HUMAN RIGHTS IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
David P Forsythe
To appreciate the merits and shortcomings of this book – intended as a textbook for students of International Relations – it has to be read against the backdrop of the so-called fourth debate in International Relations, namely that of rationalist versus reflectivist theories.
Forsythe, a self-professed neo-liberalist, takes a strictly rationalist approach with the consequent benefit of providing the reader with a straightforward, to-the-point analysis of the legal, diplomatic and organisational changes in international relations with respect to human rights since 1945. He devotes the first two chapters to describing and explaining how current international human rights standards have evolved. The next six chapters show how these standards are implemented at the global level (through UN bodies and international criminal courts), the regional level (by the EU, NATO, OSCE, OAS and the OAU), the national level (through state foreign policy) and the sub-national level (by human rights groups and transnational corporations). The essential theme with which the reader is confronted is that “the notion of human rights is here to stay in international relations, human rights as soft law is important and pervasive, private actors … play a very large role, and state sovereignty is not what it used to be”.
Although Forsythe masterly illustrates these themes through examples and case studies that would appeal to both the International Relations and Law student, his overall approach succumbs to the classical rationalist shortcomings of assuming Western superiority in international relations and avoiding the ethical-philosophical debate, except for mentioning “the tip of the iceberg of (human rights) controversies” in the last chapter. In an attempt to steer clear of the (granted) sometimes, circular cultural relativism argument in human rights discourse, Forsythe does not pay due attention to the impact of non-Western values on the evolution and implementation of human rights standards.
As a textbook, scholars will find this book a valuable (empirical) introduction to the study of human rights in international relations, but an introduction that needs to be supplemented by reflectivist interpretations, such as post-modernism, feminism, normative theory and critical theory. The provocative discussion questions and reading lists at the end of each chapter can certainly be used by innovative scholars to induce critical thinking on a subject that, by nature, lends itself to the normative.
Joelien Pretorius
Centre for International Political Studies
THE IMPACT OF WAR ON CHILDREN
Graça Machel
The Impact of War on Children by Graça Machel is the follow-up to a comprehensive 1996 report for the UN Secretary-General, which outlines the ways in which war affects children. Mrs Machel was appointed to write the report by the Secretary-General following the adoption of resolution 48/157 in 1993. The 2001 update of this report is a 230-page book with photographs that will obviously enjoy a much wider distribution that its predecessor, reflecting the ‘mainstreaming’ of children’s rights issues into the broader reading society. Mainstreaming essentially describes the process by which the issue has become a regular feature in the workings of the UN Security Council, in UN peacekeeping, politics and policy, conflict prevention, resolution, peace building and humanitarian assistance. The UN General Assembly was scheduled to hold the first Special Session on Children in September 2001, but this was postponed indefinitely after the events of September 11.
The notion of war waged on children appals most people, and it is unthinkable that they should be intentionally targeted in warfare. What this book aims to illustrate is that, by suffering disproportionately in conflict, children become the vanquished, intentionally or otherwise. Regardless of the origins or type of conflict (case studies from the Philippines, Iraq and Sierra Leone are included), wars ultimately are waged on children and not in spite of them. It is for this reason that this emotive book delves only briefly into the origins of conflict and offers no apologies for the strict application of international law and standards in protecting children.
Mention is made of progress in international law on child protection since 1996 (Chapter 12), with the most important advances cited as the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict (which prohibits the participation of children under the age of 18 in armed conflict); the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement; the Convention on the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction; the International Labour Organisation Convention No. 182 on the Immediate Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour; and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which makes the conscription or enlistment of children under the age of 15 into national armed forces or using them to participate actively in hostilities, punishable as a war crime. Mrs Machel is a realist, however, and points out that despite these developments, children’s rights “continue to be violated in situations of armed conflict and an unacceptably high degree of impunity for such violations and abuses remains” (p 150).
