INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS
"Would you have me argue than man is entitled to liberty?" (Frederick Douglass)

    Although the 20th century can be said to have been the time when the idea of international human rights arose, earlier interest existed among academic and philosophic circles as to whether "natural" rights existed at all (see review by Hart 1955), and the ancients came close to the idea with the Roman concept of jus gentium (rules common to all civilized societies).  The Magna Carta of 1215 is usually pointed to as the first appearance of "individual rights" and the English Bill of Rights (1689) is usually pointed to as the first modern step toward "human rights" (Robertson 2003).  A special role in history should also be reserved for natural law theory (the Lockean argument -- based on John Locke's 1689 Two Treatises of Government -- that human beings in the state of nature are free and equal, and when they enter society they surrender only such rights as are necessary for their security and the common good, retaining those fundamental prerogatives relating to human dignity and property).  Natural law theory did not originate with Locke, but his argument should be seen as an argument over the ages for a human rights-based conception of justice, so compelling an argument, in fact, that it formed the philosophical basis for two revolutions: the American and French.  Thomas Jefferson used natural law theory to justify his trinity of "inalienable rights" (life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) in the U.S. Declaration of Independence.  Note that Jefferson substituted the "pursuit of happiness" for "property" to avoid stringent British conceptions of the latter term, appear less legalistic, and convey pretty much the same idea since several state constitutions at the time; e.g., Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire, were uniting the ideas of happiness and property.  It should be noted there are many other sources of the concept of human rights besides this standard Western version, and it doesn't really matter what it takes (religion, philosophy, or common sense) to make people believe it's in their own self interest to care about human rights as long as they realize that "Rights are what make us human. Chairs and tables don't have rights....It's just the moral thing to do" (Schultz 2002).   

    Critics of the Western version usually argue that human rights are part of positive law's attempt to reshape all nations into some kind of Western mold for the sake of economic progress.  In fact, the opposite can be argued.  Human rights law can be seen as much like natural law's opposition to positive law.  Positive law, in this sense, refers to the idea that rights only exist in the context of whatever legal validity a sovereign authority possesses, and that rights have no necessary or essential connection with morality or justice.  Human rights law is just the opposite in having an essential connection with morality and justice.  Although it is a matter of debate as to the place of human rights as part of customary law or jus cogens in relation to sovereignty, most scholars (except the most secular ones who only see impersonal norms) do agree that human rights are essentially connected to notions of morality and justice (the debate over religious or metaphysical foundations notwithstanding).  However, debates over human rights involve more than debates between natural law versus legal positivism, and between religion versus secularism.  In today's world, there are at least three pressing issues: (1) whether any recognized international mechanism or regime exists as an authority for defining and/or enforcing human rights; (2) whether human rights trump sovereignty, enabling "coalition of the willing" interventions on moral grounds in the name of humanity; and (3) whether certain Middle Eastern, African or Asian "Third Way" conceptions have any utility in the attempt at rapid economic development by putting human rights issues aside.  Each of these three issue areas are equally important, and we'll deal first with the sovereignty debate, and then turn to an understanding of what international human rights are all about.

    Sovereignty is the number one reason for rejecting international human rights.  As the argument goes, human rights should have nothing to do with foreign policy (Vincent 1986).  Concern for human rights injects morality and ethics into the field of international affairs and interferes with the rational pursuit of power and national interest.  As Kennan (1985) puts it, morality is pacta sunt servanda (private contracts must be respected), a fundamental principle of international law, but one that must not come into conflict with other interests that may be more important than the defense of human rights in particular circumstances.  International relations is structured around the principle of sovereignty, which means that what a state does with respect to its own nationals on its own territory is a matter of sovereign jurisdiction and thus of no legitimate concern to other states.  However, over the last 50 years, an extensive body of human rights law has developed, accepted by states on the basis of custom and treaty.  Sovereignty may very well only be the starting point of international law; human rights law may be its future.  The debate over whether human rights trump sovereignty depends upon how you define terms like "interests" and "values."  I would argue that not all interests are matters of power; and not all values are someone else's values.  Values concerning human rights are the professed values shared by all of humanity.  In the secular sense, they are authoritative, preemptory norms.  Hence, they trump sovereignty.  It would be the most perverse act of elitism or racism to stand idly by and watch human rights abuses happen when we hold these professed values to be self-evident ("inalienable" to use the language of the American tradition).  Active international involvement is necessary, not on grounds of some haughty moral superiority, but because of the duty to act (on values or principle), in a calm, dispassionate manner on the basis of what we know we believe in.  George Washington's Farewell Address is instructive on this point.

   WHAT ARE INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS? 

