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Eric, nothing that the pope said Friday favored one set of rights over another. Indeed, as my post stated, his speech to the U.N. General Assembly included "a tacit reprimand to those who would privilege civil and political rights over economic, social, and cultural rights -- or vice versa." (emphasis added) The point I'd intended to underscore was that the pope had reaffirmed the indivisibility of both sets of rights, the civil/political, on the one hand, and the economic/social/cultural, on the other. Indivisibility was inherent in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but frayed when Cold War geopolitics pushed the U.N. Human Rights Commission to separate the 2 sets as it began the process of drafting treaties designed to make binding all those rights that states had endorsed in the nonbinding Declaration. That separation, which seemed essential at the height of the Cold War, may be less so today: 160 countries are full members of the 1977 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, while 157 countries are full members of the 1977 International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. That means that 3/4 of all the United Nations' member states are firmly in each Convenant's camp. Vestiges of Cold War concerns may be found, however, in the fact that the United States is not party to the latter Covenant and China is not party to the former.
As for China: application of the concept of indivisibility means that China is no more a "champion" of human rights than any other state. The role that the Chinese state has played in alleviating poverty deserves attention. Indeed, how each country addresses the basic needs of persons within its jurisdiction deserves note, as I've argued with regard to the United States in a forthcoming essay just posted at SSRN. But the costs of such programs also must be assessed, respecting matters as wide-ranging as the health problems and the repressions of civil liberties that may result from economic development at all costs. (Here, too, insert a "vice versa.")
On 2 points, it seems, we agree. 1st: Athletes honored to carry the torch a bit of the way toward the 2008 Olympics should not have to fear anger and assault as they run through the streets of their home country. 2d: Comprehensive, critical comparison of the nature and extent of states' programs to protect human rights rarely will yield a clear "winner."
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shows that entrusting exclusively to individual States, with their laws and institutions, the final responsibility to meet the aspirations of persons, communities and entire peoples, can sometimes have consequences that exclude the possibility of a social order respectful of the dignity and the rights of the person.
Benedict looked, rather, to transnational and international institutions as vehicles to promote human dignity, using a "common language" and not "a relativistic conception." For the pope religion is one such transnational vehicle, of course; "relativist" is, after all, an antonym of "catholic," itself a a synonym of "universal." Yet he devoted much of his address to a vehicle typically expressed on the temporal plane: human rights, the promotion of which Benedict called
the most effective strategy for eliminating inequalities between countries and social groups, and for increasing security.
Even as he found traces of human rights in the centuries-old writings of Catholic scholars like
Augustine and
de Vitoria, the pope found its contemporary source in a 20th C. secular instrument, the 1948
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In tacit reprimand of those who would privilege civil and political rights over economic, social, and cultural rights -- or vice versa -- Benedict reaffirmed the 60-year-old decision to intertwine those rights:
[E]fforts need to be redoubled in the face of pressure to reinterpret the foundations of the Declaration and to compromise its inner unity so as to facilitate a move away from the protection of human dignity towards the satisfaction of simple interests, often particular interests. The Declaration was adopted as a 'common standard of achievement' (Preamble) and cannot be applied piecemeal, according to trends or
selective choices that merely run the risk of contradicting the unity of the human person and thus the indivisibility of human rights.
Perhaps most notable was the pope's embrace of "
responsibility to protect," the international law concept that each nation-state has the primary duty to protect persons within its jurisdiction and control, but if it does not do so, the international community as a whole has a duty to protect those persons against, as the pope put it, "grave and sustained violations of human rights, as well as from the consequences of humanitarian crises, whether natural or man-made." Use of means permitted by the the law of the
U.N. Charter is not "an unwarranted imposition or a limitation of sovereignty," the pope maintained, for "it is indifference or failure to intervene that do the real damage."
Some approach the "responsibility to protect" with skepticism, wondering whether the energy spent on pushing a new concept with a catchy acronym --
R2P -- might be better spent on working to strengthen the U.N. Security Council and other pre-existing mechanism that in the end would have to effect any such intervention.
I'm among those skeptics,
so too José Alvarez, Columbia law professor and immediate past president of the American Society of International Law. Despite disagreement on means, however, we all agree on the ultimate goal, greater enforcement of human rights. And so yesterday's strong statement in support of that objective, from one of the globe's premier norm-shapers, is welcome.
(cross-posted at IntLawGrrls blog)
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