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