    The best place to begin is with the Universal Declaration model.  The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948, is a proclamation, not a treaty or international agreement, and as such, is not a legally binding document, but serves as the foundation for two legally-binding UN human rights covenants (treaties):  the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (CESCR), ratified by the US Senate in 1977; and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (CCPR), ratified by the US Senate in 1992.  Although there are seven major human rights treaties besides these two Covenants (the other five dealing with racial discrimination, discrimination against women, torture, the rights of children, and the rights of migrant workers) as well as numerous other "instruments" in various stages of ratification (see UN High Commissioner's List of Human Rights Instruments), the UDHR, CESCR & CCPR together constitute the main legal foundation in human rights law, and more importantly, permit a listing of all substantive rights that have been expressly enumerated, upheld, and/or elaborated in almost all other documents.  This substantive list of rights is presented below, and it is important to note that they are to be treated as an indivisible whole, not some sort of menu from which one may pick and choose.  Following Donnelly's (2003) method of abbreviation, symbols after each right refer to which Article in each instrument the right is mentioned (U for UDHR; E for CESCR; and C for CCPR).

ENFORCEMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION ISSUES

    Every human rights treaty is associated with a treaty body (commission), which meets regularly in Geneva and is responsible for monitoring compliance.  For the CESCR (E) & CCPR (C), those bodies are called the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Human Rights Committee, respectively.  Monitoring takes place in three ways: (1) analysis of reports which all states parties are required by the treaties to produce at various intervals; (2) investigation of individual complaints; and (3) in the case of where grave concerns exist, through a special UN mission to a country.  The process for filing an individual complaint is well described at places like Bayefsky.com, and it should be noted that for the treaties we are talking about, only the CCPR allows a complaint process, and even then, only through an additional treaty called the Optional Protocol to the CCPR (although most states have signed the CCPR, not all states have signed off on the Optional Protocol -- Note, the United States has not signed off on the Optional Protocol and therefore doesn't participate in the complaint process, and it should be further noted that there is a more recent Second Optional Protocol which aims to eliminate the death penalty worldwide).  Complaints may be sent to a committee via the High Commissioner by using official forms, and once received, such complaints are usually referred to as "communications."  Other UN terminology exists (sometimes complaints are called applications or petitions), and specific kinds of complaints may trigger different treaties and procedures.  For example, torture triggers a separate treaty and what is called an Article 22 procedure (but less than a third of the world's nations have signed off on the torture treaty); and racial discrimination triggers a separate treaty and an Article 14 procedure (also a situation where few nations have signed off).  Most complaints, however, are handled by the Optional Protocol to the CCPR and its main workhorse, the Human Rights Committee, which has established certain due process, procedural rules.  However, CESCR and other committees are sometimes involved through ECOSOC (Economic and Social Council) resolution 1503 procedures which authorize the discrete and somewhat confidential production of a "black list" of countries where a consistent pattern of gross and reliably attested human rights violations have been found.  The Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM) Databases is one such repository where the UNCOM database (under Case Law) provides the quickest way to access Country Reports (by Searching This Database by typing in the country's name).   

    Most UN due process procedures follow the Human Rights Committee model where arguments on both the admissibility and merits of a communications are heard in a format similar to the way most legal cases are handled; e.g., Smith v. Italy, or Jones v. Honduras, etc., but the atmosphere is decidedly less pro forma.  Cases dealing with the same issue can be joined, or handled jointly.  To date, there have been about 1400 cases heard involving a total of 77 countries, with the record indicating whether cases are "living" or "concluded" along with a view (also called opinion or decision) of the commission as to whether a violation exists or not.  Many cases are found to be inadmissible for a number of reasons (no standing, jurisdictional problems, complaint was anonymous, failure to exhaust state remedies, same complaint over and over again).  A finding of violation usually carries with it a recommendation for what the state should do, usually a recommendation for how it can modify or improve its domestic legal system.  These views and recommendations are not legally binding, and there are no sanctions for non-implementation of committee views.  The committee's views are authoritative, however, and many states do in fact cooperate by providing remedies at least to the complainants involved.  States which don't cooperate usually have to deal with constant intervention by one of the committee's members called a "special rapporteur" who keeps following-up in a kind of enhanced monitoring for compliance.  This is usually in addition to a variety of IGOs and NGOs (Human Rights Watch being a prominent organization of note) which inundate the country with representatives or investigators and cooperate heavily with special rapporteurs.  The mechanism of an appointed special rapporteur has worked out quite well for the UN, and is used in a variety of areas, especially those areas where no Optional Protocol mechanism exists.  A partial listing would include the Special Rapporteur for Indigenous Rights, Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Special Rapporteur on Torture, Special Rapporteur on Children, Special Rapporteur on Food, Special Rapporteur on Disability, and Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression.  Because a lot of countries don't participate in the Optional Protocol, the following list should NOT be considered any kind of guide to human rights violators, only an indicator of activity by the Human Rights Committee (for OP Complaints) and the UN Commission on Human Rights (for Country Mechanisms).

