europe and the Soviet Union. The 1976 riots in Soweto and murder of black South
African leader Steve Biko and the growing number of “disappearances” and other
human rights abuses in Latin America were widely publicized. US president Jimmy
Carter made human rights a priority in US foreign policy and Amnesty International
was awarded the 1977 Nobel Peace Prize. These events gave a boost to the
establishment of a new generation of human rights NGO groups, including Helsinki
Watch, the Mothers (and Grandmothers) of the Plaza de Mayo, and the National
Endowment for Democracy, a quasi-NGO. With the Cold War’s end and the rise of
democratic states in the 1980s and 1990s, another generation of NGOs developed,
including the Open Society Institute. Today there are thousands of human rights
groups at the international, national, subnational, and grassroots levels. Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch are by far the largest, best-known, and most
influential groups. Over time, discrete human rights NGOs have together forged the
international human rights movement, due in part to the rise of investigative
journalism and the attention it has brought to human rights issues (Neier 2012: 5). The
information revolution has facilitated the movement’s ability to transmit such
information across borders.
Despite their diversity, human rights NGOs perform a variety of functions and
roles, both independently and in conjunction with IGOs, in international human rights
governance. These include educating the public, providing expertise in drafting
human rights conventions, monitoring violations, shaming violators, and mobilizing
public support for changes in national policies. They may also undertake operational
tasks such as providing aid for victims of human rights abuses, training police and
judges, and running programs to rehabilitate former child soldiers. In addition, NGOs
provided much of the momentum for the UN human rights conferences of the 1990s,
including the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights (Vienna) and the 1995 Fourth
World Conference on Women (Beijing).
In the human rights field, there have been a variety of such campaigns,
including those against apartheid, child labor, and sweatshops, as well as those
promoting the rights of indigenous peoples and migrant workers. Many of these
campaigns have involved both local groups and transnational coalitions. With the
Internet and social media, individuals and groups are able to voice their grievances
swiftly to a worldwide audience and to solicit sympathizers to take direct actions. As
constructivists have shown, these campaigns shape discourse and ideas, leading to
learning across multiple constituencies and to norm creation.
One example of a media-driven effort illustrates the promise and problems of
the campaign approach. Since the late 1980s, the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda
and its leader Joseph Kony have been kidnapping children in northern Uganda, using
them as child soldiers and creating fear and intimidation among the population.
Invisible Children, founded in 2004, is an NGO organized to call attention to this
abuse through film and organized political activity. Over the years, it has presented a
simplistic but graphic message aimed at Western audiences to fight against Kony. In
2012, a halfhour video piece titled “Kony2012” went viral, attracting 80 million hits.
While all agree that this abuse represents an egregious violation of human rights, not
everyone, including many in Uganda itself, agree with Invisible Children’s solution—
military action. So in constructivist discourse, NGOs can aid in the spread of ideas
and they can use material resources for effect, but NGOs and campaigns in general
also have the power to distort messages, to oversimplify complex problems, and to
offer slick solutions.
As strong and vocal as the human rights NGOs are, they do not always get
their way. At the 1993 Vienna Conference, for example, a number of key NGO
demands were not included in the final document, such as rights of the disabled, AIDS
victims, and indigenous peoples. NGOs were also restricted from participating in the
drafting of documents. Thus, NGOs are still not equal partners with states in human
rights governance. Much of their success, however, has been due to opportunities
presented by the League of Nations and the UN.
The League of Nations Covenant made little mention of human rights, despite
persistent efforts by some delegates to include principles of racial equality and
religious freedom. One fascinating story concerns the efforts by representatives of the
Japanese government to convince the principals, including US president Woodrow
Wilson, to adopt a statement on human rights and racial equality. As a victorious and
economically advanced power, Japan felt it had a credible claim and that such basic
rights would not be rejected. Yet the initiative was blocked, with the US
representatives recognizing that such a provision would doom Senate passage of the
peace treaty (Lauren 1996: 82–93). The League’s Covenant did, however, include
specific provision for protection of minorities and dependent peoples in colonies held
by Turkey and Germany, the defeated powers of World War I. These were placed
under the mandate system, whereby a designated victor nation would administer the
territory and supervise it through the Mandates Commission until independence.
