It seems that the institutionalization of Human Rights (HR) that we know today developed over time under the very impression of peculiar incidents of atrocity and war. It was not until the end of the Second World War and under the impression of previously unimagined acts of inhumanity in form of the holocaust, extended prosecution and German war cruelties in Eastern Europe that nation states consented that is was in their own interest to develop and agree on a comprehensive and extensive Human Rights regime. The London Conference in June 1946 – the outcome of negotiations that had begun as early as in 1942 – laid out the design for an international system of international justice and normative order as exists today. In fact, the establishment of International Military Courts, the concept of crimes against humanity as well as the notion of global procedural justice under the rule of law, all these phenomena can be understood as the first steps towards the current institutional and normative HR regime architecture that comprises such prominent features as the UN Declaration of Human Rights (1948) or the International Criminal Court (ICC) (1998).Yet, the ideational foundations of the UN Declaration were not new; rather, they reached back to the 17th century and the program of humanism and enlightenment that made human rights logically conclude the ethical cosmopolitanism that underpins the Declaration.
Definitively, as Paul Kennedy pointed out in his book “Parliament of Man”, the UN Declaration of Human Rights since then greatly contributed to promoting Human Rights as idea as well as social practice on the national and international level. However,the idea of Human Rights – while being highly accepted as a normative order (value) in many contexts and minds worldwide – seems at the same time to remain highly contested as a practice in the international and domestic context. In this regard, it is not clear whether this is so despite or because of the increasing degree of international institutionalization and interaction.
Human Rights and International Relations
In this context, B.R.Tomlinson’s analysis of the so-called ‘Third World’ can be seen as an interesting contribution concerning the question of ethical cosmopolitanism in international relations and international institutions, and the contribution of the latter to the cause. On the basis of a historical account of the “Third World” as the outcome and example of the continued domination of certain nations of the ‘West’ over international discourse and institutions, Tomlinson concludes that we need to move beyond established criteria of assessing international relations and developments to finally develop a perspective of one instead of several worlds. Accordingly, the ethical cosmopolitanism immanent in HR makes a one world perspective a necessary precondition for its realization. Along with Tomlinson one can argue that only this perspective will make it be possible to write global history that accounts for the diversity of developments of different countries; the prevailing historical narrative that extrapolates the Rest of the World by mainly accommodating the ‘West’s’ narrative will on the contrary sustain notions of ideational and practical supremacy by some countries and institutions in the context of HR, and thereby in practice counteract criteria of equality and Kantian deontological ethics that actually build the normative kernel of the idea of human rights themselves.
Complementary to Tomlinson, Kristin S. Tassin focuses on the impact of the UN Human Rights Declaration in former colonial countries. Accordingly, the declaration had opened a new policy space for ex-colonial countries to constitute an alternative third world in the aftermath of the Second World War and with regard to the geopolitical dichotomy of the Cold War era. This amounted to the emergence of the non-alignment movement that aimed at advancing independent foreign policy, the domestic policy space, and the processes of nation building and national integration. The non-alignment movement put to life a new notion of territorial sovereignty by going beyond a mere negative self-interpretation within world politics. However, Tassin points out that the increase in political independence of ex-colonial countries was not met by existing structures of international economic governance. Rather, the contrary was/is the case. In fact, both articles (Tassin, Tomlinson) show the unwillingness of dominant powers in the international system to accommodate the demands for new institutions of global (economic) governance by the G77 countries. At the same time, the role of the UN as forum for ‘developing countries’ to exert pressure for change diminished since the 1970’s, and the 1980’s brought about an increased role of international institutions such as the World Bank, IMF or WTO whose policies were best characterized by decreasing domestic policy space via deregulation, by forcing ‘mono-economics’ as well as ‘political conditionality’ on to the people of ‘developing countries’. Thus, while the idea of Human Rights was a widely acknowledged value and along with it concepts of dignity and identity, at the same time the structural conditions that were enforced by the great powers after the Second World War remained in place, constraining the policy space and HR expansion (self empowerment) of the Third World’s governments and populaces.
The Global and Local Dilemma of HR
Out of the above, one can conclude that over the last four decades the highly ideal Human Rights regime in the context of the international realm missed to account for the question of changes and differences in political and socio-economic development. This yielded a ‘destructive dilemma by design’ according to which the institutionalized HR regime established and continuously sustains the existence of ‘morally supreme’ states over others in practice; and it brought a prioritization of certain HR articles over others, instead of moving on towards a human centered focus on development. If we look for example at the R2P-justification narrative that is based on HR, it seems problematic as it misses issues of political and economic marginalization as HR violations. Yet, this holistic HR perspective would be needed for the prevention of conflict as well as analysis of conflict. In this regard the establishment of an institutionalized global norm to some extent counter runs local developments by (a) helping to mask interests of states that have the structural as well as productive (norm generating) power; (b) in turning HR into a Top-Down endeavor.
Literature
B. R. Tomlinson, “What was the Third World?,” Journal of Contemporary History, 38, 2, 2003, 307-321.
Nuremberg Trial Excerpts: http://web.pdx.edu/~kinsella/nuremberg.pdf
Kristin S. Tassin, “’Lift Up your Head, My Brother’: Nationalism and the Genesis of the Non-Aligned Movement,” Journal of Third World Studies, 23, 1, 2006, 147-168.
UN Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
