DP1 Students: IA Engagements!

Codification, Protection, and Monitoring of Human Rights

Most important stuff

There is a LOT here. Easily the "beefiest" part of Unit 2. Some of it is fairly straightforward, while other bits are more complex and potentially confusing.

There are many, many examples we can use to explore this part of the unit. Do not get bogged down in trying to memorize or be familiar with all of them. Make sure you are familiar with some things related to codifying human rights (getting them written into laws), protecting them (essentially where justice comes in), and monitoring human rights (often at an IGO, NGO, or state level.)

Human Rights in Laws and Treaties

The role of states

Human rights are rarely, if ever, codified on a local level. The best starting point would be on a national level.

Many states identify specific rights that are extended to citizens, or that need protection by (or from) the government, within their founding documents or state constitution. The U.S. Constitution, for instance, has the Bill of Rights, which are the first ten amendments made in the late 1700s; the BoR outlines the most fundamental political rights that American citizens enjoy. Many later amendments, even failed amendments, have similar importance. The 19th amendment extended women the right to vote (in 1920.) In the 1980s and 1990s, there were efforts to pass an Equal Rights Amendment which would have codified total equality between men and women into the USA's governing document. This effort did not pass (for a variety of reasons, not solely sexism) though it could be picked up again in the future.

States, as the primary actors within the international system, also play the largest role in codifying and protecting human rights on an international level.

Human Rights Declarations

Declarations, like the UDHR, are not laws and cannot be enforced. They represent principles, and form a basis for subsequent legislation and action. When countries sign the UDHR, this is not necessarily a sign that they will live up to their responsibilities.

Various non-human rights instruments, displayed in a museum.

Human Rights Instruments

An "instrument" is a funny name for a human rights agreement that is a law and can be enforced and upheld. (Think "instrument" as in "tool," like how a pen is a "writing instrument," rather than "instrument" as in a tuba. Womp womp.)

These could be viewed as the international human rights treaties. As treaties, these are written at the IGO level but states have to sign and ratify them individually. A country that is a signatory has signed the agreement (typically, a UN representative.) This does not mean they can be expected to uphold that agreement. Only a full state party to an agreement can do that. A country becomes a state party when their government formally ratifies, agrees to, or accedes to the human rights treaty (like, in the USA it would require Congress to vote to join the treaty and the President's signature.) At that point, a country can be considered a part of the agreement.

One weakness of this system is that states who violate the rights of specific groups of people -- for instance, migrant workers -- can avoid a lot of responsibility simply by not becoming state parties to those agreements. Qatar, for example, gets a lot of international criticism for the way migrant workers are treated, but they are not a state party to the convention on the rights of migrants and their families, so they cannot be held responsible for that agreement. This presents a challenge to protecting the rights of vulnerable groups.

Plenty of treaties/instruments and declarations! The two 1966 agreements seen at the top of the image to the left represent a codification of the basic civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights expressed in the UDHR. So, while the UDHR was merely a declaration, with no force of law, the 1966 conventions essentially turned those into law. Do note that there are only 155 state parties, though, rather than the ideal 192.

Clearly, you can see that between the 1960s and early 2000s, a number of conventions focused on protecting human rights of specific groups were passed. These can be viewed as collective rights, but in most cases they are really just clarifying that basic rights need to be extended to people who are in great need (like refugees, migrants, women, etc.)

Signatories

This is when a representative of a state government (e.g. Foreign Minister, Secretary of State, UN Ambassador, etc.) signs an agreement on behalf of their country. This does not make that country responsible for following or enforcing the treaty; it usually represents an agreement on the principles or ideas represented within the agreement. States need to go through their own formal process for agreeing to a treaty in order to be full members of an international agreement.

This is one thing that shows how sovereignty matters -- only the full weight of a state's government can agree to a treaty, by whatever particular process that state uses. One representative is not enough!

State Parties

A state party is a state that has fully ratified that treaty; for instance, when the U.S. Congress votes to approve a treaty, that is what makes the U.S. a full state party to an agreement. Simply having one representative sign an agreement does not make a state a full party to that agreement.

Only state parties are expected to fulfill their obligations and enforce the treaty.

It is also possible for a state to leave an agreement, such as when the Philippines left the Rome Statute (which set up the ICC) in 2016.

What is the status of different treaties?

The United Nations has a website to track all of that! You can find it here: https://indicators.ohchr.org/

From this, you can see which international agreements have the broadest support (more state parties, fewer signatories, fewer countries who withheld altogether) compared to those with the weakest international standing (those where you see entire regions of the world just not give a fudge.)

Protection and Enforcement of Human Rights

How are international agreements enforced?

Most international human rights agreements follow the same exact protection/enforcement method. State parties form committees that keep track of things, states self-report their status or progress every few years, and there is a sense of "open doors, open books" for monitoring things.

Does this work? Well, some states are a bit opaque and either don't give their information or submit falsified data. It can be tricky to follow-up on that. A lot of parties think its better to get a state into an agreement and hope that a group effort can get them to fall in line, than to have them left out entirely.

Enforcement of international human rights agreements is a bit of a weak spot. It takes a lot more than just the parties and a committee to keep things in line (see the "Monitoring" section down below.)