The Mandates Commission, despite having no right of inspections, acquired a
reputation of being thorough and neutral in its administration. Britain administered
Palestine, Transjordan, Iraq, and Tanganyika; France assumed the same role for Syria
and Lebanon. They divided responsibility for the Cameroons and Togoland; Belgium
administered Rwanda-Urundi; South Africa administered South West Africa; and
Japan administered several Pacific islands. Between 1932 and 1947, pressure from the
Mandates Commission led to independence for the Arab mandates of Lebanon, Syria,
Iraq, and Transjordan, with Palestine a glaring exception. The mandates in Africa
(Cameroons, Togoland, and Rwanda-Urundi) and in the Pacific were transferred to the
United Nations trusteeship system in 1946, with South West Africa being the sole
exception. South Africa continued to administer the territory as its own, despite
several legal challenges, and a long campaign through the UN led by African states.
South West Africa (Namibia) did not attain independence until 1989.
The idea of the mandate system was a triumph, giving those under its
supervision a greater degree of protection from abuses than they would have enjoyed
otherwise. The system reflected the growing sentiment that territories were not to be
annexed following wars, that the international community had responsibilities over
dependent peoples, and that the eventual goal was self-determination.
In addition, US president Woodrow Wilson’s powerful promise of a right to
self-determination brought groups from all over the world to the 1919 Paris Peace
Conference. As a result, the rights of minorities and the corollary responsibilities of
states were a major topic. Five agreements, known as the Minority Treaties, required
beneficiaries of the peace settlement, such as Poland and Czechoslovakia, among
others, “to assure full and complete protection” to all their inhabitants “without
distinction of birth, nationality, language, race, or religion.” These agreements also
provided for civil and political rights and imposed similar obligations on remnants of
defeated states to be guaranteed by the League of Nations. Later, the League made
admission of new members contingent on a pledge to protect minority rights.
Minority rights were a major agenda item for the League bodies, creating “significant
precedents for increased international protection of human rights”
In other human rights activities, the League conducted a study of slavery after
intensive lobbying by the British Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society and
established the Temporary Slavery Commission, whose report led to the 1926
International Convention on the Abolition of Slavery and the Slave Trade. While not
listing specific practices or including monitoring provisions, the treaty was
pathbreaking in setting the standard regarding slavery. The League also established
principles for assisting refugees and created the first organization dedicated to refugee
relief, the Refugee Organization. Pressed by NGOs, it devoted attention to the issues
of women’s and children’s rights, as well as the right to a minimum level of health,
and in 1924 approved the Declaration on the Rights of the Child. In the 1930s, the
League Assembly even discussed the possibility of an international human rights
document, but no action was ever taken.
The ILO’s mandate to work for the improvement of workers’ living
conditions, health, safety, and livelihood was (and remains) clearly consistent with
concepts of economic and social rights. Because it did not die with the League, the
ILO’s work provided a foundation for other UN human rights activities.
A very different climate shaped the drafting of the UN Charter. US president
Franklin Roosevelt’s famous “Four Freedoms” speech in 1941 called for “a world
founded upon four essential freedoms,” and his vision of “the moral order” formed a
normative base for the Allies in World War II (Roosevelt 1941). The chilling
revelation of Nazi concentration camps drew attention to human rights as an
international issue. Thus, at the founding UN conference in San Francisco, a broad
spectrum of groups, from churches to peace societies, along with delegates from a
number of small states, pushed for the inclusion of human rights language. The
Preamble reaffirmed “faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of
the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and
small.” Although references to human rights were more weakly worded than
advocates had hoped, there were seven such references in the UN Charter, placing the
promotion of human rights among the central purposes of the new organization.
The UN Charter adopted a broad view of human rights, going far beyond the
view of the League of Nations. Included in Article 1 is the statement that the
organization would be responsible for organizing cooperation in areas of a
“humanitarian character,” and “in promoting and encouraging respect for human
rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex,
language, or religion.” Articles 55(c) and 56 amplify the UN’s responsibility to
promote “universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental
freedoms for all” and the obligation of member states to “take joint and separate
action in cooperation with the Organization for the achievement of the purposes set
forth in Article 55.”
