Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T18:51:57.415Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Post-Cold War Reflections on the Study of International Human Rights

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

Jack Donnelly
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The 1993 World Human Rights Conference, only the second UN-sponsored global conference on human rights ever held, provides an appropriate occasion to reflect on the state of the study of international human rights. The first global human rights conference, held in Tehran in 1968, came on the heels of the rise of the Third World to a position of international prominence. The Tehran Conference helped to initiate an era in which issues of economic, social, and cultural rights and development received steadily increasing attention in international human rights discussions. The 1993 Vienna Conference reflected the new international context characterized by the end of the Cold War and the global trend toward political liberalization and democratization. Substantively, the Vienna Conference was perhaps most notable for its emphasis on the university of international human rights—an emphasis, as I will argue below, that is reflected in the development of the academic human rights literature as well.

Type
Articles
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 8 , March 1994 , pp. 97 - 117
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 For fairly representative surveys of the state of the literature at this time, see Asbjorn Eide and August Schou, eds., International Protection of Human Rights, Nobel Symposium 7 (Stockholm: Almquist and Wiksell, 1968) and Moses Moskowitz, The Politics and Dynamics of Human Rights (Dobbs Ferry NY: Oceana, 1968). See also Ernst B. Haas, Human Rights and International Action: The Case of Freedom of Association (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 1970) and C. Wilfred Jenks, Social Justice in the Law of Nations (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970).

2 Vernon Van Dyke, Human Rights, The United States, and World Community (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970). Philosophical pieces would include, for example, Hart, H. L. A., “Are There Any Natural Rights?” Philosophical Review 64 (1955), 175–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Maurice Cranston, What are Human Rights? (New York: Basic Books, 1964); D. D. Raphael, ed., Political Theory and the Rights of Man (Bloomington IN: University of Indiana Press, 1967); and Feinberg, Joel, “The Nature and Value of Rights,” Journal of Value Inquiry 4 (1970)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in Rights, Justice, and the Bounds of Liberty (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980).

3 The international legal literature, however, still makes up the majority of the scholarly literature on human rights. For better or worse, I have neither the space nor the inclination to address it here. Perhaps the best introductory overview is Hurst Hannum, ed., Guide to International Human Rights Practice, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992). The other major, although significantly over- lapping, omission is the literature on international and regional human rights organizations. For summary overviews see Jaek Donnelly, International Human Rights (Boulder CO: Westview Press, 1993. chap. 4; David P. Forsythe, “The Politics of Effieacy: The United Nations and Human Rights,” in Lawrence Finkelstein. ed., Politics in the United Nations System (Durham NC: Duke University Press. 1988: and Burns H. Weston. Robin Ann Lukes, and Kelly M. Hnatt. “Regional Human Rights Regimes: A Comparison and Appraisal,” in Richard Pierre Claude and Burns H. Weston. eds. Human Right in the World Community (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 1989.

4 One still valuable article from this time that addresses some of these differences is Henkin, Louis, “Rights: American and Human,” Columbia Law Review 79 (1979). 405–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On American exeeptionalism in the area of human rights more generally, sec David P. Forsythe. The Internationalization of Human Rights (Lexington MA: Lexington Books. 1991).

5 Peter G. Brown and Douglas MacLean, eds., Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Policy: Principles and Applications (Lexington MA: Lexington Books, 1979); Donald P. Kommers and Gil Loescher, eds., Human Rights and American Foreign Policy (Notre Dame IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979).

6 Charles Frankel, “Human Rights and Foreign Policy,”Headline Series 241 (New York: Foreign Policy Association, 1978); Paul R. Newberg, ed., The Politics of Human Rights (New York: New York University Press, 1980); Evan Luard, Human Rights and Foreign Policy (Elmsford NY: Pergamon Press, 1981).

7 Vogelgesang, Sandy, “What Price Principle? U.S. Policy on Human Rights,” Foreign Affairs 56 (Spring 1978), 819–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schlesinger, Arthur J., “Human Rights and the American Tradition,” Foreign Affairs 57 (1979), 503–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Buckley, William F. Jr., “Human Rights and Foreign Policy: A Proposal,” Foreign Affairs 58 (Spring 1980), 775–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 See, e.g., Hans J. Morgenthau, Human Rights and Foreign Policy (New York: Council on Religion and International Affairs, 1979) and Henry A. Kissinger, “Continuity and Change in American Foreign Policy,” in Abdul Aziz Said, ed., Human Rights and World Order (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1978).

9 Kirkpatrick, Jeane J., “Dictatorships and Double Standards,” Commentary 69 (November 1979), 34–45Google Scholar.

10 See. for example, Americas Watch, Helsinki Watch, and Lawyers' Committee for International Human Rights, Failure: The Reagan Administration's Human Rights Policy in 1983 (New York: Americas Watch. 19841; Americas Watch Committee and the American Civil Liberties Union. As BAD as Ever: A Report an Human Rights in El Salvador (New York: Americas Watch. 1984): Americas Watch, Human Rights in Niearagua: Reagan. Rhetoric and Reality (New York: Americas Watch, 1985): Cynthia Brown, ed. With Friends Like These: The Americas Watch Report on Human Rights and U.S. Policy in Latin America (New York: Pantheon Books. 1985): Americas Watch. Helsinki Watch, and Lawyers Committee for international Human Rights, “…in the Face of Cruelts”. The Reagan Administration's Human Rights Record in 1984 (New York: Americas Watch, 1985): The Watch Committees and Lawyers' