Liberal democracies, not activists and international law, protect human rights.
By Eric Posner
Sunday, April 22, 2007 12:01 a.m.
The international human rights regime has fallen on hard times. Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, wrote recently that "since the U.S. can't provide credible leadership on human rights, European countries must pick up the slack." But the Europeans, Mr. Roth notes, are no more enthusiastic about pressuring foreign countries than is the U.S.
The United Nation's Human Rights Council is in no position to pick up the slack, either.
The Human Rights Council has performed even more dismally than its much maligned predecessor, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. The latter was disbanded because it had become a platform dominated by human rights abusers who used it mostly for criticizing Israel. The Human Rights Council, by contrast, is a platform dominated by human rights abusers who use it exclusively for criticizing Israel.
Late last month the commission finally issued a weak resolution on the genocide in Darfur, one, in the words of U.N. Watch, that "failed to condemn or even to cite the Sudanese government." At the same time, it urged governments "to prohibit the dissemination of racist and xenophobic ideas and material aimed at any religion"--a reference to the Danish cartoon controversy and a sentiment deeply in conflict with Western ideals of freedom of expression.
So if Americans, Europeans, and the U.N. will not lead on human rights, who will? Nobody, and maybe that is not such a bad thing.
Human rights were supposed to be special. Unlike most international law, which governs the relations of states with each other, international human rights law regulates the internal workings of states--the relationship between a government and its citizens. This gives human rights law a rigidity that is absent from most international law.
When the U.S. and another country disagree about flyover rights or trade, they can renegotiate the relevant treaty regime and bring it into alignment with their joint interests. But when a country decides that its human rights commitments interfere with law enforcement or counterinsurgency operations, it cannot renegotiate its commitments. With minor exceptions, its commitments are to all.
The theory is that human rights are universal, and so states have no excuse for committing human rights abuses. The practice, however, has been different. States must worry about their security even when an existential threat is not imminent. If they do not, they lose the support of their citizens or subjects, and thus they risk their own political stability. And states must cater to local religious and cultural values at odds with Western human rights. Accordingly, most states have paid no more than lip service to their human rights commitments. During the Cold War, the U.S. used human rights as a cudgel against the Soviet Union and its satellites, but gave a free pass to friendly dictators.
The end of the Cold War was supposed to change all this. Under American leadership, countries would finally live up to their human rights commitments and international human rights would continue to advance. Several forces have conspired to ruin this pretty picture.
First, genuine disagreement exists about the proper moral ordering of society. Where once it could be thought that totalitarian regimes suppressed people's natural instinct in favor of human rights, it has become clear as electoral democracies have replaced authoritarian regimes, that this is simply not true. People also care about tribal, ethnic, and religious ties; they care about order and security. An Islamic democracy will not necessarily endorse religious pluralism or women's rights; a country with a long history of tribal dispute resolution practices will reject Western-style law enforcement.
The tension between promoting democracy and promoting human rights, when newly enfranchised peoples turn out not to subscribe to the ideals of the Enlightenment, is the dirty secret of the human rights movement. As the expanding franchise continues to expose the fissure between the two ideals, human rights advocates are finally going to have to choose between them.
Second, the idea that the U.S., with or without European support, could impose its conception of human rights on other countries has taken a beating in recent years, and this beating will only become worse over the next few decades. As regional powers like China, Russia, India, South Africa and Brazil continue to rise and assert themselves, whatever leverage the West has had for pressuring human rights violators will continue to decline. The new powers will offer alternative cultural, religious, or ideological standards that are more attractive than Western human rights to subsets of nations, and they will offer trade and securities ties if the West tries to withdraw them. Already we observe China snapping up oil leases in Sudan and Russia exploiting its economic ties with Iran.
Third, the ideology of human rights advancement relies on a false picture of human motivation and global politics. Human rights advocates seem to think that closing Guantanamo Bay would improve the behavior of governments in other countries. But foreign governments have no reason to think that they should do whatever the U.S. does. Indeed, if the U.S. closed Guantanamo Bay, and some of the freed detainees returned to Afghanistan (as some reportedly have) and killed American troops, the lesson learned by the world is not one that would advance the cause of human rights.
Today, the future of the international human rights legal regime is bleak. And yet if what matters is not conformity with the rules of the human rights treaties, but the well-being of the world's population, things have never been better. Mortality rates are down, per capita income is up, literacy has spread, democracy is flourishing. Economic growth in China and India, which together account for a third of the world's population, largely accounts for improvement in overall well-being, but there is also good news in Latin America, South Africa, Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia.
How can this be? As technology and trade have advanced and spread, so has wealth and education, and with wealth and education has come political reform, and the expansion of civil and political rights. This is part of a long-term trend that goes back centuries.
There is no guarantee that it will continue, but one central fact needs to be recognized: The role of legalized international human rights in this process has been minimal or nil. Much more important in the 20th century were the determined efforts of liberal democracies to oppose powerful, dangerous, expansionist states that rejected markets and democracy, and imposed their views on small countries. These efforts required pragmatic accommodation of unsavory allies, and even compromising of Western values, for the sake of the greater goal of keeping dangerous forces in check. For the conflict with radical Islam, this history holds important lessons.
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