The book expands on the 1996 report with additional chapters on HIV/AIDS, small arms and light weapons, women and the peace process, media and communications and peace and security. The chapter on HIV/AIDS is extremely important as it finally begins to delve into the links between conflict and the spread of HIV/AIDS where others have made only vague references, despite a growing awareness that the epidemic presents a global security challenge. The chapter on media and communications focuses on the uses of these in conflict prevention, human rights monitoring, peace building and peacekeeping, but also offers an important section on protecting children from media exploitation. Mrs Machel draws attention to cases where “in the effort to publicise a relief programme or organisation, or even to make a political point, ex-child soldiers have been asked to pose with guns”. Similarly, she points out: “humanitarian organisations have been known to comply with requests from film-makers and journalists to talk to ‘younger girls’ who have been raped or children with ‘more traumatic’ stories”. She goes on to warn of the danger of distorting the reality of conflict situations through inaccurate representation of the involvement of children in conflict. The book itself heeds this warning by not belabouring the unfortunately sensationalised issue of child soldiers and instead placing them within the context of millions of other less photogenic victims of war.
The text is punctuated with short case studies illustrating children’s experiences in conflict in a way that reminds us that, although cultures, circumstances and notions of childhood differ, children’s social space is rarely safeguarded in warfare. But Mrs. Machel also points out that practical interventions can make an enormous difference in alleviating the suffering of not only children but also communities as a whole. The notion of carrying on schooling, for example, in the midst of chaos, forced flight and hunger might seem like a mistake of priorities, but experience has shown that the sense of purpose and hope afforded by schooling in emergency contexts creates community cohesion that is a step toward restoring that space. Similarly, forced military recruitment of children can be reduced by measures as basic as birth registration, by holding governments accountable to their legal commitments. ‘Days of tranquillity’, or brief, informal cease-fires, have been honoured in conflict zones to enable the safe passage of humanitarian assistance to vulnerable people. The book concludes with a summary of such practical recommendations based on each of the chapters.
The Impact of War on Children is an essential primer for anyone working in conflict resolution, peacekeeping, peace building and humanitarian assistance. It will also be a powerful advocacy tool, hopefully used to remind those who write off the impacts of armed conflict on the young as collateral damage that war might just as well be waged against children themselves.
DIALOGUE AMONG CIVILISATION
A PARADIGM FOR PEACE
Theo Bekker & Joelien Pretorius (Eds)
This book comprises an introductory chapter by Theo Bekker and Joelien Pretorius from the University of Pretoria, followed by several edited essays by Iranian President Mohammad Khatami. The essays reflect the ideal to enter into dialogue with Western nations. They express the need and rationalisation for such dialogue in order to move from a state of war/non-war to genuine international co-operation and accommodation of social and historical differences (pp 14-21), dialogue in a new millennium and the practice of such dialogue among civilisations (pp 22-36), the role of religion, tradition, modernity and development and the debate in an East-West perspective (pp 37-62).
Conservatives, liberals and post-modernists may not like, and may even despise, the work as it departs from a realistic account non-Westerners’ experience and continues to experience under Western domination. But the work also presents pointers towards solutions to this problem, ie., attaining economic justice and political equality.
Khatami, educated among others in Sorbonne, France reflects a generation of Muslim leaders who not only defend Muslim Republicanism (and its implied version of democracy), but who wish to enter into serious dialogue with First World (Western) democracies. It is written at a time when such attempts to facilitate communicative interaction between the Third World and the First World is perhaps at its lowest. Conservative Western theorists such as Samuel Huntington have relinquished the notion of “political order in changing societies” for a perceived “clash amongst civilisations”, without relinquishing conservatism in defence of Western domination of the global economy. It also comes at a time when settlement in the Middle East seems further away than ever before, as hardliners increasingly dominate the state of Israel, backed by the United States (US).
It also comes at a time when the world has left behind Cold War bi-polarism, and where multi-polarism is advocated while in reality the US has become a dominating force in an increasingly uni-polar world with seemingly little international resistance. The recent nearly unilateral aggression against the state of Afghanistan and Afghan citizens by the government of the US without UN consultation under the pretext that the Taliban regime was undemocratic and evil, testifies to that. Since the Vietnam War, overt and covert aggression by the US in the Far East (Vietnam, Cambodia), the Middle East (Iraq) and Latin American countries has caused the death of approximately eight million people.