     The UN High Commissioner's Office is also tasked with voicing concerns about implementation of the human rights treaties.  These are usually expressed as "general comments" on the meaning or interpretation of various Articles in the treaties.  On the Internet can be found a List of All General Comments, but some examples follow for illustration purposes (and from these illustrations, you should get some idea of the tremendous variety of cultural conceptions worldwide regarding things like what progress means, diversity in conceptions of property, health, education, and even food):

• making progress or "taking steps" is the language used in many treaties, but such phrases mean to act in French and to adopt in Spanish, so there is a need to comment on exactly what these phrases mean, along with phrases like "by all appropriate means," in terms which make it clear that "deliberate, concrete and targeted" legislative action is needed

• forced eviction needs clarification that it involves the non-acceptance of rent or damage to rented property

• health needs to be defined in accordance with WHO definitions, which conceptualize health as "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity"

• education needs to clarified that this empowerment right includes the practical elements of availability, accessibility, acceptability and adaptability, or the goal of receiving an education which furthers political participation and not just allows the mind to wander freely, although that by itself is one of the joys of human existence

• the human right to food applies to everyone, not just to "himself" or the male as head of household; it does not imply any limitation upon the applicability of this right to other family members or to female-headed households

    Short of military intervention (invasion), what can be done to enforce and implement human rights falls into two categories: (1) economic sanctions; and (2) verbal condemnations.  Luard (1981) tried to come up with a full list of options: e.g., confidential representations; joint representations; public statements; calls for investigation; cancellation of ministerial visits; restrictions on cultural and sporting events; embargoes on arms sales; reductions in aid; withdrawal of ambassadors; breaking diplomatic relations; trade sanctions; support for legal opposition groups; and support for nonviolent opposition groups.  Economic sanctions (divestiture) worked pretty well against South Africa's Apartheid during the 1980s, but that might have been the exception rather than rule.  Experience as well as empirical evidence (see Carleton & Stohl 1985 or Poe 1990) have shown that there just isn't that strong a link between negative economic sanctions and positive improvements in human rights (Note: rewards for rights-protective states might work better than punishments for rights-abusive states).  This leaves words, or verbal condemnation, as the only thing left, where the hope is that symbolic action will eventually result in material action -- and this does happen, sometimes, but only indirectly, after vocalness or global attention leads to an increase in local human rights activism (as well as an influx of foreign human rights activism).  Ultimately, this is as it should be, because the only people who really have a legitimate standing to force a government to change its ways are those people whose very own, personal human rights are at stake.  

WHEN AND WHERE HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS OCCUR

    Perhaps the best illustration of a human rights violation is the pervasive example of a political prisoner (Hagan 1998).  Not much of a scholarly nature has been written on the topic, but from the many memoirs published, it is believed that thousands of political prisoners are arrested, imprisoned, tortured, murdered, or abandoned throughout the world.  There is no common definition of a political prisoner, but Amnesty International defines one as "a person who has committed criminal offenses for political motives" although Amnesty International also only campaigns for the release of prisoners of conscience, defined as "anyone imprisoned because of their race, religion, color, language, sexual orientation, or belief (so long as they have not used or advocated violence)."  Political prisoners do not have to be held in a prison, since they could be otherwise detained, perhaps by house arrest.  In most cases, trumped-up criminal charges have been used to imprison or detain them, and they have been denied procedural justice or due process afforded to other defendants, or special powers have been invoked against them by the judiciary.  All governments deny they have political prisoners; and all types of governments (from fascist to democratic) usually have political prisoners.  The definition of a political prisoner will vary depending upon one's political perspective.  Terrorists, anarchists, and resistance movements in general always claim that any of their arrested members are political prisoners.  Countries commonly known to house political prisoners are usually communist countries (e.g., China, Cuba, North Korea), military dictatorships (e.g., Myanmar), Arab republics (e.g. Iran, Lebanon), or African republics (e.g. Rwanda).  The most recent well-known example of rounding up political prisoners on a grand scale occurred after the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989.   

    Hand-in-hand with the problem of political prisoners is the problem of secret police.  Again, not much has been written of a scholarly nature on this topic (but see Plat & Darvi 1981 or Stove 2003), however it is commonly claimed that all governments require some type of secret police for clandestine intelligence gathering and internal security (Hagan 1998).  What counts as "secret" is hotly disputed, as the agency in question may be an official (visible) or semi-official (low visible) organ of government, as well as not even being a police agency.  It is generally accepted that any adequate definition would focus on the repressive measures usually taken by such organizations, which revolve around wiretaps and surveillance (Marx 1990) as well as measures suggested by Turk (1981):

