The Politics and Processes of Global Governance, P.413-457.

Margaret P. Karns &Karen A. Mingst, 2004

Summary: Protecting Human Rights Date: February 8, 2013 There is an estimation that 300,000 children currently participating in military activities in over fifty countries from Sir Lanka to Sudan, Congo, Cote dIvoire, Liberia, Nepal, and Guatemala. For instance, eight years old children fought for paramilitary forces. Ten thousand children fought in Sierra Leone civil war, while fifty thousand young soldiers in Myanmar, the largest number in the world. In the words of one Sierra Leonean recruit, we beat and killed people (Masland 2002: 243). So how can the human rights of this vulnerable group be protected? Life in uniform, absent from civilian life, offers children protection from the hardship of daily struggle for shelter, food, and security. The story of how child soldiers became a prominent human rights issue in the 1990s. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, secretary general of the UN 1994, answering the demands of the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights, appointed Graca Machel, former first lady of Mozambique of South Africa as Nelson Mandelas wife to investigate the children in conflicts. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, 1997, appointed Olara Otunnu Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict including the Department of Peacekeeping Operations and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and then Security Council has passed four resolutions in peacekeeping missions and training of personnel. In 1998, a large group of NGOs formed the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers to prevent recruitment, force demobilization, and provide rehabilitation and reintegration services. In 2000, signed by 111 countries, the UN General Assembly approved the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict. And at that time, the particularly active in the campaign to half the recruitment of child soldiers is Human Rights Watch (HRW). Because the child soldier is the most concern in the international community on childs rights, in January 1990, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) was signed by 91 states and 194 states had ratified it in 2004. However, Child soldiers are not new during the Middle Age children were sent from Europe to the Middle East in the Childrens Crusade. The Holocaust Nazi Germanys genocide campaign against Jews that killed six million civilian men, women, and children during WWII - was a powerful impetus to the development of a human rights movement. The massacre in the Bosnia and Rwanda, 1990, pressured the international community to set up the prosecution against the war crimes and genocide, and televised starving children in Somalia provoked public demand the state to do something. If they look into the religious tradition Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, and Confucianism - as well

Prof. Dr. Ana

Student: LONG KimKhorn

The Politics and Processes of Global Governance, P.413-457.

Margaret P. Karns &Karen A. Mingst, 2004

as philosophers and political theorists - John Locke (1632-1704), English Magna Carta in 1215, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789, and the U.S. Bill of Rights in 1791 stated that no individual should be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. Are human rights truly universal, applicable to all peoples, in all states, religions, cultures, and protected group? Recently, the legacy of universal rights versus cultural relativism debated by developing states, including China, Colombia, Cuba, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Malaysia, Mexico, Myanmar, Singapore, Syria, Vietnam, and Yemen. Amartya Sen, Indian essayist and winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics, found conscious theorizing about tolerance and freedom in substantial and important parts of the Asian tradition from Buddhism to Confucianism. Others disagree, suggesting that the so-called Asian version of human rights, placing the family and community over the individual, is not just an Asian construct. However, the Final Declaration and Programme of Action of the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights affirmed, All human rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent and interrelated. Osama Bin Laden used to criticize the UN representing Western interests. Annan said, Bin Laden is wrong when Bin Laden affirms that democracy and human rights are just Western products, I find that insulting for the people of the Third World whom he claims to defend. So far, IGOs in particular the UN and NGOs have played key roles in the process of globalizing human rights establishing the norms, institutions, mechanisms, and activities for giving effect the ideals. For example, in the 1860s, individuals concerned about protecting those wounded during war established the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The 1919 Paris Peace Conference legitimized the promised of right to self-determination brought groups from all over the world, not just from areas formerly part of the defeated Austro-Hungarian, German, Russian, and empire Ottoman. In 1920, the League of Nations established the first principles on assisting refugees and the Refugee Organization. In 1946 and 1947, the UNs Economic and Social Council established the Commission on Human Rights and the Commission on the Status of Women on the Prevention of Discrimination, Protection and promotion of Human Rights. Furthermore, in the first General Assembly session in 1946, apartheid in South Africa was the longest-running human rights issue. The Process of Human Rights Governance: Over fifty years, international human rights regime has emerged that has articulated norms and standards in human rights and codified these standards in treaties, legal decisions, and practices. First, there were NGOs anti-slavery movements, 19th, but not only of the first examples of NGO activity. The UNs core role in the international human rights

Prof. Dr. Ana

Student: LONG KimKhorn

The Politics and Processes of Global Governance, P.413-457.

Margaret P. Karns &Karen A. Mingst, 2004

regime is its activity in defining and elaborating what constitutes internationally protected rights. Its two initial actions were the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Not only were the international but even in the region, there human rights standards. For example, the European system is viewed as the most successful system of human rights protection in terms of the broad consensus in the 1961 EU Charter. To have a good human rights governance and implementation requires procedure for receiving complaints of violations from affected individuals or interested groups and reports of state practice. For instance, the ILO, in 1926s, was the first international organization to establish procedures for monitoring human rights within states the workers rights. Amnesty International (AI), founded in 1961, has become perhaps the most effective human rights NGO for a number of reasons (Clark 2001; Welch 2001a). In 1978, Human Rights Watch (HRW) was founded the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe the Helsinki Accords on Respect for Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, including Freedom of Thought, Conscience, Religion, or Belief.

Promoting Human Rights: the UN has played a far more active role in human rights promotion since the Cold Wars end. For example, the UN has promoted democratization and associated political rights through its electoral assistance programs, such as in Namibia, Nicaragua, Cambodia, and Mozambique. Endorsement of the 1993 Vienna conference, the World Bank promoted the good governance including political and civil rights. UNDPs annual Human Development Reports have increasingly focused on rights-related issues including democratization in 2002 report. In 1993, the UN took the key step of creating the office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) to centralize responsibilities and provide visible international spokespersons for human rights. As for NGOs have become increasingly important in the promotion of human rights actively in education on human rights in Cambodia, Central America, Kosovo, and more recently in Afghanistan. The Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO), with fifty members representing 100 million persons, have played a unique promotional role. Human Rights Enforcement: First, states have always been the major enforcers of human rights norms. Second, national courts are one means for dealing with human rights violations. Third,

Prof. Dr. Ana

Student: LONG KimKhorn

The Politics and Processes of Global Governance, P.413-457.

Margaret P. Karns &Karen A. Mingst, 2004

where national courts are used by individual plaintiffs or activist judges, governments themselves may undertake unilateral coercive measures against other states for egregious human rights abuses. For example, the China after the Tiananmen Square suppression of the student-led pro-democracy movement in June 1989 made the United States immediately instituted an arms embargo and canceled new foreign aid and high-level talks. Fourth, the UNs enforcement authority founded in Chapter VII of the UN that if the Security Council determines that human rights violations threaten or breach international peace, it has the authority to take enforcement actions. Fifth, for the EU, in the European human rights regime has been concerned with enforcement so the EU in the European Convention on Human Rights established the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). Otherwise, the violence against women such as the estimated 300,000 Chinese women in Nanjing were raped during World War II by Japanese forces as were 200,000 to 400,000 East Pakistani (Bangladeshi) women in that countrys war of independence in 1970, 60,000 Bosnian women by Serb forces in 1993, and 250,000 women in Burundis and Rwandas ethic conflict in 1993-1994 were not be trailed for the justice.

Margaret P. Karns and Karen A. Mingst, International Organizations: The Politics and Processes of Global Governance, 2004 (London: Lynne Rienner, 2004), 413-457.

Prof. Dr. Ana

Student: LONG KimKhorn