Khatami’s work is the result of an initiative taken by the Centre for International Political Studies (CIPS) at the University of Pretoria and the Iranian Embassy in South Africa. Khatami’s plea is for dialogue and accommodation – and per implication, tolerance towards various forms of social identities and democracies. This should be facilitated through dialogue and reasoning aimed at global reconstruction. The meta-text for such a plea is found in the theory of communicative interaction (Jürgen Habermas), as well as cultural tolerance and economic justice. The theoretical framework is not spelled out in detail, as the book is an attempt at a popular accessible publication.
In the introductory chapter, the editors contextualise the attempt from an African/South African perspective in arguing that South Africa succeeded in a negotiated transition through dialogue and accommodation. They point out that the spirit and practice of ubuntu may have played an important role in this, and suggest that such an attitude may facilitate global dialogue.
Khatami’s reasoning reminds one of ex-Soviet President Michael Gorbatchev’s attempts at national and international perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness). The end result, however, led to an even more unequal society in Russia with increasing poverty and inequality. Internationally, it led to the loss of status and international influence for the Soviet Union and the paralysis of contending economic pathways towards international equality, resulting in a uni-polar world dominated by the West.
The South African experience has, however, shown that dialogue between unequal partners does not succeed. Negotiations between adversaries in South Africa only took place after the armed struggle, international isolation and eventual political stalemate achieved some balance of forces. For exactly the same reason some conflict resolution experts and mediation practitioners opted for ‘biased intervention’ in order to get the government incumbents and political contenders in South Africa to the negotiation table.
Resistance against uni-polarism and one-sidedly driven globalisation (not to mention US-led Western domination) is not new. Khatami’s plea came at a time when anti-globalisation lobbies and other groups took to more violent means – the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre (911), a nerve centre of capitalism, being one example. In what can at best be described as a harsh message to American captains of industry, Hollywood flew home and post-modernism could not solve the equation. The violent opponents have shown that rather than Maoist or Clausiwitschian strategies, there was no need for total war, but rather the beginning of a long-winded Sun Tsu–like resistance struggle against uni-polarism. Following the 911 attacks, Noam Chomsky rightly remarked that such an attack calls for reflection before unheeded action or else … worse was to come.
The US as a super-power reacted predictably. Rather than reflecting on the causes of their global unpopularity, they resorted to the projection of extreme violence against a poor state with a suspended state and the civilian population, as they have been doing countless times since 1954. As argued by Seleoane:
“If there (was) a possible mission to achieve, it would remain legitimate to enquire whether the US is best placed to asses what constitutes evil and what does not. Many (think of) the US as a singularly decadent society [without trying to recall their acts of aggression of weaker states] … Afghanistan had a tiny ‘Third World’ army. It was from the beginning no match in military terms for the US, even if the latter undertook the military action alone. The ganging up of Britain and the US against Afghanistan means that the force brought to bear on Afghanistan is disproportionate to any threat that Afghanistan [may] might pose ... this war both in itself and the way in which it is being conducted, cannot be morally justified.”
But moral issues aside: war is seldom waged on moral principles. George F Kennan, an American security specialist, argued in the 1970s that Soviet aggression and expansionism (read: global policeman mentality and imperial methods) was to increase as the Soviet economy was winding down towards a standstill. The Soviets were, according to Kennan, going to project military power increasingly outwards as the Soviet political status and economic capacity dwindles.
A long-time peace activist, Rob Robertson, following Prof. Walter Wink, argues that “it is when major powers are almost beaten that they unleash brutal responses” – as the US did in Afghanistan, one may wish to add. Wink’s observations are relevant here.
If Kennan was correct in his observations on the Soviet Union in the 1970s, the same theory will equally apply to the US of the 1990s and the early 2000, namely, a declining economy and the increasing realisation of failing stature are imperatively turned into military projection and international aggression. Needless to say, this leads to increasing international isolation and internal alienation of citizens due to authoritarianisation of the state. Further, increased resistance by the victims and their associates against such authoritarian projection of international force.
Khatami appeals to a dwindling group of people in the ‘Third world’ and those who think that the current global inequalities can be solved through dialogue and negotiation –even mediation. He may be morally correct in his appeal, but many will argue that he is misleading himself and others when he refers to this dialogue as if this is one of dialogue between equals.
Either way, Khatami will probably be vindicated by the fact that he appeals to reason, debate and tolerance while worse is to come in the fight against supporters of uni-polarism and their reactionary militaristic actions against smaller states and peoples.
The book is more than worthwhile reading and a must have for those interested in globalisation and the debates surrounding it.
Ian Liebenberg
University of South Africa (Unisa)
INTERNATIONAL LAW CONCERNING CHILD CIVILIANS IN ARMED CONFLICT
Jenny Kuper, Clarendon Press, 1997
War and armed conflict has enormous negative social consequences for children. Caught up in a community at war, children are often left to fend for themselves without the support structures that exist during times of peace. International law tries to regulate the way that wars are fought and a large body of law exists, which aims to minimise the exposure of children to war’s harsh reality. The list of relevant charters, declarations, protocols, conventions and covenants is long, and shows just how intricate and extensive this section of international law is.
Jenny Kuper’s book is a guide to these, and according to the publisher, the first major international legal text “to focus exclusively on child civilians”.
Kuper addresses three main questions in the book: which laws are applicable and how they are implemented; how effective the laws are; and finally, whether the laws can be improved.
The answers to these questions are sometimes complex, but are presented in a format that, while often full of legal jargon and long footnotes, can still be understood by a lay reader.
International law aspires to high ideals but the distance between those aims and the reality that children face is often immense. Much has been achieved in the field of international law since 1945 but many may wonder how much it has helped those at the sharp end of war. Some high profile cases, usually to do with war crimes, have received much attention but the remaining legislation is seldom the subject of international decisions.
As Kuper notes, there is broad global recognition that children, because they represent the future generation and because they are often defenceless, merit special treatment and protection. Beyond this, states’ views diverge. Some states accept further obligations towards children without having the resources to implement them. Other states happily sign and ratify the international or regional agreements without the intention of ever abiding by them. The relatively weak international system can do little more than rely on the media, civil society and diplomatic pressure to encourage the application of this law. International courts are used infrequently and seldom on issues of child rights.
The section on monitoring, implementation and enforcement of the relevant laws will be particularly helpful to those, especially NGOs, whose work it is to influence those who break the law. The large number of monitoring mechanisms is perhaps testimony to the weakness of the implementation and enforcement aspects. All sorts of councils, reports and committees have been established, many of them without real power, to encourage compliance.
The bureaucracy that has developed is, however, not without advantages. It provides a useful focus point for the often erratic international efforts and manages to sustain the programmes independent of individual states.
The complexity of the legal mechanisms and the precise manner in which tribunals and committees go about their work is in stark contrast to the violations. Children’s rights abuses are sometimes unexpected, frequently violent and happen suddenly. The application of the law only happens years later, in a setting remote from the victims and then only if enough political will exists to see the effort through to the end. Detailed public monitoring by agencies such as Amnesty International has the positive effect of being an early warning system of worse to come.
The response to monitoring is not consistent though. Policymakers are more likely to follow television cameras’ lead than the strict application of the law to all current conflicts.
The use of chemical weapons against the Iraqi Kurds in 1987 and 1988 is one of the examples Kuper chooses to assess the ‘engine’ of the relevant body of law; to test its response in the field. In this case, the Kurds were theoretically protected by some of the most respected laws concerning children: the Geneva Conventions, the prohibition of genocide, the Hague Conventions and even customary law. Kurdish children suffered the dire consequences of President Hussein’s internal policies and thousands died. International responses were weak and the attacks seem to have ended mainly because they had achieved their sordid aim.
This case is perhaps an extreme one but it does highlight the extent to which a state can completely disregard what are thought to be respected legal instruments designed to safeguard the next generation from aggression. In fact, Kuper’s notes on the number of child deaths within Iraq as a result of the Gulf War show how some states are willing to undertake military action knowing, or at least suspecting, that its own child citizens will die, not in a military campaign, but as a result of the ensuing sanctions.
Recommendations for the improvement of the legal instruments form the final section. Many are not new but could be improved, such as protection zones and safe corridors. Others are optimistic and bureaucratic: liaison groups and special rapporteurs.
The book will succeed in making the law better known to those who consult it. Indeed, those who do, will be aware that each new conflict seems to break more, newer laws and conventions than ever before.
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