    The most well-known example of a secret police organization is a death squad, which is an assassination group endorsed, supported, protected, or at least not discouraged by a government (sometimes directly created by a government; other times consisting entirely of vigilantes).  In most cases, a feigned attempt is made to make it look like vigilante action, since in essence, they are contracted hit teams hired to intimidate, murder, rape or in general terrorize opponents, all the while hiding behind a mask of feigned outrage.  Campbell & Brenner (2002) define them as "clandestine, irregular organizations, often paramilitary in nature, which carry out extrajudicial executions and other violent acts against clearly defined individuals or groups of people."  Death squad activity must be carefully distinguished from assassination, vigilantism, and terrorism.  The scope of death squad activity is much wider than the death toll for assassination; death squads carry out the government's wishes and don't usurp government power like vigilantes do; and although death squads spread terror like terrorists do, the symbolism of their fear is local rather than far away as it is for terrorists.  Death squads exist in all places of the world, not just in Latin America (which has had more than its fair share; e.g. Guatemala, El Salvador, Brazil, Colombia, Haiti).  Nor do death squads have to be "working" for a government because in El Salvador (during the 1980s), they worked for wealthy landowners.  Death squads have also been known to work for terrorist organizations (e.g., the IRA, al-Qaeda).  Death squads played a vital part in the Rwanda Genocide of 1994 and the Bosnian Genocide of 1995.

    It would be futile to go on describing the many ways a human rights violation can occur.  Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch tend to be the largest of many watchdog groups with an extensive web presence where one can find authoritative research reports on the latest patterns, trends, and forms of human rights violations.  Some people find Amnesty International a bit hard on open, democratic societies like the US, but such societies ought to be able to take criticism [Note: the tendency to over-report allegations of human rights abuse in open, democratic societies is called Moynihan's Law after former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who once said the number of complaints about human rights is inversely proportional to the actual violation of human rights.]  Suffice it to say there are multiple ways to offend, from the horrific ways just described (bordering on genocide) to more subtle economic, social, and cultural abuses.  Steiner & Alston (2000) document some examples below which illustrate a good range of contemporary human rights abuses:

• The Nike Shoe Plant in Vietnam -- an Ernst & Young inspection report in 1997 looked at Nike's boast that it had model working conditions at its factories around the world.  Instead, they found a dismal picture of thousands of young women under age 25, laboring 10 1/2 hours a day, six days a week, in excessive heat and noise and in foul air, for slightly more than $10 a week. Most workers were not provided with protective masks or gloves and had skin and breathing problems from the chemicals.  Nike, like hundreds of other US companies who operate using cheap Asian labor, makes at least $10 billion dollars a year and lavishes millions of dollars on star athletes to endorse their products while the underpaid workers suffer from human rights violations.

• The Disappearing Bodies in Serbia -- when forensic teams arrived on the scene in 1999, they expected to find the bodies of Kosovo Albanians who had been killed by Serbian forces.  After all, the site had been designated as one of three sites where bodies would be found (based on tips by confidential informants), and the forensic team thought it would be just carrying out routine evidence collection procedures in accordance with the International Tribunal which was about to prosecute Milosevic.  Instead, the team found that somehow, all the bodies were missing as if someone had dug up the graves, and carried the bodies off somewhere in an apparent attempt to hide evidence.  Without the hard evidence to support a war crimes prosecution, the case had to rest on a human rights prosecution.

• Columbian Drug Trafficking Courts -- so-called "faceless" courts in Columbia routinely allow special tribunals where judges, prosecutors, and witnesses get to remain anonymous, and this attracted the complaints of several international organizations as a blatant violation of due process.  However, the Columbian government claims it is necessary to remain faceless when dealing with narcoterrorists.  Columbia is the only country in the world which routinely practices such "faceless" courts, and the practice is fully supported by US policy in the War on Drugs.

• United States Police and Criminal Justice System -- Amnesty International has long claimed that the US criminal justice system represents a persistent and widespread pattern of human rights violation (in its death penalty, its ill treatment of prisoners, its Drug War, and its War on Terrorism).  In response, it has been the habit of each President since Clinton to offer allowing UN monitors to come in and inspect how the criminal justice system works, but the UN appears to be waiting to see how the issue plays out in the US Congress where a critical mass of Congressmen would validate or ratify the invite.  In the meantime, the US and this NGO are playing hardball, with Amnesty International's 2005 Report calling the Guantánamo Bay detention of unlawful enemy combatants "the gulag of our times" and US officials calling the report "absurd" and "offensive."

INTERNATIONAL REGIMES FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

    Regimes consist of international or regional arrangements between nations where there is agreed-upon consensus over norms, standards, or rules.  According to Donnelly (2003), some regimes may simply exist for declaratory or promotional purposes, while others are more actively involved in implementation of policy or monitoring and enforcement.  Regimes can also be devoted to the full range of human rights or established for the purpose of a single human rights issue (e.g., UNESCO for the educational issue in the context of preserving cultural integrity).