These provisions did not define what was meant by “human rights and
fundamental freedoms,” but they established that human rights were a matter of
international concern and that states had assumed some as-yetundefined international
obligation relating to them. Despite the inherent tension between establishing
international standards and Article 2(7)’s principle of noninterference in a state’s
domestic affairs, these provided the UN with the legal authority to undertake the
definition and codification of human rights. The first step in this direction was laid by
the General Assembly’s passage on December 10, 1948, of the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights. Taken together, the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights represented a watershed moment.
In 1946 and 1947, ECOSOC established the Commission on Human Rights,
the Commission on the Status of Women, and the Sub-Commission on the Prevention
of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities. Between 1946 and 2006, the
Commission on Human Rights was the hub of the UN system’s human rights activity.
It was largely responsible for drafting and negotiating the major documents that
elaborate and define human rights norms, including the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights and the international covenants. It conducted studies and issued
reports. Only in 1970, however, did the commission gain the authority to review
complaints of human rights violations, and since it met just once a year, its sessions
included hearing complaints and individual petitions as well as addressing major
human rights themes such as racism and violations of human rights in Israeli-occupied
Arab territories.
Beginning in the 1970s, the Human Rights Commission became the subject of
intense criticism for targeting some countries while ignoring the records of other
egregious violators. Between 1970 and 1991, a few cases, namely South Africa,
Israel, and Chile (under Augusto Pinochet), received significant attention, while other
violators were ignored. Nonetheless, an empirical study of the commission’s actions
from 1979 to 2001 found that “targeting and punishment were driven to a
considerable degree by the actual human rights records of potential targets” (Lebovic
and Voeten 2006: 863). By the mid-1990s, some 60 percent of the more egregious
violators had been examined by the commission, a finding consistent with the 2002–
2005 period. Still, there was a growing tendency to avoid direct criticisms of states
(Forsythe 2009). In 2001, the United States lost its commission seat for the first time
and a few well-known human rights abusers such as Sudan, Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia,
Pakistan, and Cuba were elected members and Libya was elected chair (2002),
causing the criticism of the commission to intensify.
In 2006, the Human Rights Commission was replaced by the Human Rights
Council, whose forty-seven members are elected by secret ballot by a majority of
members of the General Assembly for three-year renewable terms distributed among
the five recognized regional groups. The HRC meets at least ten weeks throughout the
year and reports to the General Assembly. To address the problem of having human
rights violators among the membership, the human rights records of all potential
council members are subject to scrutiny, and the council can suspend actual members
suspected of abuses with a two-thirds vote—a provision that has failed to remedy the
problem.
The council responds to complaints by appointing either individual experts or
working groups to address specific concerns or thematic issues (known as Special
Procedures 1235 and 1503). For example, the HRC has a number of special
rapporteurs for specific human rights issues, including one for the Palestinian
territories. These are individuals who investigate abuses with the consent of the state
concerned. Another tool is the Universal Periodic Review, whereby each UN member
state’s record is reviewed every four years based on three documents: a written
national report prepared by the state itself; a summary prepared by the Office of the
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) with input from other UN
bodies; and a summary report by international human rights groups and other
stakeholders. The process includes dialogue among several HRC members,
representatives from the state under review, and national and subnational human
rights institutions (Wolman 2014). In 2008, the HRC established a new Advisory
Committee, a human rights think tank of eighteen experts that conducts studies for the
council employing a variety of governmental and independent sources.
e. The Processes of Human Rights Governance
Over seven decades, an international human rights regime has emerged that
has articulated human rights norms and codified these standards in treaties, legal
decisions, and practices. IGOs and NGOs have engaged in monitoring the human
rights records of states, receiving reports of abuses and compliance, promoting norms
of the regime, and enforcing compliance when states have committed gross violations
of those norms.
The prominent role of NGOs, transnational advocacy networks, and social
movements in pushing for domestic laws and international treaties that set human
rights standards has already been discussed. We can best illustrate NGOs’ role here
with a critical case. That role is well illustrated by the case of the anti-slavery
movement. The UN and several regional IGOs have also played central roles in
setting human rights standards.
