Human rights and social justice/Reading assignments/Global politics

The bigger picture

This section is meant to give you the answer to "WHY are we doing the reading assignment and how does it fit into the course structure?". Also, this can serve as an introductory text to the assignment or as a "popular text" (?) to get familiar with the contents of the assignment. Class discussions after the assignment may tread into news stories and other parts of the layman's domain and they may serve as the source of this section.

Outline of the assignment

This is a rough outline of the given reading assignment. Please note that this is NOT a collection of the subtitles that have been used in the article/chapter. The sole purpose of the outline is to summarize the discussion and present it with a logical flow to take the reader one step closer towards understanding the article/chapter fully.

Introduction to global politics

• Terms like NGO/IGO are introduced.
• The law of nations is introduced.
  • It is pointed out that the law of nations (the international law) is different from domestic law
  • There's no one to make, enforce and interpret international law.
  • Realists/Liberals/Constructivists are introduced.
• Sources of international law are discussed.
  • This is logical. The laws that a citizen has to abide by in a state have been developed/evolved from the natural law. What, then, is the source for the international law? (This is a personal note by the contributor)
  • Custom and treaties are introduced and some examples have been cited. These are introduced as the sources of the international law.
  • The Geneva conventions are mentioned in this regard as well. This is noteworthy because Geneva conventions are oft-mentioned in news stories.
  • Most of the examples cited till now were related to international law regarding wars. The 1982 Law of the Sea convention is the first example to justify that war related treaties are just a subset of the international law.
• It is clarified that the international law does not give birth to a body superior to the states.
  • Sovereignty itself is a cornerstone of international law...
  • Indeed, the emergence of the state system and international law are inseparable.
• Discussion on "What were the rulers constrained by?"
  • Natural law? The natural law would be imposed on the rulers from above by God.
  • Contrasting to this, the law between states is voluntary : Legal poitivism
• The discussion on Thirty Years' War, Hugo Grotius and his book On the Law of War and Peace. Grotius' views are as follows: -
  • Men go to wars even without any major cause and once the war starts, there is no respect for any law, human or divine (the natural law.)
  • The customs that the nations adhere to have the force of law.
  • International law would allow the states to form stable expectations of one another's obligations and would be less likely to go to war. (This assertion comes from the view that states have their own interests. ???)
  • Supporters of Grotius are people who support/reinforce the idea that the international law is between rather than above states.
• The concept of a Just war is introduced.

The individual in global politics

Introduction

• Introduction
  • Human rights are frequently abused.
  • Even though every human being has the same rights - by virtue of being a human - women often do not get the same realization of their rights.
  • It's ironic that the Declaration of Independence declares that "All men are born equal" when the declaration is meant to assert the equality of all human beings.
  • Few thinkers or politicians thought that people had rights apart from those granted to them by their sovereigns.
• Are states required to treat their citizens humanely?
  • States may do as they please!
    • States are sovereign and within their territory they have unlimited power. Hence they may do as they please.
    • They have no legal superiors. this furthers the argument above.
    • The international law dictates that no one can interfere in the domestic affairs of a country.
  • States HAVE done as they pleased in the past.
    • Forcing people to follow a particular religion, ideology or political view.
    • Many rulers arbitrarily jail prisoners, torture political prisoners to extract information and so on.
    • US soldiers in Iraq have violated human rights and this serves as a very modern example for the above statement.
    • Dictators like Adolf Hitler, Idi Amin, Josef Stalin and others have ordered genocides - the most extreme form of human rights violation.
  • The spread of democracy also spread the belief that law/government requires the consent of the governed. This is a direct answer to the question posed in the beginning of this nested outline.
  • Liberals, constructivists, realists are introduced with their views.
• International law has mostly dealt with the sovereignty of states in the last three centuries. However, human rights are acquiring an increasing status in international law.
  • Humanitarian intervention in extreme abuses of human rights attack the very idea of the sovereignty of a state.
  • Sovereignty of the states is a priority in the UN charter but as Kofi Annan says, "Sovereignty is not an excuse for the inexcusable".

The Holocaust

• Genocides date back to WWII
  • However, anti-semitism for the jews had existed in Europe for centuries.
  • Pogroms of Jews were common during the crusades.
• Hitler had anti-semitism at the core of his ideology, mainly from the belief that Jews (mainly, apart from others)