Mason Teng

International Relations
12/5/15
Outline
International Organization, Law, and Human Rights
1. Roles of International Organization
a. International norms are the expectations actors hold about normal
international relations.
b. Agreed norms of behavior, institutionalized through such
organizations, become habitual over time and gain legitimacy.
c. The power of international norms and standards of morality may
vary when different states or world regions hold different expectations of what is
normal.
d. International organizations include intergovernmental
organizations and nongovernmental organizations.
e. A web of international organizations of various sizes and types
now connects people in all countries.
2. The United Nations
a. The UN System
i.
Purposes of the UN
1. Although the UN strengthens world
order, its design acknowledges the realities of international
anarchy and the unwillingness of states to surrender their
sovereignty.
2. The UN Charter is based on the
principles that states are equal under international law;that states
have full sovereignty over their own affairs; that states should
have full independence and territorial integrity; and that states
should diplomatic privileges, refraining from committing
aggression and observing the terms of treaties they sign.
3. Sometimes the UN succeeds and
sometimes it fails.
ii.
Structure of the UN
1. The General Assembly coordinates
a variety of development programs and other autonomous
agencies through the Economic and Social Council.
2. The Security Council dispatches
peacekeeping forces to trouble spots.
3. The administration of the UN takes
place through the UN Secretariat, led by the secretary-general of
the UN
4. The World Court is a judicial arm of
the UN
b. The Security Council
i.
The Security Council is responsible for maintaining
international peace and security and for restoring peace when it breaks
down.

ii.
The five permanent members of the Councilthe
United States, Britain, France, Russia, and Chinaare the most
important.
iii.
A no vote by any permanent member defeats the
resolutionthe veto power.
iv.
The Councils ten nonpermanent members rotate
onto the Council for two-year terms.
v.
Members can abstain on resolutions, an option that
some permanent members use to register misgivings about a resolution
without vetoing.
vi.
The Security Council meets irregularly upon
request of a UN memberoften a state with a grievance regarding
another states actions.
vii.
The Security Councils power is limited in two major
ways: 1. The Councils decisions depend entirely on the interests of its
member states. 2. member states in practice often try to evade or soften
their effect.
viii.
Military forces responding to aggression under the
auspices of Security Council resolutions remain under national command.
ix.
Proposed Changes
1. Japan and Germany are great
powers that contributions to UN programs and peacekeeping
operations.
2. They have exactly the same formal
representation in the UN as tiny states with less than onehundredth of their populations.
c. Peacekeeping Forces
i.
Peacekeeping Missions
1. The secretary-general assembles a
peacekeeping force for each mission, usually from a few states
totally uninvolved in the conflict, and puts it under a single
commander.
2. Authority for peacekeeping forces is
granted by the Security Council.
3. Funds must be voted on by the
General Assembly, and lack of funds is today the single greatest
constraint on the use of peacekeeping forces.
ii.
Recent Missions
1. At the end of 2012, the UN
maintained more than 100,000 international personnel in 14
peacekeeping or observing missions, spanning 5 world regions,
using military personnel from 113 countries.
2. The two largest peacekeeping
missions in 2012 were in the Darfur region of Sudan and
Democratic Congo mission.

3. As UN peacekeeping has become

more intensive in recent years, new missions have expanded the
range of what are now called broadly peace operations.
4. These expanded operations after
conflicts are called peacebuilding.
iii.
Observing and Peacekeeping
1. Observers are unarmed military
officers sent to a conflict area in small numbers simply to watch
what happens and report back to the UN.
2. The function of peacekeeping is
carried out by lightly armed soldiers.
3. Peacekeeping is much more difficult
if one side sees the UN forces as being biased toward the other
side.
4. Peacekeeping forces have generally
been unable to make peace, only to keep it.
d. The Secretariat
i.
The secretary-general is nominated by the Security
Councilrequiring the consent of all five permanent membersand must
be approved by the General Assembly.
ii.
The Secretariat of the UN is its executive branch,
headed by the secretary-general
iii.
One purpose of the UN Secretariat is to develop an
international civil service of diplomats and bureaucrats whose loyalties lie
at the global level, not with their states of origin.
iv.
The secretary-general works to bring together the
great power consensus on which Security Council action depends.
e. The General Assembly
i.
The General Assembly is made up of all 193
member states of the UN, each with one vote.
ii.
The Assembly convenes for special sessions every
few years on general topics such as economic cooperation.
iii.
The General Assembly has the power to accredit
national delegations as members of the UN.
iv.
The General Assemblys main power lies in its
control of finances for UN programs and operations, including
peacekeeping.
v.
ECOSOC manages the overlapping work of a large
number of programs and agencies.
f. UN Programs
i.
The programs are funded partly by General
Assembly allocations and partly by contributions that the programs raise
directly from member states, businesses, or private charitable
contributors.
ii.
The UN Environment Program (UNEP) became
more prominent in the 1990s as the economic development of the global

South and the growing economies of the industrialized world took a toll on
the world environment.
iii.
UNICEF is the UN Childrens Fund, which gives
technical and financial assistance to poor countries for programs
benefiting children.
iv.
The Office of the UN High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR) coordinates efforts to protect, assist, and eventually
repatriate the many refugees who flee across international borders each
year to escape war and political violence.
v.
The UN Development Program (UNDP), funded by
voluntary contributions, coordinates all UN efforts related to development
in poor countries.
vi.
The UN Conference on Trade and Development
(UNCTAD) negotiates international trade agreements to stabilize
commodity prices and promote development.
g. Autonomous Agencies
i.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has
an economic role in helping develop civilian nuclear power plants, and it
mainly works to prevent nuclear proliferation.
ii.
In the area of health care, the Geneva-based World
Health Organization (WHO) provides technical assistance to improve
conditions and conduct major immunization campaign in poor countries.
iii.
The World Bank and the International Monetary
Fund (IMF) give loans, grants, and technical assistance for economic
development.
3. International Law
a. Sources of International Law
i.
Treaties and other international obligations such as
debts are binding on successor governments whether the new
government takes power through an election, a coup, or a revolution.
ii.
Because of the universal commitment by all states
to respect certain basic principles of international law, the UN Charter is
one of the worlds most important treaties.
iii.
Custom: If states behave toward each other in a
certain way for long enough, their behavior may become generally
accepted practice with the status of law.
iv.
General principle: Actions such as theft and assault
recognized in most national legal systems as crimes tend to have the
same meaning in a international context.
v.
Legal scholarship: the written arguments of judges
and lawyers around the world on the issues in question.
b. Enforcement of International Law
i.
Enforcement of international law depends heavily
on the reciprocity principle.
ii.
A state that breaks international law may face a
collective response by a group of states, such as the imposition of

sanctionsagreements among other states to stop trading with the

violator, or to stop some particular commodity trade.
iii.
International law enforcement depends entirely on
national power.
c. The World Court
i.
Only states, not individuals or businesses, can sue
or be sued in the World Court.
ii.
The great weakness of the World Court is that
states have not agreed in a comprehensive way to subject themselves to
its jurisdiction or obey its decisions.
iii.
A main use of the World Court now is to arbitrate
issues of secondary importance between countries with friendly relations
overall.
4. Law and Sovereignty
a. laws of Diplomacy
i.
The status of embassies and of an embassador as
an official state representative is explicitly defined in the process of
diplomatic recognition.
ii.
Diplomats enjoy diplomatic immunity even when
they leave the embassy grounds.
iii.
A diplomatic pouch is a package sent between an
embassy and its home country
iv.
To break diplomatic relations means to withdraw
ones diplomats from a state and expel that states diplomats from ones
own state.
v.
State register lower levels of displeasure by
recalling their ambassadors home for some period of time.
b. Just War Doctrine
i.
International law distinguished just wars from wars
of aggression.
ii.
The idea of aggression, around which the doctrine
of just war evolved, is based on a violation of the sovereignty and
territorial integrity of states.
iii.
Response to aggression is the only allowable use
of military force according to just war doctrine.
iv.
Just war doctrine has been undermined, even more
seriously than have laws of war crimes, by the changing nature of
warfare.
5. Human Rights
a. Individual Rights versus Sovereignty
i.
Nearly every major world religion has at its
foundation the idea that humans were created in an image of a higher
power and that therefore all humans are to be afforded the dignity and
respect that are due that higher power.
ii.
Political and legal philosophy for centuries has
discussed the idea of natural law and natural rights.

iii.
Political revolutions translated the theory of natural
law and natural rights into practice.
iv.
No globally agreed-upon definitions of the essential
human rights exist.
v.
No state has a perfect record on any type of human
rights, and states differ as to which areas they respect or violate.
b. Human Rights Institutions
i.
In 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted what is
considered the core international document concerning human rights: the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)
ii.
Amnesty International is an NGO that operates
globally to monitor and try to rectify glaring abuses of human rights.
iii.
The most effective method yet discovered is a
combination of publicity and pressure
iv.
Responsibility to Protect holds that governments
worldwide must act to save civilians from genocide or crimes against
humanity perpetrated or allowed by their own governments.
c. War Crimes
i.
Serious violations of large-scale abuses of human
rights often occur during war are considered war crimes.
ii.
Since the Nazi murders of civilians did not violate
German law, the Nuremberg tribunal treated them as a new category,
crimes against humanity, conceived as inhumane acts and persecutions
against civilians on a vast scale in the pursuit of unjust ends.
iii.
International Criminal Court hears cases of
genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity from anywhere in the
world.
iv.
What makes the ICC different is the idea of
universal jurisdictionthat the court has the ability to prosecute
individuals of any nation.
v.
Soldiers have the right under the laws of war to
surrender, which is to abandon their status as combatants and become
prisoners of war.
vi.
The laws of war reserve a special role for the
International Committee of the Red Cross.
vii.
Changing Context