The nineteenth-century anti-slavery movement not only was one of the first
examples of NGO activity, but also, as discussed earlier, helped create the norm
prohibiting slavery. Supported by a diverse constituency in Great Britain, including
religious groups (Quakers, Methodists, and Baptists), textile workers, rural
housewives, and wealthy businessmen, the movement caught the attention of like-
minded individuals in France and the Americas, forming what may be called the first
transnational advocacy network. They worked tirelessly to abolish slavery, using a
variety of tactics, including letter-writing, petitions, popular theater, and public
speeches. They networked with others across the Atlantic, sending freed slaves on
public speaking tours and exchanging strategies and information (Hochchild 2005).
Later, the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society played a key role in
lobbying the League of Nations and in writing the 1926 International Convention on
the Abolition of Slavery, as well as the 1956 Supplementary Convention on the
Abolition of Slavery, Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery. In
the intervening quarter century, the group had expanded its agenda to include
practices such as child labor, trafficking in human beings, and forced labor. In 1990,
with a broadened orientation, the group changed its name to Anti-Slavery
International. It and other NGOs continue to play key roles in setting human rights
standards in many areas, since slavery in various forms, including human trafficking,
continues to be a significant problem, as discussed in the opening case.
The key role of the United Nations and treaty-making. The UN’s core role in
the international human rights regime is its activity in defining and elaborating what
constitutes internationally protected rights, initially in the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of
Genocide, both concluded in 1948. Under the leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt, who at
that time was chair of the Commission on Human Rights, these documents articulated
a farreaching rights agenda. In particular, the Universal Declaration elucidated
innovative principles: that people have these rights by virtue of being human; that
they apply universally; that human rights include both political and civil rights and
social and economic rights; and that advancement of these rights includes legislation,
public discussion, and social monitoring. Almost seven decades later, the declaration
continues to serve as a “rallying banner for the young, the poor, and the oppressed in
their quest for a more just world” (Ramcharan 2008: 1). The expectation was that
these rights would be set forth in treaties.
Although other human rights conventions were approved in the 1950s, it took
until 1966 for the General Assembly to approve the International Covenant on
Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights. Both became operative in 1976 following the necessary number of
ratifications. Together with the Universal Declaration, they are known as the
“international bill of rights.” That it took almost thirty years to define these legal
standards suggests the difficulty of the task in a world where states jealously guard
their national sovereignty. Indeed, not all states have ratified the covenants. The
United States, for example, did not ratify the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
until 1992, and has yet to ratify the Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural
Rights. Other states have ratified the covenants but attached reservations,
declarations, or interpretative statements that in some cases undercut the whole intent.
The same pattern is found with other human rights treaties such as the Convention on
the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). As of 2014, of the 188
parties to this convention, 62 had ratified with specific reservations, some on
procedural issues and others on broader, more substantive issues such as provisions
that conflict with sharia law. The price of ratification, therefore, has often been highly
qualified, weaker conventions.
The inter-American human rights regime, embedded in the Organization of
American States and Inter-American Convention on Human Rights, highlights
political and civil rights, although widespread abuses, including state-sanctioned
disappearances in the 1970s and 1980s, undermined the regime. In the 1980s, Latin
America experienced what has been called a “norms cascade,” a rapid shift toward
recognizing the legitimacy of human rights norms elucidated in the regional and
international conventions (Lutz and Sikkink 2000: 638).
The African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights, which was approved in
1981 and entered into force in 1986, is of special interest for two reasons. First,
specific attention is given to third-generation rights— group and collective rights that
are compatible with African traditions, including the right to development, to self-
determination, and to full sovereignty over natural resources. Second, the African
Charter is unique because of numerous “clawback clauses” that qualify or limit
specific standards. For example, fundamental civil and political liberties are
guaranteed except for reasons of law and order or for national security. Such clauses
permit states to suspend fundamental rights with little protection and undermine the
standards articulated in the African Charter (Mutua 1999: 358). Conspicuously absent
from the regional picture are Asian and Middle Eastern norms, standards, and
institutions, although this is now changing in Southeast Asia.
The ASEAN Charter, approved in 2008, included human rights for the first
time. In 2009, the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights was
established, followed in 2010 by the ASEAN Commission on the Promotion and
Protection of the Rights of Women and Children and in 2012 by the ASEAN
Declaration on Human Rights. Even though civil society groups were critical of flaws
in the declaration, these are major steps in a region where any discussion of
international human rights norms has been considered inconsistent with the norm of
noninterference. The mix of authoritarian, military, and democratic governments in
the region, however, still makes it unlikely that there will be major progress in
developing regional standards.
