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Human rights with ‘Third World characteristics’

12 Mar 2021

By Ramindu Perera   Events in the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) have become a day-to-day talk for most Sri Lankans due to the resolution that has been submitted, addressing accountability and human rights issues in Sri Lanka. The resolution drafted by the Core Group of Countries on Sri Lanka, led by the UK, calls for stronger punitive measures against Sri Lanka. There is a clear division in the way how different countries in the UNHRC have responded to this resolution. Whilst 15 States comprising mostly western countries have spoken in favour of implementing harsher measures against Sri Lanka, 21 countries (including 10 States having voting rights in the Council) have expressed their opposition to the resolution. Almost all countries, except for Russia, are developing countries coming from the Global South. This division at the UNHRC is larger than Sri Lanka and reflects something more fundamental. The divide constitutes around substantive differences of opinion on issues such as how to define human rights, the role human rights should play in the international realm, and identifying the most appropriate means to realise human rights. As the history of human rights suggests, the meaning of human rights is not static and lies in constant motion. This evolution occurs in a context where different actors and forces are contesting with each other to define what human rights are. One such contestation we witness today at the UN level is the endeavour of the countries in the Global South to appropriate the human rights discourse and redefine it by disarticulating how human rights are defined in its current Euro-centric form.   Chinese intervention The speech delivered by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi during the UNHRC session in February, titled “A people-centred approach for global human rights progress”, can be considered as a well-structured attempt to articulate a distinct Third World position on human rights. Although China has grown into the second largest economy in the world, it identifies itself as a developing country and positions itself as representing the interests of the Global South. In its diplomatic narratives, China constantly raises the need of reforming the relationship between the Global North and the Global South in a more equitable manner and also promotes the idea of “South-South co-operation”, meaning increased collaboration among developing nations. In recent years, China has enhanced its activities in UN human rights forums, alarming some western observers about a possible “takeover” of the UNHRC by the Chinese. In most debates occurring within the forum, the positions of China tend to converge with the perspectives advanced by other developing nations. Chinese Foreign Minister Yi highlighted four theses in his speech. First, he argued for a human rights philosophy that centres on the “people”. This means that people should be the real masters of their countries and that increasing the people’s sense of gain, happiness, and security are important for any human rights mission. Furthermore, it requires reducing the gap between the haves and have-nots. Second, universality as well as the particularity of human rights should be acknowledged. While all countries should respect the universal values enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it should also be understood that countries differ from each other in terms of their history, culture, social system, and the level of economic and social development. These national realities and interests of the people should be taken into consideration in promoting human rights. Third, human rights are an all-encompassing notion comprising civil and political as well as economic, social, and cultural rights. The right to subsistence and development are basic human rights. The scope of human rights is constantly expanding and due attention should be attributed to the right to healthcare and the environment. Finally, the promotion of human rights in the international realm should be done through dialogue and co-operation, and not by coercion. Human rights are neither a monopoly of a small number of states, nor a tool to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. The basis of international human rights protection and promotion has to be equality and mutual respect. Chinese Foreign Minister Yi’s address appears different to most of the mainstream narrations on human rights. Broadly speaking, his four propositions can be classified under two categories: Those concerning the meaning of human rights and ideas concerning the means of realising human rights.   Defining human rights The origins of the modern conception of human rights lie in liberal political thought. The foundation of liberalism is the notion of the abstract human individual – abstracted from the social relations that he lives in. The initial conception of human rights was a limited ideal, defining “natural rights” as the right to life, liberty, and property that an individual can claim against the state. This conception later led to the recognition of rights related to individual security and liberty such as the freedom of religion, freedom from torture, freedom of association, and so forth. In its early days, what was meant by “human” rights was nothing but the rights of the white, bourgeoise, heterosexual, male individual. However, this initial meaning started expanding as different social groups excluded from the dominant notion of rights attempted to appropriate the rights discourse to articulate their demands. This led to the proliferation of new rights discourses different from the classical liberal conception. For instance, the use of the rights discourse by workers paved the way for the emergence of “workers’ rights”, a set of collective rights that are fundamentally distinct from individualist notions of rights. Similarly, the emergence of socialist forces resulted in the recognition of “social rights” discourse – recognising having an adequate standard of living, just conditions at work, housing, and healthcare and education as human rights. The anti-colonial movement in the 20th Century succeeded in making the right to self-determination of peoples an internationally recognised human right. The demand of newly decolonised countries for a just international economic order was later articulated in the language of rights – albeit in a diluted form – in terms of the “right to development”. Despite all these developments, still the orthodox notion of identifying human rights only as civil and political rights remains to be hegemonic in the international realm. This orthodoxy stems from the manner in which the constitutional and political tradition in the western liberal democracies defines human rights. They are reluctant to identify social rights as proper human rights. This reluctance overshadows how we identify massive and grave “human rights violations” in the world. For instance, the structural adjustment policies the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank imposed on developing countries during the Third World debt crisis in the 1980s and 1990s had a devastating effect on millions of the poor living in these countries, driving them towards poverty, the loss of livelihood, dispossessing farmers; compelling them to migrate into urban slums; and excluding poor families from education and access to healthcare. But the dominant human rights discourse does not identify such devastating events as “gross human rights violations” or “crimes against humanity”. What if we redefine human rights by giving prominence to social rights and redraw the “line” between nations abiding by human rights norms and those who are not? Such a redrawing might have interesting consequences. For instance, China or Vietnam that have effectively contained the coronavirus pandemic, largely due to their effective system of public and community healthcare, could claim a better “human rights record” in terms of the right to health, compared to the US where hundreds of thousands have died as there is no prudent public healthcare policy. From the perspective of developing countries, what they desperately need is economic independence in order to ensure a good standard of living for their citizens. This means better conditions in international trade, a larger say in decision-making bodies like the World Trade Organisation, freedom from indebtedness, and a conducive environment for technological transfers. This is why they require a just international economic order – recognition of the “right to development”. The realisation of all other human rights largely depends on this fundamental precondition. Thus, the emphasis on the right to development and international economic co-operation is an attempt to radically expand the meaning of human rights from a Third World perspective. On the other hand, by highlighting the importance of social rights and by drawing attention towards issues like poverty and economic inequality, these countries can challenge the privileged position western countries currently enjoy as the “guardians of human rights”.   Co-operation instead of confrontation Professor of International Relations at the University of St. Andrews, UK, Sibylle Scheipers has pointed out a fundamental difference between how countries in the Global North and Global South have historically approached the issue of human rights protection in the international order. Most nations in the Global North are former colonial powers. The claim that the western civilization represents something more “advanced” than the rest of the world is what justified the colonial project. The modern approach of these countries to human rights replicates the “civilizational paradigm”. The older civilizational mission went into crisis in the 20th Century with the advent of anti-colonial revolutions in the Third World and the collapse of European empires. Newly independent nations – assuming the majority in forums like the UN General Assembly – pushed for a new international political order firmly based on the notion of sovereign equality and non-intervention in international affairs. The “international human rights” discourse we witness today is an emergence in the late 1970s. The defeat in the Vietnam war compelled the US to reconsider its strategy in containing the advent of the Third World project that was aggressively demanding a fundamental reform in international economic relations at the time. As Professor of Law and History at Yale University Samuel Moyn explains, contemporary human rights are born with President Jimmy Carter deciding to make human rights a central tenet of the American foreign policy. The new strategy redefined international political rivalries in terms of human rights. Thus, the world is depicted as comprising two sets of nations: Legitimate States that adhere to “standards of civilization” represented by human rights and inferior nations that have failed in this mission. The sovereignty of those inferior states is conditional to the standards of civilization. If they fail to uphold them, external interference in terms of “humanitarian interventions” (such interventions could range from imposing sanctions and various covert actions to outright invasion) are