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10. Human and Global Challenges
Nine-year-old victim of the crisis
A civilian killed by the Sudanese Government backed Janjaweed militia West Darfur. Photographed August 24, 2004, by Lynsey Addario.
Sudanese refugees fleeing Darfur (April 2004)
displaced children Refugee Camp, Darfur
Sudan
• Britain ruled the Sudan
: the northern part of the country to maintain its Islamic religion and customs.
: the southern part of the Sudan
- Christian missionaries: allowed to convert the region’s inhabitants.
- many southern Sudanese: practice their traditional religion, or animism.
• just as a trans-Atlantic slave trade: a trans-Sahara slave trade.
• the Arab countries of the Middle East and North Africa: enslaved 10million Africans from south of the Sahara.
• Arabs and Africans remain distrustful of each other.• some people in the northern part of the Sudan
: refer to a person from the south as slave.• many northern Sudanese, mainly Arab
: unwilling to treat southern Sudanese as equal citizens because of the legacy of slavery.
• this ethnic and religious conflict
: complicated by the claims of both sides to territory that may contain huge oil reserves.
• Sudan, its independence in 1956, : the stage was already set for ethnic conflict
• the north and the south: fought each other with varying levels of intensity from 1956 to
1972• in 1983 the Muslim government declared
: the entire country would be ruled by shari’a, or Islamic law.• the Christians and animists in the southern part of the Sudan
: resisted Islamic rule.: formed the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) to achieve a
secular democratic Sudan.: to make the south an independent country.
• more than 2.6 million people faced starvation• more than 1.6 million people have died from famine and
war.• the government
: prevented food supplies from reaching the starving people in the south
: bombed international relief centers.• both sides
: committed gross violations of human rights.• the north
: continues to enslave people from the south.
The Human Condition
Global South:• 3 billion people live on $2 per day• life expectancy less than 60 years• 33% out of the 4.4 billion people in the Global South lack
safe drinking water• 25% lack adequate housing• a daunting scale of poverty and misery is evident
throughout the world
• “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains” – Rousseau (18th century)
• can the poorest proportion of humanity sever the chains of their disadvantages?
• the gap between rich and poor is increasing
: causes of hopelessness, desperation, violence, terrorism, suicidal martyrdom
• “in the past 15 years, per capita income has declined in more than 100 countries. … The number of poor people will increase sharply … to more than 100 million from 40 million” (World Bank)
• the opportunities and choices to freedom from fear and poverty
: unavailable for most people in the Global South
• life in the Global South
: has changed little from that of their ancestors
The Global Refugee Crisis
• refugees: people who flee for safety to another country because of
a well-founded fear of persecution: avg. 20 million people
• Britain and France : continue to receive large numbers of immigrants from
their former colonies but nationalistic criticism arises• the U.S.
: reduced the maximum number of refugees from 200,000 in the mid-1980s to 70,000
• displaced people: people involuntarily uprooted from their homes, but still
in their own countries: 20 to 30 million
• refugees and displaced persons alike : the victims of war
- Persian Gulf War in 1991: a refugee population of 5 million
- genocide in Rwanda in 1994: 1.7 million- ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia: uprooted
3 million victims- the U.S. war on terror in 2002: 3.6 million Afghans - civil war in Sudan in 2004: 1 million displaced
people
• failed states: governments have collapsed and no authority has gained
acceptance to restore domestic law and order
“refugees or displaced people cannot expect, at home, the protection of the police, access to a fair trial ….”
Genocide • during the 20th century
: there were not only two world wars but also at least 6 major cases of genocide
• genocide: the deliberate extermination of an ethnic or minority group: the gravest international crime and the most dangerous
violation of human rights- Nazi Germany and Jews and Gypsies: annihilation of 6
million Jews- Cambodians, the Khmer Rouge- Yugoslavia and Muslims- Rwanda and Tutsi and Hutus in 1994: 1 million Tutsis
died- Saddam Hussein and Kurds
Status of Women
• gender inequalities: women
• lower living standards
• lower pay
• lower-level jobs
• 14% of parliamentary seats
• less access to health care; girls die more often
• most egregious in Global South
• exacerbated by religion and culture
Human Rights and Protecting People
• human right
: a transnational ethical movements that support
- the view that human being should come first, ahead of other objects of identity such as state
: universal
: apply to everyone by virtue of humanity – everywhere and all the times
• human rights
: obligates all actor on the global stages to respect, observe, and protect these rights
• UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948
: declared a broad civil and political rights
: “human rights should be protected by the rule of law”
• great distance between the ideal human rights and its realization
• the global community
: has not yet agreed upon criteria for determining when, whether, and how to intervene to protect human rights
• humanitarian intervention
: the use of peacekeeping troops by foreign countries and international organization
- to protect endangered people from massive murder
• the problem of legitimacy of international intervention
: can foreign countries and IO interfere in the domestic affairs of a sovereign state?
• liberalists
: advocate the protection and promotion of human rights
• realists
: resist this goal because they see the protection and promotion of state sovereignty as a priority
• noncombatant immunity
: noncombatant becomes the primary victims in warfare (today 90 civilian casualties result for 10 military losses)
• revising international law
: heads of state are now accountable for war crime against humanity
- removing the protection they have received under traditional international law
• Milosevic of Yugoslavia
: was indicted in 1999
: faced prosecution of war criminals at the Hague
• the humanitarian vision to promote human rights
: remain a big challenge on the global agenda
• the world
: has a long way to go to achieve that aspiration
• Pinochet transferred power to Patricio Aylwin, the new democratically elected president, in 1990
- retained his post as commander-in-chief of the army until 1998 and a senator
• In 1998 Pinochet traveled to Britain for medical treatment- he was arrested on an international arrest warrant from a Spanish
judge, Baltasar Garzon, the son of middle-class farmers- kept under house arrest for over a year- the charges included 94 counts of torture of Spanish citizens and
one count of conspiracy to commit torture.
• Pinochet (left) and Allende in 1973
• Pinochet (sitting) as head of the military junta
• Chile's military junta of 1973
• There was a 16-month legal battle over whether Pinochet was immune from prosecution as a former head of state.
• Pinochet was visited by Margaret Thatcher during his house arrest in London, in 1998
Human Rights Advocates Opponents
- Tony Blair’s Labour
- Spain (Garzon)
- other European nations
- NGO
- Thatcher
- the center-left coalition government of Chile
- universal jurisdiction over war crimes: national courts could try individuals (a head of state) for human rights crimes regardless of the nationality
- national sovereignty: a central tenet of international law
- sovereign (diplomatic) immunity from prosecution
- a body of international treaties would be used to prosecute leaders guilty of serious crimes against humanity
- extradition and prosecution are dangerous precedent that threatens the principle of national sovereignty- this is an internal matter of Chile
- leaders contemplating acts of torture or murder might reconsider their abuses of power
- they would likely extend the duration of their abusive rules
- need to recognize his achievement: saving Chile from socialists, strengthening its economy
- universal jurisdiction could jeopardize American and European leaders
: involved in controversial military engagements
: leaders of the former Soviet Union, Thatcher (invasion of the Falklands), Clinton (bombing in Sudan and Afghanistan), Kissinger (bombing in Cambodia, support of Pinochet)
• The highest court, the House of Lords, ruled that extradition could proceed
- only charges after Britain had signed the International Convention against Torture in 1988 could be considered
• Yet, because of Pinochet's fragile health, the Home Secretary Jack Straw ruled that he should not be extradited
• on 2 March 2000 he returned to Chile
• Pinochet was arrested in Chile- the Supreme Court ruled that he was not fit to stand trial, on
mental health grounds
• He later gave a lengthy and vivid television interview, claiming he was never a dictator
- victims' lawyers claimed that this was evidence that he was fit to stand trial.
• In January 2005 the Supreme Court upheld his indictment on murder and kidnapping charges