Endtimes of Human Rights

Stephen Hopgood

Description

"We are living through the endtimes of the civilizing mission. The ineffectual International Criminal Court and its disastrous first prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, along with the failure in Syria of the Responsibility to Protect are the latest pieces of evidence not of transient misfortunes but of fatal structural defects in international humanism. Whether it is the increase in deadly attacks on aid workers, the torture and 'disappearing' of al-Qaeda suspects by American officials, the flouting of international law by states such as Sri Lanka and Sudan, or the shambles of the Khmer Rouge tribunal in Phnom Penh, the prospect of one world under secular human rights law is receding. What seemed like a dawn is in fact a sunset. The foundations of universal liberal norms and global governance are crumbling."-from The Endtimes of Human RightsIn a book that is at once passionate and provocative, Stephen Hopgood argues, against the conventional wisdom, that the idea of universal human rights has become not only ill adapted to current realities but also overambitious and unresponsive. A shift in the global balance of power away from the United States further undermines the foundations on which the global human rights regime is based. American decline exposes the contradictions, hypocrisies and weaknesses behind the attempt to enforce this regime around the world and opens the way for resurgent religious and sovereign actors to challenge human rights.Historically, Hopgood writes, universal humanist norms inspired a sense of secular religiosity among the new middle classes of a rapidly modernizing Europe. Human rights were the product of a particular worldview (Western European and Christian) and specific historical moments (humanitarianism in the nineteenth century, the aftermath of the Holocaust). They were an antidote to a troubling contradiction-the coexistence of a belief in progress with horrifying violence and growing inequality. The obsolescence of that founding purpose in the modern globalized world has, Hopgood asserts, transformed the institutions created to perform it, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross and recently the International Criminal Court, into self-perpetuating structures of intermittent power and authority that mask their lack of democratic legitimacy and systematic ineffectiveness. At their best, they provide relief in extraordinary situations of great distress; otherwise they are serving up a mixture of false hope and unaccountability sustained by "human rights" as a global brand. The Endtimes of Human Rights is sure to be controversial. Hopgood makes a plea for a new understanding of where hope lies for human rights, a plea that mourns the promise but rejects the reality of universalism in favor of a less predictable encounter with the diverse realities of today's multipolar world.

Sujets

• International relations
• Human rights

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 18 novembre 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780801469305
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

endtimes THE human rights OF

endtimes HET human rights OF

stephenhopgood

C O R N E L L U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S Ithaca and London

Copyright © 2013 by Cornell University

Allrightsreserved.Exceptforbriefquotationsinareview, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.

Firstpublished2013byCornellUniversityPress

PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica

LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData Hopgood, Stephen, author.  The endtimes of human rights / Stephen Hopgood.  pages cm  Includes bibliographical references and index.  ISBN 9780801452376 (cloth : alk. paper)  1. Human rights—International cooperation. 2. Human rights—Moral and ethical aspects. 3. Human rights— Political aspects. I. Title.  JC571.H65 2013  323—dc23 2013016127

CornellUniversityPressstrivestouseenvironmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possibleinthepublishingofitsbooks.Suchmaterials include vegetablebased, lowVOC inks and acidfree papers that are recycled, totally chlorinefree, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu.

Cloth printing

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

contents

preface vii

1. M O R A L A U T H O R I T Y I N A G O D L E S S W O R L D 1

2 . T H E C H U R C H O F H U M A N R I G H T S 24

3 . T H E H O L O C A U S T M E TA N A R R AT I V E 47

4 . T H E M O R A L A R C H I T E C T U R E O F S U F F E R I N G 69

5 . H U M A N R I G H T S A N D A M E R I C A N P O W E R 96

6 . H U M A N R I G H T S E M P I R E 119

7. O F G O D S A N D N AT I O N S 142

8 . T H E N E O  W E S T P H A L I A N W O R L D 166

acknowledgments 183

listofabbreviations 185

notes 187

bibliography 223

index 247

preface

Writingthisbook hasbeen on my mind since Mary Robinson visited Dili in East Timor in 1999. Indonesia’s brutal occupation had recently ended. Robinson, at the time UN high commissioner for human rights, opened a twoday workshop designed to embed East Timor’s pledge to uphold international human rights law. Her speech was titled “Build ing the Future of East Timor on a Culture of Human Rights.” Each of 160 participants received a kit containing all the major human rights documentsandabadgethatcarriedthewords“Humanrights:know 1 them, live them, defend them,” written in the local language, Tetun. Fortwentyfiveyears,since1975,theEastTimoresehadfoughta guerrillawaragainsttheIndonesianmilitaryandmilitias.Civilian deaths from hunger, illness, killings, and disappearances during this period are conservatively estimated at more than one hundred thou sand. This was out of a population of under a million. Numerous human 2 rights abuses were committed.Somehow, led by future president XananaGusmão,thearmedTimoreseresistancekeptthefightaliveas the international community made empty, rhetorical protests. Even the internationalhumanrightsactivistsandjournalistswhohighlightedEast Timor’s cause made little impact. Gusmão’sliberationfightersalwaysseemedtomeexemplaryhuman rights defenders. What they knew was that no one else was coming to save them. Through their own tight communal bonds, shoulderto shoulder with people on whom they depended and who in turn de pended on them, they defeated a threat to their very existence. During this time, the United States continued to train some of Indonesia’s top 3 army officers.One of them, former president Suharto’s soninlaw