    At the top (considered the heart of the global human rights regime) is the UN Commission on Human Rights.  This group is the largest (over 3,000 delegates) and meets once a year for six weeks in Geneva.  Since 1946, it has been the principal forum for negotiating human rights norms, and it deals with the broadest set of human rights issues (i.e., fundamental freedoms in any part of the world).  Although this organization is empowered to use ECOSOC (Economic and Social Council) resolution 1503 procedures (explained above as authorizing the discrete and somewhat confidential production of a "black list" of countries where a consistent pattern of gross and reliably attested human rights violations have been found), this Commission more comfortably produces Resolutions, Decisions, and Reports, and has relatively weak enforcement powers since it was never intended to have enforcement powers in the first place.  It fulfills its empowerment mandate (for public reporting) by making available what are known as Country Mechanisms or Mandates which currently has about 10 countries "monitored" (under what could be called a black list or watch list) for "The Situation of Human Rights" in those countries.  Far more interesting are the so-called Thematic Mandates that the Commission is looking into.  At any given time, there are about 20 of those, and they serve as the breeding ground for the development of any new human rights as well as places for expertise to be shared on specific topics, such as disappearances, xenophobia, poverty, and mental health.  For example, looking at xenophobia, the Commission has discovered it is a root cause of migration and poverty, and can be dealt with by changing the way political discourse takes place as well as media representations, and that through strong religious and educational institutions, new norms of tolerance and respect may be possible.  However, the Commission has not gone without criticism.  There has been recent talk (e.g, with the 2005 Millennium Development Goals) about creating a Human Rights Council to replace the present Human Rights Commission.  The Commission has lost much Western support because any member state, no matter how bad its human rights record, can be elected onto it.

    The second most important part of the international human rights regime is the Human Rights Committee, described previously as the "workhorse" of the regime which hears complaints and also considers petitions under the (first) Optional Protocol.  Despite relatively strong enforcement powers (to judge and evaluate state practices), the Committee suffers from the problem that relatively strong procedures are applied primarily to where they are not most needed.  For example, over half of the Optional Protocol complaints come from countries like Jamaica and Uruguay, and this is not to say that human rights issues aren't important there, but there are other places in the world where such strong attention is needed, and the "voluntary" and unregulated nature of the reporting system has the potential for abuse in that highly vocal and over-active complainants dominate the time of the Committee.  In addition, the quality of some of the reports, as Donnelly (2003) points out, is poor, with some State Reports being farces (simply repeats of national constitutions saying "no problem here").  As expected, there is also a backlog in producing state reports; e.g., the report on the Congo took ten years.

    The third and final part of the international human rights regime is the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights itself.  This office has global reach and, like the special rapporteurs, can deal directly with national governments, except on a wide variety of issues.  Additionally, the High Commissioner holds the office in their own capacity, not as a representative of any state.  The office is indeed the "voice" of human rights around the world, but how active or enthusiastic the office is depends heavily upon the personal characteristics of the office-holder.  At minimum, the office must accomplish creating a sense of moral interdependence or togetherness.

REGIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS REGIMES

    The European Court of Human Rights deserves mention as perhaps the strongest regional human rights regime in the world.  The court component of it is only a small part, and what is noteworthy is its foundation, the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms which was drawn up within the Council of Europe back in 1950.  The complaint system is fairly advanced and grants a lot of autonomy to NGOs, and most cases are settled informally and amicably.  When a case goes to Court for a binding decision, compliance has been good.  For example, Court decisions have led to changes in detention practices in Belgium, Germany, Greece, and Italy; the treatment of aliens has been changed in the Netherlands and Switzerland; press freedoms have been expanded in Britain; wiretapping has been outlawed in Switzerland; and legal aid practices have been added in Italy, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Sweden.  One of the keys to the Court's success has been its method of jurisprudence, called "evolutive interpretation" which means that caselaw is not constrained by precedent or conditions which existed back in 1950, but that human rights law is seen as a steadily rising bar of standards, at least for European norms.  According to the Wikipedia Entry on the European Court of Human Rights, recent concerns have been as far-ranging as issues involving sodomy, reproductive rights, and privacy.   

    The American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man (1948) was the world's first international human rights instrument, predating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by more than six months.  It was signed in Bogata, Columbia and that same year, created the organization called OAS (Organization of American States).  There are two components of the Declaration:  (1) the Inter-American Court of Human Rights; and (2) the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, or in Spanish, CIDH).  The Court is located in Costa Rica and the Commission is located in Washington DC.  In contrast to the European regime, an individual is not allowed to take a case directly to the Inter-American Court, but when a case gets to Court (usually involving a massacre of some kind), reparations (to the survivors or next-of-kin) are the usual remedy.  Typical cases include the Plan de Sánchez massacre in 1982 or the Barrios Altos massacre in 1991, but other cases involve mass riots or protests as well as political prisoner situations.  The Commission is quite active throughout the hemisphere, holding meetings and conferences regularly.  The Commission has on-site inspection procedures and a fairly strong investigative capability.  It strives for urgent action in what are called special "precautionary procedures" with pressing cases.