made to implement the standards. Thus, the norm of sovereign equality was replaced with a new notion of a hierarchy of nations. This approach that has little regard towards the sovereignty of states in the Global South represents the logic of confrontation. However, confrontation applies selectively. Condemnation of human rights violations is directly related to the geopolitical interests of western superpowers. For instance, in his address to the recent UNHRC session, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken who condemned countries like Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, North Korea, Iran, South Sudan, and Sri Lanka for human rights violations, on the other hand, defended Israel that has been illegally occupying Palestine for decades, stating that Israel is disproportionately targeted. The history of “human rights concerns” of powerful western countries is such that they would highlight human rights issues of countries they dislike as the human rights issues requiring international attention. Instead of this confrontational and hypocritical approach, the preference of developing nations has been for an approach promoting human rights through “dialogue” and “co-operation”. The difference between the two approaches was visible since the days the UNHRC was formed and was reflected in the debates concerning the structure and the role of the Body. The preference for dialogue, rather than confrontation, stems from the fear that powerful countries would politicise internal human rights issues in order to undermine the sovereignty of developing countries. Neither China nor any other developing country has yet concretely elaborated on a model on how to realise human rights through co-operation, dialogue, and technical assistance. The approach of the International Labour Organisation that tends to engage with countries with a poor labour rights record – offering technical assistance and so forth instead of demonising them as outcastes – might offer an example for such an alternative paradigm. In 2018, the UNHRC adopted a resolution initiated by China on promoting human rights through mutually beneficial co-operation among countries. The resolution was condemned by western nations as an attempt to dilute the standard meaning of human rights, but was supported by most of the developing countries. Such resolutions are examples of the attempt from the part of the developing world to explore a model that could strike a better balance between human rights promotion and sovereign equality and non-interference.   Limits of the Third World mission Mainstream commentators and liberal pundits tend to explain the division at the UNHRC as a division between democratic states and authoritarian regimes. However, this comparison is thoroughly misleading. Developing countries having different political systems – from one-party States like China to pluralist democracies such as South Africa, Brazil, and Pakistan – generally tend to take similar positions in terms of issues like the meaning of human rights and the approach that has to be taken to protect human rights. Two resolutions that were adopted by the UNHRC in the previous regular session – one on reducing inequalities among and within states and another on strengthening the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Development – testifies to this fact. Whilst developing countries with varying forms of political systems endorsed these resolutions, countries from the West either abstained or voted against them. The attempt of developing nations to appropriate the human rights discourse also entails a number of pitfalls. The main downside is that the defence of sovereignty is often used to justify atrocities committed within the borders. Sri Lanka provides the best example for this scenario. The suppression of the rights of minorities in our country is often shielded as an internal matter in the country, and a strict “non-intervention” policy is likely to play into the hands of those who perpetrate atrocities. When countries like Cuba defend Sri Lanka before the resolutions advanced by western superpowers on the ground of anti-imperialism, what they fail to address is the legitimate concerns of communities that are affected because of the majoritarian policies of the government. On the other hand, the demand that social rights should be given prominence might also well lead to a scenario where the demand is manipulated to justify authoritarian practices that undermine civil and political liberties. At the moment, there does not seem to be any solution to this paradox. Core States, in maintaining their hegemonic control over peripheral countries, tend to define the relationship between sovereignty and human rights (defined as individual rights) in a manner subordinating the former to the latter. The opposition of developing countries – and their attempt to redefine the relationship by emphasising the importance of sovereignty and sovereign equality – assumes the character of a counter-hegemonic resistance. In the context of global power relations, this endeavour entails the characteristics of a subaltern movement. But it also might lead towards increasing insecurities among certain subaltern communities like ethnic minorities living in these nations who are “subalterns within the subaltern”. The current counter-hegemonic endeavour of developing countries, along with all its limitations, would remain in force as long as the domination of the Global North persists.   (The writer is an academic attached to the Department of Legal Studies at the Open University. He can be reached at raminduezln@gmail.com)


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