International Court of Justice (ICJ)

The ICJ is one of the UN's "organs," and it is meant to resolve disputes that arise between states. The ICJ can consider cases that relate to human rights issues and abuses, but those issues must have state-to-state conflict or disputes at their core. It is not the best setting to handle claims on most human rights issues.

International Criminal Court (ICC)

The ICC is set up to handle human rights issues. It was created to prosecute those who commit "crimes against humanity." Most of the cases the ICC has prosecuted have human rights abuses at their core.

It was set up by the Rome Statute, and works similarly to other international human rights treaties: states must be a signatory to the statute and have their state government formally ratify the agreement in order to become a full state party to the ICC.

A lack of state parties has occasionally hurt the ICC's legitimacy. Countries like the US are not state parties, and some of the worst abusers of human rights have similarly ignored the Rome Statute.

Further, it is possible for states to leave the agreement, as the Philippines recently did (under President Rodrigo Duterte; he was being investigated for human rights abuses related to his anti-drug street war and left the ICC to try and guarantee that he couldn't be extradited to be put on trial. The ICC is still investigating him and claims they still have jurisdiction as many of Duterte's crimes happened while the Philippines was still a state party to the ICC.

State Level

States with well-established judicial systems, and elected officials that care about human rights, are often quite on top of things!

A single country's set of laws are typically a lot more detailed and robust than any international agreement. One general trend is that states tend to be better at punishing violators than they are at compensating or restoring victims.

Other things to consider here could dive into the Peace & Conflict unit; a peacebuilding process often deals with reconciliation, restorative justice, etc. and that is easier to pull of at the state level than anything higher.

Regional Level

More and more we see regional organizations play a larger role in enforcing human rights and keeping track of things. The EU, for instance, is quite good at speaking out and putting a lot of pressure on human rights violators both within the EU and abroad. Hungary, as an EU member, recently got a lot of flack for clamping down on press freedoms and other liberties; they are kind of the "black sheep" of the EU, and treated with disdain and distrust by many other member states and representatives.

Another example (that IB lists but that we didn't look at together) is the Interamerican Commission of Human Rights, which is set up by the Organization of American States. This is mainly a monitoring organization, but there is a regional human rights court as part of the OAS (the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, headquarted in Costa Rica.) The commission essentially hears complaints (the term used for a formal request to have your case heard, not "wah wah wah IB is so hard wah wah wah"). They try to negotiate some kind of settlement between the party whose rights were violated and the violators, and if they find themselves unable to do that in some cases they refer the complaint to the OAS human rights court (but only when that is warranted.)

Monitoring Human Rights

First off, a number of organizations are almost purely dedicated to the monitoring of human rights on a national, regional, or international level.

Human Rights Watch

HRW is one of the most prominent human rights organizations in the world. They have a clear interest in basically every category of rights, and a global reach. HRW has partnered with state and IGO actors like the UN, and they are most well known for detailed case analyses of human rights challenges and annual country reports that are published and disseminated.

Amnesty International

Amnesty has a lot in common with HRW, though the NGO has a more specific interest in causes like helping political prisoners (they played a big role in helping Taiwanese cartoonist Bo Yang get out of his Green Island imprisonment, and he was one of the first leaders of the Taiwanese AI chapter.) The "Amnesty" in their name refers to a plea for leniency and compassion for people who are imprisoned or punished unjustly.

The Red Cross & Red Crescent

These are sometimes seen as health NGOs, but they play a vital role in major conflicts. They are neutral parties, giving medical aid and comfort to any combatants or civilians in a warzone. They are often responsible for recovering dead bodies from a battlefield or warzone and attempting to return them to families for burial. "Dignity" is the name of the game here; everyone, in any conflict, deserves to have their rights respected and receive care if needed. The Red Cross & Crescent act as observers and caregivers when people need it most.

TMZ

A well-established paparazzi outlet based in Los Angeles, TMZ ensures that no celebrity has a right to privacy.

After all, we all have the right to an unvarnished glimpse at famous people's lives, and awkward photos of them and their children when they're out shopping at their local vegan co-op anti-war (members only) supermarket.

This is a joke. TMZ is not a human rights NGO.

Other forms of rights monitoring

Watching Elections: not every democratic state has free and fair elections, and a fair few authoritarian states pretend that they do. States that claim to be democratic often invite election monitors from international organizations to watch their process, usually in key international elections. When I worked in Kazakhstan, I got to see this happen as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) sent monitors for a national election, only to be kept out of some voting sites. After the election, the OSCE wrote a scathing report on Kazakhstan's system, and the government responded by saying, more or less, "We expected the President to get 97% of the vote, but he only got 93% so this clearly shows how free and fair our elections are, and we won't be needing OSCE observers again thank you very much." Needless to say, this only increased the international perception of Kazakhstan as an authoritarian state (and the fact that my school was named for the President, the university was named for the President, the capital city was renamed for the President when he stepped down, etc...)

Election monitoring happens frequently in countries that are undergoing a transition to democracy, and it serves as a HUGE help for those states as they a) have an incentive to improve their practices and b) the opportunity to share knowledge and experience with other democratic states, helping the process speed along.

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