Beth Simmons’s study (2009: 28) of international law in domestic politics
identifies three categories of governments on the question of why they ratify human
rights agreements: the “sincere ratifiers,” the “false negatives,” and the “strategic
ratifiers.” The first and third are fairly selfevident; some governments genuinely
support the rights covered by a particular treaty and expect to comply; others figure
that by ratifying they may avoid criticism or improve their reputations at least in the
short run. The United States illustrates the case of the “false negatives” in its long-
standing pattern of refusing (or being unable) to ratify a number of conventions such
as CEDAW and the Convention on the Rights of the Child despite its support for these
rights on account of domestic political or institutional challenges that prevent
ratification. The US federal system complicates implementation of international rights
treaties because the national government’s authority is constitutionally limited. The
death penalty, for example, is a matter for state courts in the United States.
With regard to commitment, it is useful to study the wide variations in patterns
of ratification of the various human rights treaties. The Convention on the Rights of
the Child has been ratified by all countries except the United States and Somalia; the
Convention on the Rights of Migrant Workers has been signed by only thirty-eight
countries and ratified by forty-seven as of 2014, more than a decade after it came into
force. Furthermore, what the table does not show are the numbers and types of
reservations that states have attached to their ratifications. Although more than 150
governments have ratified the Convention Against Torture, a significant number of
them did so with reservations; the same is true for CEDAW. Not surprisingly perhaps,
there are significant regional variations in the patterns of ratification, with the
European countries having the strongest records, since commitment to democratic
values and Western cultural mores are among the factors that tend to strengthen
commitment to human rights (Simmons 2009: 65–66).
The ability of treaties to contribute to changes in states’ behavior depends in
large part on domestic politics. Compliance may therefore take place through
domestic litigation and domestic executive and legislative processes by groups,
including human rights NGOs, lawyers, and civil society activists, to translate treaty
legal obligations into domestic law and practice and to aid the process of mobilizing
support for change (Simmons 2009: 129–149). Compliance may depend on the
presence of sympathetic NGOs. Emilie Hafner-Burton and Kiyoteru Tsutsui (2005),
for example, have found that state ratification of six core international human rights
treaties has led to changes in state practice if the issues covered by treaties are taken
up by local NGOs that mobilize around the new standards and can use the treaty
obligations to pressure governments. What both Hafner-Burton and Tsutsui (2005)
and Simmons (2009), among others, have demonstrated is that increased NGO
activity within a country, whether by local or transnational groups, or national and
subnational human rights institutions such as provincial human rights councils and
municipal ombudspersons, increases the likelihood that human rights treaties will
have a positive effect on local human rights practices.
State judicial practices also matter. Milli Lake (2014), for example, shows how
domestic and international actors have taken advantage of judicial processes in the
eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo to compile a startlingly
successful record in addressing rape and other sexual and gender-based violence in
that fragile state. Other studies point to cases where ratification of treaties has led to
significant changes in state behavior. Efforts by Turkey and Eastern European states
to comply with European human rights conventions to boost their applications for EU
membership illustrate the pull of compliance. As David Weissbrodt (2003: 89) aptly
put it, “Getting countries to toe the mark is only possible when there is a mark to toe.”
Over time, the UN and some regional bodies have moved incrementally from
articulating the standards to monitoring states’ behavior.
f. Global Human Rights and Humanitarian Governance in Action
Of the many human rights and humanitarian issues, four in particular—
genocide and ethnic cleansing, violence against women, LGBT rights, and refugees—
help to illustrate the strengths and successes, and the weaknesses and failures, of
global human rights governance in action.
Despite the rhetoric of “never again,” genocide continues to take the lives of
millions. The Holocaust of World War II was a key event, but genocides occurred
before (the Belgian Congo in the late nineteenth century, Armenia in 1915) and after
(East Pakistan, Cambodia, Iraq, Rwanda, Darfur, and South Sudan). Yet prior to 1944,
the term genocide did not exist. It was coined by a Polish lawyer, Raphael Lemkin, a
tireless advocate for recognition of the crime, although he did not live long enough to
see the UN’s Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide ratified by
his adopted country, the United States (Frieze 2013). The convention was drafted after
a laborious two-year process in ECOSOC’s Ad Hoc Committee on Genocide, and
unanimously adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948. The convention defines
the crime of genocide, lists the prohibited acts, and calls for punishment of the
perpetrators.