VI I IPR E FACE

General Prabowo, accused of masterminding systematic human rights abuses in East Timor, is now a leading candidate for the 2014 Indonesian 4 presidential election.More than ten years after Indonesia was driven from the country, there has still been no accounting for the crimes com 5 mitted under occupation. TheEastTimoreseknewwhathumanrightswere:theyhadfought and died for them every day. The arrogance of the high commission er’s lecture and those badges still seems to me obscene. All she should have come with was an apology. International human rights had failed East Timor when it mattered. Grotesquely, having resorted to violence to protecttheirownlivesandfreedom,EastTimor’sguerrillaswouldnotbe considered true “human rights defenders” at all by international agen cies. How could the heart of global human rights advocacy be so cold and so naive in the face of such courage? This book is an attempt to answer that question. To do so is to reject overly idealistic accounts from within the human rights discourse and to ask searching and critical questions 6 of this ubiquitous language of global rules and norms.After all, human rights advocates proselytize in the name of humanity, and that means they claim to speak for me and for you. IntruththereweretwoformsofhumanrightsatworkinEast Timor. One is the local and transnational networks of activists who bring publicity to abuses they and their communities face and who try to exert pressure on governments and the United Nations for ac 7 tion, often at tremendous personal cost.This form of activism I’ll term human rightsthlowercaseiniitla.sInocbmtaolviginndaceenirpediw, vation, any language is useful that helps to raise awareness, generate transnational activism, put pressure on governments, facilitate legal redress, and attract funds for campaigning, whether it is that of human rights, compassion, solidarity, freedom, brotherhood, sisterhood, jus tice, religion, grace, charity, kin, ethnicity, nationalism, pity, love, or equality. The endtimes can never come for this form of “human rights” in the same way that nothing can stop people banding together to de mand their own freedom or justice in whatever language they prefer. These ethical and political claims are rooted in our shared interest in fair and equal treatment. The call for human rights at this instinctive level is really the demand “No more, stop, enough!”—the name of the report produced by East Timor’s truth and reconciliation commission

PR E FACEI X

8 (“Chega!” in Portuguese).Human rights can be used tactically to help prevent torture, disappearances, or extrajudicial executions or to demandeconomicandsocialrightstofood,water,andhealthcare.Itis a flexible and negotiable language. It does not “defend human rights,” it defends the person. It is a means, not an end in itself. NoneofthisiswhatMaryRobinsonmeantbyhumanrights.She was talking aboutHuman Rightsc,izalitapamuH.desthgiRnisaglobal structureoflaws,courts,norms,andorganizationsthatraisemoney, write reports, run international campaigns, open local offices, lobby gov ernments, and claim to speak with singular authority in the name of humanityasawhole.HumanRightsadvocatesmaketheirdemandthat all societies adopt global norms on the basis of a uniquely universal and secular moral authority. Often highly legalized, Human Rights norms are not flexible and negotiable. They are a kind of secular monotheism with aspirations to civilize the world. The East Timorese, heavily Catholic, had rooted their fight as much in everyday Christianity as any abstract secu 9 lar norm.The arrival of a UN transitional authority now subjected East Timor to the regime of Human Rights norms that had so conspicuously failed it before. Of this global regime, Mary Robinson was the highest of high priests. ThisbookisabouttheendtimesofHumanRights.Itisanargument, 10 not a history.By making my claims in bold terms, I endeavor to cut through some of the hype with which Human Rights advocates often surround themselves. I will argue, in contrast, that we are on the verge of the imminent decay of the Global Human Rights Regime. Through my previous work with Amnesty International I know only too well how many hardworking, wellmeaning people of good faith are active all over 11 the world for human rights.They work, however, within global Human Rights institutions that have permanency, organizational interests, and ambitions that far outweigh the impulse many of us share to stand up for the abused or cheer the end of tyrants. Taking care that this global regime remains true to its core principles requires us to understand just what those principles are: What is it that gives Human Rights its moral authority?Thisquestionishardertoanswerthanyoumightthink.But without an answer, how do Human Rights advocates, who assume unto themselves the right to speak for everyone, mobilize the faithful and legitimate their demands?