CNN Newsroom: Global View

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ CNN Newsroom: Global View / CNN Newsroom: Global View.iso / wld / wld.po2 < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1994-05-06 | 53KB | 1,049 lines

<text> <title> World: Human Rights Watch </title> <article> <hdr> Human Rights Watch World Report 1992 Introduction </hdr> <body> 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Sovereignty and Human Rights 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. But sovereignty gave way to human rights in a number of less dramatic ways as well. -- 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. -- 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. -- 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. -- 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. -- 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. -- 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. 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. 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. Human Rights as an Element of Peace and Stability 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. The recognition that respect for human rights promotes peace shaped international policy in several countries in 1991. The most si