Sunday, October 26, 2008

The Strange Triumph of Human Rights, 1933-1950: Mark Mazower

The emergence of the human rights phenomena between 1941 and 1948 is nothing short than amazing given the almost absolute disregard statesman paid the concept for millenia beforehand. To address this question, legal scholars rely too much on legal texts and political scientists take events out of their political context. Historians are too subject to intellectual fashion, too deferential to legal historians, and guilty of failing to examine how human rights have been employed in international politics.

Given that international law implies weakening the state's power, why did the states in the United Nations choose to do so? Recent history circles around a moral teleology stressing the agency of individual activists. State interests and cynicism played a much larger role in events than noted previously.



Fears over minority rights in Eastern European states made international recognition conditional upon guaranteeing all ethnicities collective rights verified by the League of Nations. Following in the pattern of Great Power paternalism from the nineteenth century. Self-interest limited the power of the declaration to Eastern Europe, and once the strategic situation changed in the 1930s, the French and British preferred strengthening Eastern European states as bulwarks against fascism and communism, regardless of the quality of the regime.



The Atlantic Charter outlined the preservation of human rights across the globe as a war aim. The experience of the Holocaust proved that only through international defense could human rights be defended. This meant ending the policy of permitting a state to persecute its own nationals as it saw fit. Enforcibility emerged as the primary obstacle for forming a policy as states would need to commit resources and sacrifice sovereignty over actions to achieve progress.



The British supported the rights movement because it wanted the Americans, moving away from isolationism, to have a reason to remain in Europe post-war. Human rights also offered an alternative vision for minority rights seemingly discredited by the failure of the League of Nations. Czechs, Poles, and Jews believed individual rights better protected their interests than minority rights, the British feared the Russians would ignore any international system trying to supervise his territory while the Americans might nibble away at the Empire. Indeed, a majoirty of states preferred an international organization concerned with rights to focus on "human rights." Minority rights pushed to the side.


Inside the planning meetings, British and Russian delegates worried too much scrutiny on rights would lead to dissent in crafting the postwar international organization. Attempts to backtrack from the rhetoric of the war aims encounter swift and strong resistance from the American public and the smaller nations of the world. The real issue now became ensuring that only a declarion lacking teeth would get through the Charter, so as not to upset American isolationists. Little language on implementation found its way into the charter.

No comments: