Abstract
Among global security regimes, the international human rights regime stands out for its importance and ineffectiveness. Human rights are strongly linked to both international and domestic peace, as well as human security. Yet, progress towards guaranteeing even the most basic political, civil and socio-economic rights for all people has been fitful and partial. Multilateral efforts, mainly within the UN, to promote human rights through standard-setting and voluntary compliance measures have made little difference, especially in the most repressive contexts where it matters most. Attempts by the Western-led human rights movement to strengthen the regime through policies of naming, shaming, and sanctions have not fared much better, and in fact have often done more harm than good. In this chapter, I critically review the existing international human rights regime and argue, theoretically as well as empirically, for the need to further develop and strengthen a new and complementary approach to promoting human rights. This approach, which I call ‘principled engagement’, acknowledges the importance in the absence of a central authority or world government of ensuring states’ voluntary compliance with international human rights norms, but seeks to ‘give teeth’ to the existing multilateral regime through much stronger and deeper engagement on the ground in repressive states. It does not deny the potential usefulness of strong international pressure on repressive states to help create the space for such engagement, but emphasises the advantages of ‘mediation’ over coercion.
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Notes
- 1.
The International Bill of Rights is made up of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), as well as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (both 1966) and their optional protocols. The protections laid out in these core instruments are further elaborated and expanded in a number of later international treaties focussing on particular groups, such as women and children, or particular actions, notably torture and enforced disappearances.
- 2.
For the purposes of the following policy analysis, I follow Pedersen and Kinley 2013 in excluding crisis situations requiring immediate action to stop, for example, a genocide, as well as failed states where the government has little control over its territory. Such situations present a different set of challenges, which are more usefully examined through the lenses of humanitarian intervention, peace and state-building, than human rights per se. The former also has its own system of international law.
- 3.
Escriba-Folch and Wright (2010) modify this argument slightly, showing that, among authoritarian regimes, personalist regimes are relatively more susceptible to the loss of external revenue, while sanctions have little effect on single-party and military regimes.
- 4.
This is particularly evident in post-colonial states where the experience of imperialism has bred xenophobic forms of nationalism, making resistance a matter of personal face as well as national pride. In such contexts, no self-respecting leader can be seen to give in to outside pressure. Indeed, concessions might well undercut his or her personal authority and position of power within the ruling elite.
- 5.
This broader effect was first observed by Galtung (1967) in his seminal study of Rhodesia in the 1960s and presents a particular risk in countries with a high level of state control of the media, which can be used to ‘whip up’ nationalistic fervour and scapegoat the foreign threat for home-grown problems (Tannenbaum and Rose 2003).
- 6.
For a more general account of the association between perceived threats and increased state extraction of resources from society, see Lektzian and Prins 2008.
- 7.
In a study of 11 UN sanctions regimes between 1990 and 1999, Cortright and Lopez (2000) found that seven out of eight cases of smart sanctions had little or no effect.
- 8.
The punitive element of most human rights sanctions episodes is perhaps most evident in the use of diplomatic sanctions or other strongly condemnatory practices, which cut communication links and generate hostility between the parties, thus making bargaining all but impossible. Typically, the implicit or explicit goal of senders is to bring about wholesale regime change; limited or partial progress on human rights is therefore rarely considered sufficient. A telling exception from this rule was the efforts by the International Labor Office in the 2000s to combat the widespread use of forced labour in Myanmar, which used a bargaining model of sanctions and, not incidentally, was highly successful (Horsey 2011).
- 9.
Contrary to diplomats who tend to be generalists, people working for IOs and NGOs are often experts in areas such as human rights law, mediation, community development or malaria prevention.
- 10.
As the project director for a recent study on North Korea concluded, ‘We in the U.S. need to stop thinking of economic engagement as a carrot. It’s more like some very bitter, foul-smelling medicine’ (Independent Task Force 2009).
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Pedersen, M.B. (2017). Three Generations of International Human Rights Governance. In: Burke, A., Parker, R. (eds) Global Insecurity. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95145-1_16
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