    The Organization of African Unity (OAU) was notable for its emphasis on collective or "peoples'" rights, but quickly became extremely deferential to sovereignty, and was disbanded in 2002 and replaced by the African Union (see Wikipedia Entry on African Union).  The African Union has three goals: promoting democracy, human rights, and development.  It began mounting small peacekeeping operations in 2003, but regularly has to be helped out by UN forces.  The African Union tries to deal with many problems, from the HIV epidemic, to massive poverty, to the many civil wars (six of which are ongoing in any given year).  Interestingly enough, the African Union has its origin in the idea of a "United States of Africa" conceived by Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi, but has since abandoned that vision for other pan-African notions involving traditionalism and culturalism.  There is a African Court of Justice for Human Rights, modeled after Europe's, but it has yet to hear a case or even have its location determined.  Protocols have been proposed, but none have been ratified.  Much African jurisprudence is based on the idea that a council of elders should advise or be attached to any human rights organization.  The region has a terrible human rights record, only exceeded by what Western observers regard as the more terrible Middle East record.

    The League of Arab States (aka Arab League) was established in 1968, but has been largely inactive on the world stage except for an overabiding interest in documenting the human rights situation in Israeli-occupied territories.  Its headquarters is located in Cairo, and it operates like a mini-UN for Arab states.  Economic cooperation is emphasized, as is the Charter prohibition against using force against one another.  To the region's credit, there have been a few noteworthy accomplishments; e.g., the Permanent Arab Commission on Human Rights (1969), the Arab Charter of Human Rights (drafted in 1971, adopted in 1994), the Draft Covenant on Human Rights produced by the Baghdad Conference of the Union of Arab Jurists in 1979, and the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam (passed in 1990, which interestingly, includes freedom from usury, something not often found in Western documents).  However, according to the consensus of most scholars like Mayer (1995) and Donnelly (2003), there is little reason to think that the Arab League should even be considered a human rights organization, and further, that Islam can be critiqued in terms of emphasizing duties, not rights; possessing a certain anti-individualism which is contrary to the idea of human rights.  In defense of Islam, there are those such as Bielefeldt (1995) and Strawson (1997) who argue from Said's (1978) Orientalism or Occidentalist viewpoint that most inquiry into Middle Eastern human rights is based on racist assumptions of Western superiority.  It is true, however, that Islam makes no distinction between civil society and the state, that the individual is considered a limb of the collectivity, that Muslims have duties vis-a-vis the community (umma), and that no individual rights exist in the sense of entitlements.  Western impatience with Islam on its human rights record should not be construed as racism.  To be charitable, what is likely is that, throughout history, key Middle Eastern human rights-related documents and/or scholarship have probably been lost, destroyed, or never translated into English (likewise, absence of an acceptable Arabic version of the UDHR has probably been the basis of Iran's steadfast opposition against Western notions of human rights for a long time).  Dwyer's (1991) interviews with activists in the region tend to suggest that the language barrier is at least part of the reason for misunderstandings, although Waltz (1995) points out there are other limitations for human rights activism in this region which are very real and not subject to a charitable interpretation.     

SINGLE-ISSUE HUMAN RIGHTS REGIMES

    Worker's Rights -- This was one of the world's first single-issue regime, represented by the International Labor Organization, created by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.  Most of its norms were developed after WW II, however.  The ILO is dedicated to decent working conditions for all, and has a special interest in eliminating child labor.  A series of eight conventions have been passed, all ratified by the member states, and are known as the international labor standards.  Every year, each government is required to submit reports detailing their compliance with these standards, and every year, a Committee on the Application of Standards conducts an examination of suspected breaches.  Unfortunately, there are few sanctions that the ILO can levy other than to issue statements of "grave concern" (the nation of Myanmar having received the most recent attention for repeated failure to guarantee fundamental worker's rights).  In terms of standards, the ILO has been quite successful at producing a "floor" or minimum set of worker's rights (which has become the basis for development of most trade unions), but it has been largely unsuccessful with other issues, such as agreement over the number of hours in a work week or the rights of part-time workers.

    Racial Discrimination -- This special-interest area is governed by a document called the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) which was passed in 1965 and entered into force during 1969.  There is a monitoring body called the Committee on the Elimination of Racism which hears periodic (often overdue) reports from nations, but enforcement mechanisms are weak, despite the existence of an early warning and urgent action procedure which allows caselaw-like adjudications of individual communications.  In essence, all the Committee does is express concerns and issue recommendations.  State reports are also made public.  In recent years, the work of the Committee has been sidetracked a bit by diverting attention to the global struggle against terrorism and whether any discrimination exists there with respect to legislation passed.