The Genocide Convention was rapidly signed and ratified and widely
recognized as a major advance in international human rights law. Yet how would it be
interpreted and enforced? For example, it does not specify how many people have to
be killed to constitute genocide, but only addresses the intention on the part of the
perpetrators to destroy a group of people “in whole or in part.” The convention
created no permanent treaty body to monitor situations or provide early warnings of
impending or actual genocide. And for many years it seemed to have little effect. The
international community ignored several situations that appeared to be genocide, such
as the “killing fields” of Cambodia, where almost one-third of the country’s
population died in the mid-1970s.
Three post–Cold War cases, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Darfur, illustrate the
dilemmas associated with application of the Genocide Convention. Were these cases
genocide? Was there a systematic attempt by one group to exterminate another group?
Or were these just brutal civil wars? If genocide was committed, the parties to the
convention were obligated to respond under Article I, but proving genocide is
problematic. Few perpetrators leave behind conclusive evidence of intent. In all of
these cases, the UN member states failed to act decisively to stop the killing.
During the Yugoslav civil war, the term ethnic cleansing was coined to refer to
systematic efforts by Croatia, the Bosnian Serbs, and Serbia itself to remove peoples
of another group from their territory, but not necessarily to wipe out the entire group
or part of it as specified in the Genocide Convention. In Bosnia, Muslim civilians
were forced by Serb troops to flee towns for Muslim areas within Bosnia or for
neighboring countries. Some were deported to neighboring Macedonia, while others
were placed in concentration camps. Sixty thousand Bosnian women were raped by
Serb forces. Croatia expelled Serbs from its territory, and Serbia expelled Kosovar
Albanians from Kosovo.
Investigators from the UN Commission on Human Rights, beginning in 1992,
reported “massive and grave violations of human rights” against the Bosnian Muslim
population. In the same year, the General Assembly condemned Serbia’s ethnic
cleansing of Bosnia’s Muslims as a form of genocide, while the ICJ began to consider
the specific case in 1993. A Commission of Experts created by the Security Council in
1993 conducted further investigations. Before its report was issued in 1995, the
Security Council established the ICTY, instituted an arms embargo on all parties, and
imposed trade sanctions on Serbia, condemning it for human rights violations. By
December 1995, when the Dayton Peace Accords were signed, the war had resulted in
200,000 deaths and millions of homeless, missing, or internally displaced persons.
Why didn’t the Security Council undertake more direct action? Was ethnic
cleansing in Bosnia equivalent to genocide? The UN Commission of Experts and the
Commission on Human Rights both said that Serbia had a conscious policy of
systematic genocide. Some states and NGOs, such as Doctors Without Borders,
disagreed. Still others maintained that all sides were guilty. The fact was that Security
Council members lacked the political will to stop the killing. In 2007, the ICJ
concluded that although Serbia failed to prevent the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, Serbia
neither committed genocide nor conspired nor was complicit in the act of genocide.
The judges pointed to insufficient proof of intentionality to destroy the Bosnians as a
whole or in part. The controversy continues, however. In 1999, Croatia filed suit
against Serbia over the genocide claims, and Serbia filed a countersuit in 2010.
Hearings finally began in 2014 and a decision was announced in 2015 that neither
Croatia nor Serbia had committed genocide against each other’s population during the
Balkan wars that followed the collapse of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. Crimes were
committed by both countries, but the intent to commit genocide had not been proven
against either, the court decided (ICJ Contentious Case 2015). The ICTY, however,
has long since ruled that genocide was committed in Bosnia when the UN safe haven
of Srebrenica was overrun by Bosnian Serb forces in 1995. And, in 2015, prosecutors
in Serbia began arresting persons suspected of having participated in the Srebrenica
massacre, widening the focus beyond highlevel personnel. These trials will be held in
Serbia itself—a first.
