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<text>
<title>
Human Rights Watch World Report: Introduction
</title>
<article>
<hdr>
Human Rights Watch World Report 1992
Introduction
</hdr>
<body>
<p> Nineteen ninety-one was a year in which the discourse of
human rights gained greater acceptance than ever before. The
tired formula that the way governments treat their own citizens
is an internal affair, not the appropriate subject of
international discussion, lost resonance even among the
governments most resistant to international scrutiny. Even so
sacred a notion as the inviolability of borders--the essence
of sovereignty--gave way to a growing insistence that the most
extreme abuses could not remain immune from humanitarian
intervention. Several efforts to fashion peace also reflected
the emerging recognition that human rights must be at the center
of a secure and stable world order.
</p>
<p> Despite this increased acceptance, however, respect for
human rights faces a dangerous challenge in the rise of
exclusionary ideologies. Now that the Cold War's proxy conflicts
are winding down, the quest for ethnic, linguistic or religious
purity, pursued by growing numbers, lies behind much of today's
bloodshed. By closing the community to diversity and stripping
outsiders of essential rights, these dangerous visions of
enforced conformity nourish a climate of often brutal
intolerance.
</p>
<p> At the same time, democracy itself faces an important
challenge. Just as the breakup of the Soviet Union finds
opponents of totalitarianism pronouncing victory, more and more
governments are attempting to claim that they are democratic
merely because they hold periodic elections. Fearful of the
unrestrained exercise of the freedoms of speech and association,
such governments have sought to cripple the institutions of
civil society that might provide a vehicle for an organized
challenge to their power.
</p>
<p> It is a source of disappointment that the Bush Administration
has responded to these challenges by downgrading the
significance of human rights in the formulation of U.S. foreign
policy. On occasion, when other interests did not stand in the
way, the Administration defended human rights. Examples include
Bulgaria, Honduras and Suriname, where the Administration has
spoken out against human rights violations, and Burma and Kenya,
where it backed such criticism with economic sanctions. But
when competing interests arose--conducting business with
China, fighting drug-trafficking in Peru, maintaining warm
relations with Saudi oil sheikhs, pursuing a limited vision of
Arab-Israeli peace, or avoiding politically embarrassing
questions about why the United States went to war to restore the
Kuwaiti emir--human rights took a back seat at the White
House.
</p>
<p> The sad irony is that this policy of devaluation has become
entrenched at a time when U.S. influence is exceedingly high.
Rather than use that influence to insist that human rights are
a critical element of a "new world order," the Administration
maintains a short-sighted vision of national interest, too ready
to sacrifice the pursuit of human rights if it is not cost- and
conflict-free.
</p>
<p>Sovereignty and Human Rights
</p>
<p> Fortunately, the worldwide trend was in the opposite
direction, with increasing acceptance that respect for human
rights is a legitimate international concern. The most dramatic
example of the breakdown of sovereignty as a defense for human
rights violators occurred when the U.N. Security Council
authorized the creation of a security zone in northern Iraq to
protect the Kurdish population from massive reprisal by Saddam
Hussein's forces. The action represented the first time that the
international community had formally limited a sovereign
nation's authority over its own territory essentially on human
rights grounds.
</p>
<p> But sovereignty gave way to human rights in a number of less
dramatic ways as well.
</p>
<p>-- The Organization of American States (OAS), traditionally a
staunch defender of sovereignty after decades of big-stick U.S.
diplomacy in the hemisphere, resolved in June to convene
immediately if any democratically elected government were
overthrown in a military coup. The first test came in late
September, with the ouster of Haiti's first freely elected
president, the popular and populist Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The
OAS responded with unprecedented resolve, imposing an economic
embargo and vowing to maintain it until President Aristide is
restored to power.
</p>
<p>-- In September, in the face of a disintegrating situation in
Yugoslavia, the thirty-eight-state Conference on Security and
Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) dropped its traditional insistence
on unanimity to permit the sending of a human rights
fact-finding mission to a member state without securing the
state's formal consent.
</p>
<p>-- An armed force created by the Economic Community of West
African States continued its intervention between the warring
factions in Liberia. Begun in August 1990, this military
presence and subsequent diplomatic efforts were critical in
curbing the carnage and abuse of that conflict.
</p>
<p>-- The U.N. General Assembly in November took the unprecedented
step of unanimously adopting a resolution rebuking by name a
member state--Myanmar (Burma)--for human rights abuses. The
lack of dissent meant that even such hard-line opponents of
international scrutiny as Cuba and China did not oppose the
emerging consensus. Indeed, China felt it necessary to issue a
White Paper on its own human rights practices which at least
gave lip service to the legitimacy of human rights as a topic
of debate.
</p>
<p>-- Then-Soviet Foreign Minister Boris Pankin, in his September
speech to the Moscow CSCE conference, explicitly rejected the
long-time Soviet position that international criticism of its
human rights record constituted interference in its internal
affairs.
</p>
<p>-- The European Community and several of its member states have
announced that development aid would be linked to the recipient
government's respect for human rights. Even Japan, long
resistant to the notion, has articulated a similar policy.
</p>
<p> There were, of course, exceptions to this trend. The
Organization of African Unity continues to refuse to take up
human rights violations by its member states, and to diffuse
international efforts to scrutinize abuses by those states. The
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was outspoken in
its hostility to international human rights scrutiny. The
fifty-nation Commonwealth made substantial reference to human
rights at its 1991 heads-of-government meeting but continued
to neglect the matter in practice.
</p>
<p> Still, a trend could be discerned throughout the year of
significantly greater acceptance of human rights as a legitimate
topic of international concern. Given the violent disintegration
at year's end of Yugoslavia and Somalia, there in all likelihood
will be a continuing need to examine whether sovereignty can be
a basis for forgoing international efforts to prevent major
human rights abuse.
</p>
<p>Human Rights as an Element of Peace and Stability
</p>
<p> Human rights also gained growing recognition as a vital
element of peace and stability. The realpolitik view of world
order in which relations between states are determined by power
and self-interest, without concern for such "internal" matters
as how a state treats its citizens, gave way fitfully but
steadily to a broader understanding that security is not simply
a question of armed might but depends on a foundation of respect
for human rights. The need to readjust this understanding became
increasingly apparent with the August 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
If the international community previously had challenged Saddam
Hussein to temper his cruelty at home, it seems doubtful that
he would have risked brutalizing the citizens of a neighboring
state.
</p>
<p> The recognition that respect for human rights promotes peace
shaped international policy in several countries i