Human Rights Abuse and Global Civil Society (Essay Sample)

Human Rights Abuse and Global Civil Society
Student’s Name
Institution of Learning
1. Should the international community intervene in the nation-state’s domestic affairs to prevent human rights abuses?
Introduction
Human rights protection is essential in any country for a peaceful coexistence of the citizens. The government is the primary organ that is supposed to uphold and protects the right of each and every individual within its territories. At times, due to political instability, poor social structuring, and other factors, human rights are abused by some governments across the world. Extra-judicial killings, lack of democracy, limitation to rights of speech and movement are among the major human rights violation that citizens in some countries face in the world (Shawki, & Cox, 2009). In the extreme cases, where the government of these countries fails completely to show any respects to the rights of its citizens, the international community usually intervenes. The interventions can either be direct or indirect, but overall they are meant to compel the said government forcefully to uphold the rights of its citizens. This paper will determine the role of the nation in protecting the human right, it will also assess if intervention by the international community in the prevention of human rights abuse in other countries is an effective method of upholding human rights.
The Role of the Nation-State in Protecting Human.
Each nation or state have a role to play in the protection of the human rights of its citizens. The role of the nation is well established in the international organs across the world. In 1993, the United National General Assembly in New York, passed a resolution number 48/134 on human rights protection. The resolution gave all the members of the United Nations the responsibility to protect and uphold the rights of all their citizens (Shawki, & Cox, 2009). The governments across the world were supposed to ensure that the laws in their countries which were inclined toward human rights protection. They were also supposed to establish organs in their respective countries to protect the human rights.
The first and the primary role of all nations in the world in the protection of human rights is to establish human rights laws in their nations. Each country constitution should outline all the rights and the freedoms that all citizens enjoys at any time (Shawki, & Cox, 2009). The rights should be tailor made to match the international rights that ensure healthy and good coexistence of a nation’s citizens. The government thus have the very primary role of establishing the rights of its citizen by including them in the country’s constitution.
The other role of the nation is to implement the said laws on human rights. Having written laws on how human rights are protected in a country is not a proof enough that the rights of the citizens are protected. Implementation of those rights is imperative, and every nation have a duty to implement them to the letter. The implementation means setting frameworks, institution and enabling the various organ to facilitate human rights provision (Shawki, & Cox, 2009). The implementation may involve ensuring that the political system is democratic not just by voting but also having the transparent electoral system and other electoral organs. Regardless of the right involved, every nation has a role of ensuring such rights are adequately implemented.
The nation also has a role in ensuring that independent human rights institution and human rights watchdogs are established in their countries and that their operations are run independently without government interference. The 1993 UN General Assembly resolution made it very clear that each nation is supposed to establish a constitutional national human rights commission in their respective countries (Shawki, & Cox, 2009). The national human rights commission duties and mandate should be clearly stated in the nation’s constitution to ensure that an optimal level of human rights is achieved in each country. The human rights commission established by the government is supposed to promote, protect and ensure full implementation of the human rights in the country.
Lastly, the nation is supposed to allow the human rights activist movement in its territories. These are the watchdogs of human rights violation; they always shout out and criticize any move by the nation toward human violation (Shawki, & Cox, 2009). These human rights organs and movements include the non-governmental organizations, the media and press, the social media networks, the movements for women rights, the disable movements among others. By upholding the existence of such organs and systems in a nation, the nation can deliver its role of protecting its citizen’s rights.
Intervention by International Community.
At times the government of the nation, due to its selfish reasons, it may opt not to protect the rights of its citizens. When the situation worsens to inhuman levels, where citizens are exposed to total human rights violation, the international community usually intervenes (Samuels, 2007). The extreme condition includes extra-judicial killing of the citizens, political oppression and complete denial of democratic rights in a nation. Others are denial of freedom of speech and expression, total oppression of the minority groups in the nation, move to eliminate certain race, religion, or tribes in a country, slavery of some citizen, complete discrimination of certain social community among others.
The intervention is either direct or indirect. The indirect intervention does not directly undermine the sovereignty of a nation. These indirect methods may include, sanctions, stopping of any humanitarian aid toward that country, blacklisting some of the top officials in the said government from traveling to certain countries among other. The direct intervention is mostly taken if the human right violation goes to the extent of extrajudicial killing (Samuels, 2007). Here, the international community usually sends its military to the troubled country to restore peace and protect human rights violation. In the recent past, the NATO countries launched a military action toward the former Libya government of Gadhafi due to continued oppression of citizens by the government. This is one of the examples of the direct intervention made by the international community.
Reasons Why Intervention May Be Effective.
Several reasons make the international intervention very successful as seen in many nations. First, the intervention put pressure on the economy of a country. The government cannot work properly if its economy is not stable. Most intervention are designed such that they economically isolates the said nations from the world economy (Samuels, 2007). That way the said governments are left expose and thus they comply with the necessary human rights protection. The economic isolation is very powerful if all the nations of the international community accept to cut completely off the said countries.
The intervention may also be successful if the military action deployed is meant to disarm the respective government to ensure that it does not harm its citizen (Samuels, 2007). Some countries like Syria have been accused of using chemical weapons to fights its citizen. Such weapons can be best destroyed and taken out of that government's hand thought the international community intervention.
Reasons Why Intervention May Not Be Effective.
At times, the intervention by the international community may be ineffective. The state of the nation depends so much on the effectiveness of the intervention. The international community may intervene by overthrowing the ruling government but add more human abuse that what was before (Samuels, 2007). Libya situation is a perfect example; today Libya stands in a solitary state having unimaginable encroachment of terror groups and other armed groups. The scale of human abuse at that country today is unimaginable, it is worse than what Gadhafi left it as. It is so clear that the international intervention did not help at all; they failed to consider the state of the country.
When the country involved is superior, the intervention is most likely to fail. It is hard to tell China to gives its citizen the freedom of speech and expression. It is a superior country and any intervention by the international community may have less or no effects (Samuels, 2007). This is the same to what is happening in the Ukraine today, the human rights abuse are so high, although the international community have launch a sanction mission toward Russia, less of success have been seen.
Intervention may also be ineffective if the international community is not unanimous on the issue. If the international community is split into two on who to support and who not to support, then those interventions are bound to fail (Samuels, 2007). This case is very common to what is happening in Syria today; the international community is slip on how to handle the issue of Syria due to political and countries selfish interest. Russia is on one side while as United States is on the other side. In such a situation intervention never works.
When the leadership is dictatorial, interventions never work. The dictators have less, or no interest to their citizens and hence any soft intervention by the international community may not even shake them. The superb example is the North Korea; in North Korea, the level of human abuse is of high intensity, a lot of people are executed each day for the petty issue (Samuels, 2007). It is the world most inhuman country but have international community sanctions, and other pressure he...