    Torture --  This area's leading instrument is the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (UNCAT), which also created the Committee Against Torture, an organization which focuses very specifically on the leaders of nations. UNCAT came into force in 1987 and to date, has been ratified by 65 nations, with another 16 having signed but not yet ratified.  Several NGOs are heavily involved in this interest-area, as are several regional and international regimes.  The most noteworthy thing about the UNCAT is that it officially outlaws the use of any "I was just following orders" defense.  Justifications based on exceptional circumstances, such as war, are also abolished, but Article 2 clearly spell out "an order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture."  Other comments which might be made is the theoretical definition of torture used, which includes pain and suffering, presumably allowing psychological torment and/or sensory deprivation to be considered torture.  The Convention also requires states to take effective measures to prevent torture within their borders, and forbids states to return people to their home country if there is reason to believe they will be tortured.  In recent years, the Committee has been somewhat preoccupied with the United States and the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, but it might be noted the US only ratified with Reservations to UNCAT, as did other nations.

    Women's Rights, Children, and Minorities -- These areas are still somewhat neglected or less-than-fully developed areas of regime establishment, all for various reasons.  The Commission on the Status of  Women, for example, has historically had problems determining if it is for "women's rights" or "women's human rights," but it has grown to have enormous (almost unwieldly) powers over the years.  The main treaty, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), was adopted in 1979 and is often described as an international bill of rights for women.  CEDAW also stands for a Committee (by the same name) which meets annually and examines reports of nations, frequently publishing State reports, and possessing an array of powers similar to the Human Rights Committee.  An Optional Protocol is underway, allowing women around the world to file individual communications or complaints.  For the rights of children, UNICEF is the premiere organization (other than NGOs), operating primarily under the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child where there is also a Committee which functions like any treaty-based supervisory committee, but has no power to receive individual communications.  The rights of minorities is an emerging special-interest area which sometimes goes under the banner of the rights of indigenous peoples (for more, see Study Guide by Indigenous People's Human Rights Project for a good overview of all the fairly unorganized UN activity which exists).  Gay rights is also an unorganized issue-area (for more, see Waaldijk 1994; Sanders 1996; IGLHRC; or IGLA).

ISLAMIC, AFRICAN, & ASIAN "THIRD WAY" HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENTS

    Human rights are not a Western discovery (Mangalpus 1978), but there is some truth to the positivist claim that human rights are a modernist conception.  One can easily distinguish between "primitive" and "modern" societies in this regard -- every justice scholar knows that primitive societies are based on duties while modern societies are based on rights.  Duties and rights are intimately connected.  One doesn't have to subscribe to a Hohfeldian schema where duties and rights are corelative concepts, one always matched by the other (see Hoebel 1967), to understand that no duties are owed to imaginary others and rights always imply duties on the part of actual others (Feinberg 1966).  Not all duties have correlative rights, but most rights have correlative duties.  Human rights, however, are held independent of the discharge of duties, unless of course, secondary rules exist (such as a legal system) which allow disputes over claims to rights to be settled (see Hart 1961).  Human rights are held simply because one is a human being, and disputes are over the violations of those rights, not their substantive existence.

    Islamic conceptions of human rights are duties, not rights.  Any close reading of the Cairo Declaration will reveal that although it has the indivisible "God-given" aspect correct, the discussion of rights takes place in the context of duties -- duties between ruler and ruled; duties as subject to divine right.  For example, the right to "protection of life" is simply a prohibition not to kill (out of subordination to Allah); the right to "human sanctity" exists to preserve one's place in heaven; the right to "care for children" is simply dutiful adherence to Shari'ah law; the right to "education" exists to serve the religion of Islam; the right to "medical care" is simply a duty of the state (as it incarnates the will of Allah); the right to "freedom of expression" is inviolate unless it violates (note the contradiction) sanctities and the dignity of Prophets, etc.  All this represents a second-stage Hohfeldian schema where "duties" are derived from the divine and "privileges" are reserved for the elites (who manage the theocratic version of the divine state).  There is no conception of human rights other than whichever ones exist out of divine obligation (as defined by Shari'ah law and elite rulers).  What is especially troubling is Islam's tendency to see actual others as imaginary others --that the unfaithful and unbelievers are to be treated like barbarian outsiders (much like how the primitive Greeks and ancient Romans saw outsiders) who are morally inferior and to be excluded from any enjoyment of human rights.  For more on the way Shari'ah law denigrates the rights of women, religious freedom, and democracy itself, see Marshall (2005) or visit the Center for Religious Freedom website. Dien (2005) is also a good introduction to the four schools of Islamic jurisprudence for those with absolutely no prior knowledge of Islamic law. 

