| Review of: | Rethinking human rights: critical approaches to international politics edited by David Chandler |
|---|---|
| Reviewed By: | Aidan Hehir |
| Reviewed in: | International Affairs |
| Date accepted online: | 27/07/2004 |
| Published in print: | Volume 80, Issue 1, Pages 117-182 |
International ethics
Since the end of the Cold War, human rights have become increasingly prominent in international relations discourse. Lauded by human rights activists and NGOs as a wholly positive development, this trend is portrayed as having a civilizing effect on international relations that will protect the individual and increase global harmony. In this book, authors from various academic and journalistic backgrounds critically appraise this belief and their findings suggest that far from welcoming this western-driven initiative, we should view this movement with measured suspicion.
In his introduction, Chandler states that the book aims to assess the 'political implications of prioritizing human rights as a guide to policy making in the international sphere' (p. 2). Chandler asserts that the debate this movement has generated focuses only on how to further enforce human rights, ignoring the validity of these rights and whether certain interests are being served by this paradigm shift.
Fiona Fox warns against the new trend among humanitarian aid organizations, such as Médecins sans Frontières, to tie their aid to political reforms and abandon their impartiality. She sees the new 'goal orientated' relief as compromising neutrality, which today 'has become a dirty word' (p. 25).
John Laughland argues, 'the development of international legal tribunals will not necessarily lead to a more just world because the premise that states cannot themselves render justice is false' (p. 38). He argues that democratically accountable, sovereign states are the best administrators of justice and that international courts, such as the International Criminal Tribunal of the former Yugoslavia, are not necessarily neutral.
Vanessa Pupavac argues that under the guise of protecting the child, 'the international children's rights regime is legitimizing a new era of authoritarianism and inequality' (p. 58), while Chris Gilligan describes how the much acclaimed peace process in Northern Ireland is in fact designed to 'promote new relations of regulation, facilitating the control exercised by the British state' (p. 81).
John Pender exposes what he sees as the World Bank's hypocritical 'voices of the poor' initiative, stating 'the claim to be acting on behalf of the most marginalized and the most vulnerable ... has considerable currency in legitimizing greater regulatory powers for the World Bank' (p. 101). David Chandler outlines the problems inherent in moving away from a system of rights regulation based on states, warning that the international civil society under construction is elitist, undemocratic and unrepresentative.
Jon Holbrook provides an excellent critique of the increase in 'humanitarian' interventions suggesting that this upsurge is due to the end of the Cold War, which provided 'the capacity of America and its allies to exercise authority abroad under the banner of humanitarian action' (p. 140). He refutes the suggestion that humanitarian intervention constitutes an existing or evolving norm in international law and offers a strong defence of state sovereignty.
Barrie Collins's account of the West's involvement in the atrocities in Rwanda contradicts the generally accepted perception of those terrible events. He suggests that Rwanda is symptomatic of a general trend whereby 'complex and dynamic processes tend to be reduced to black and white moral narratives' where those involved are characterized as either irrational or helpless. This exonerates those external actors whose actions actually contributed to the crises. Philip Hammond, in what is possibly the book's strongest article, criticizes post-Cold War 'advocacy journalism' which seeks to support one perspective rather than adhere to journalistic neutrality. He suggests that these journalists have become instruments in policy formulation who selectively report those events that will best achieve the aims they support. Regarding Kosovo he suggests, 'in the buildup to the conflict many journalists not only urged NATO bombing, but deliberately distorted events in order to encourage it' (p. 193).
In the final chapter, Edward Herman and David Peterson go to the heart of the upsurge in human rights discourse, exposing the agenda of the major proponents of this movement. They argue that these advocates have formed a clique of 'experts' which has become the mainstream's source of information. Compromised by their financial ties to agenda-driven organizations such as NATO and the EU, these 'new humanitarians' are engaged in little more than 'war propaganda' (p. 215). The authors detail the way the 'new order of imperialism' has manipulated events, especially in the Balkans, to give their sectional motives the veneer of 'humanitarianism'. They expose the various hypocrisies of the new humanitarians and their deafening silence regarding those areas, such as Turkey, Indonesia, Colombia and Israel, where the West has supported flagrant human rights abusers. Herman and Peterson warn that the selective and compromised analysis of global events proffered by the 'new humanitarians' signifies the 'opening of the gates for the Great Powers to ignore the rule of law' which 'represents a major human rights regression that bodes ill for the future' (p. 205).
This book runs counter to the generally optimistic and supportive accounts of the recent rise in human rights discourse. It makes for uncomfortable but compelling reading and provides an excellent and necessary critique of what has become an uncontested truism of contemporary international relations.