The evidence of genocide in Rwanda is much more definitive. In April 1994,
following the death of the Rwandan and Burundian presidents in a mysterious plane
crash, Hutu extremists in the Rwandan military and police began systematically
slaughtering the minority Tutsis as well as moderate Hutus in a campaign of violence
orchestrated by Radio Libres des Milles Collines. In a ten-week period, over 800,000
were killed out of a total Rwandan population of 7 million. Even before the plane
crash, reports from NGOs and UN peacekeepers warned that there were plans to
target the Tutsi population. In January 1994, General Romeo Dallaire’s warnings of an
impending genocide went unheeded at UN headquarters and his request for additional
UN troops to augment his small, 2,500-member peacekeeping force was denied.
Instead, he was forced to confine his activities to evacuating foreigners.
Why did the international community fail to respond? Samantha Power (2002)
traces the reasons for the US failure to take any action to selfserving caution and the
belief at first that the killings were merely “random tribal slaughter.” When evidence
mounted to the contrary, it was ignored and officials avoided using the term genocide,
knowing full well that if it was invoked, they would be forced to take action under the
terms of the Genocide Convention. Philip Gourevitch (1998) and Michael Barnett
(2002) place harshest blame on the UN, which they maintain should not have
withdrawn its peacekeepers when it did. Virtually all the key Security Council
members preferred taking no military action, and the Secretariat misunderstood and
ignored the problem. Other scholars have suggested that the genocide occurred so
fast, beginning in outlying areas, that the world could not have reliably known enough
or had the time to prevent it.
Beginning in 2003, thousands of people fled their homes in the western region
of Darfur in Sudan after attacks from government-backed Arab militias (the
Janjaweed) on a rebel uprising. Although the international community and UN
provided humanitarian relief, the Security Council issued only weak warnings to
Sudan, despite the efforts of some, including then–US secretary of state Colin Powell,
who labeled Darfur a case of genocide in 2004. Exact figures are hard to come by, but
estimates are that between 2003 and 2008, over 300,000 people were killed in Darfur,
2.3 million were displaced within the country, and another 250,000 fled, mostly to
neighboring Chad. Large numbers of villages were destroyed and more than 3 million
people were dependent on international humanitarian aid. The situation drew the
attention of celebrities such as George Clooney and sparked a “Save Darfur” media
campaign to raise awareness of the little-known region and to press governments to
act. With both China and Russia opposing coercive measures against Sudan, the
Security Council referred the case to the ICC in 2005 and supported a small AU
monitoring force. Only in 2007, with Sudan’s consent, was the stronger hybrid UN-
AU peacekeeping force (UNAMID) approved, and until 2009 it looked like conflict
had diminished and displaced people were returning home. While levels of violence in
Darfur did diminish for a time, when the ICC in 2010 issued a second arrest warrant
against Sudan’s President Bashir, violence flared in retaliation against humanitarian
aid groups and workers. Neither the peace agreement between North and South Sudan
nor the 2011 referendum supporting the South’s secession have led to the permanent
cessation of violence.
All three cases demonstrate the failure to enforce the international norm
prohibiting genocide despite the evidence that genocide was occurring. The fact that
two of the cases occurred in Africa, a continent already rife with ethnic and racial
strife, provides some explanation. Were these just examples of brutal civil wars or
were they truly genocides? Was racism itself a factor in the failures to respond
adequately? The cases also point to the practical limitations to taking action against
massive human rights violations. Timing (close to the Somalia debacle) and location
proved critical in the Rwanda case; remoteness has been a factor in the Darfur case, as
it has in the case of interethnic violence bordering on genocide in the newly
independent South Sudan and in the Central African Republic in 2014. In all three
cases, the UN Security Council’s P-5 had competing priorities and therefore lacked
the political will to act. To compensate for the UN’s own institutional weaknesses and
lack of an early warning mechanism, the UN Office of the Special Adviser on the
Prevention of Genocide was established in 2004 to collect information on potential
future genocides and make recommendations to the Security Council on actions to
prevent or halt genocide, albeit too late to prevent “never again” in any of these cases.
And other cases of possible genocide continue to occur. In early 2015, for example,
the UNHCHR reported that ISIS may have committed genocide and war crimes
against the minority Yazidi community in Iraq and called for the Security Council to
refer the case to the ICC.