    African conceptions of human rights are based on social roles and statuses within the community.  Gerontocracy, or rule by elders, is considered a special virtue, as are other entitlements based on age, sex, lineage, achievement, and tribal membership.  What's missing are any entitlements or rights based on membership in humanity.  Fernyhough (1993) points out that in precolonial times, various personal or "peoples' rights" were relished, but the colonialism experience apparently changed all that.  Mutua (2002) points out that the Western mindset totally misinterprets the African concept of peoples’ rights; that for postcolonial, often illogically constructed African nations, this often meant a focus on collective values such as solidarity, interdependence, and responsibility -- collective duty being more essential than Western notions of individual rights.  Further, an interesting form of self-hatred exists in Africa, of the kind documented by Fanon (1968), but more closely related to the abandonment of indigenous culture (and religion, with accompanying morality) in the face of all the missionary, messianic religions and movements which have been forced on the region (i.e., Christianity, Islam, Communism, and unfortunately, Democracy).  As strange as it may sound, some African nations have embraced indigenous culture as a panacea for human rights issues; Benin, for example, which established National Voodoo Day in 1996, with plans to derive a human rights corpus from Voodoo concepts and practices.  Given this kind of nonsense, and attempts to justify horrible practices like female genital mutilation, clearly Africa isn't even on the same page of the international human rights movement.

    Chinese, or Asian, conceptions of human rights are traditionally derived from the Confucian code of ethics which is based not on law but upon rituals which are internalized and exert influence before action, so that people are supposed to behave properly out of shame and a desire to avoid losing face.  Chinese systems of morality are also strongly influenced by the virtue of meritocracy, or the idea that winners do indeed deserve their advantage, especially at the expense of any human rights concern for equal opportunity or the dignity of those who tried.  Principles of hierarchy and deference to superiors are deeply ingrained, and the Confucian tradition stresses the pursuit of harmony at all levels (much like socialist law).  Appeals to nationalism, state security and social stability are often used to deny ethnic and religious minorities any freedoms, give out long prison terms for protesting working conditions, extract confessions via torture, "re-educate" people in labor camps, restrict access to the Internet, and most of all, execute any criminals (even non-violent ones involved in drug use, tax fraud, or pimping) who in any way symbolize the excesses of a rights-obsessed West (see Culture is Destiny: An Interview with Lee Kuan Yew and note this fear of a crime-infested West is called the Central Park Thesis - the idea that things will become unsafe like Central Park at night).  No wonder that many international, regional, and nongovernmental organizations are concerned with China's human rights record, but the paradox is that such concern often makes matters worse given China's "butt out and mind your own business" attitude.  Nothing illustrates this more than China's combative tone over its newfound "Third way" of human rights development.

    As described by Langlois (2001), Donnelly (2003), and others, "Third Way" movements seek to: (1) re-embrace sovereignty as grounds for rejecting international human rights standards; (2) argue that there is a justifiable, and even desirable, tradeoff where human rights need to be sacrificed to make way for rapid economic development; (3) emphasize economic and cultural rights over civil and political rights, based on notions of collectivist duty and the need for survival; (4) reject Western human rights conceptions as corrosive and hedonistic, or at the very least, incompatible with traditional values and notions of human dignity and decency; (5) think of rights as things to be earned by the discharge of duties, which means rights can be earned or lost, depending upon behavior; and (6) pick and choose which aspects of the Western lifestyle to emulate.  On its face, the Third Way method seems a rather coherent set of objectives, but the problem is that (a) sovereignty is looking backward, not forward; (b) sustainable economic development and sustainable human development are not incompatible; (c) economic and cultural rights are OK as long as they are part of diversity, not a system of caste or privilege; (d) human rights standards are not corrosive but empowering; (e) there are things such as rights based on simply being human; and (f) you can't pick and choose what you like when it comes to human rights because they are an indivisible whole.  There are no exemptions in international human rights law, and there never will be.

INTERNET RESOURCES
Amnesty International
Anti-Slavery Society
Bora Laskin Law Library Overview of IHR Protections
Chinese Human Rights Web
Earthwatch Institute
Glossary of Human Rights Terms
Greenpeace
Harvard Univ. List of Key Human Rights Documents
Human Rights First
Human Rights Philosophy Forum
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch World Report 2005
International Committee of the Red Cross
International Justice Mission
Is Islam Compatible with Human Rights?
Minority Rights Group International
Notre Dame Center for Civil and Human Rights
Ph.D. Studies in Human Rights Blog
Reassessing Packer in Light of International Human Rights Norms (pdf)
Reparations as a Remedy for Human Rights Violations
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry on Human Rights
The Carter Center
U.N. Human Rights Page
U.N. Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights & UDHR, CESCR, CCPR
UNOHCHR International Law Index Page (All Treaties and Optional Protocols)
U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights
University of Minnesota Human Rights Library
US Department of State Human Rights Reports
Violence Against Children Worldwide
Wikipedia Article on Human Rights

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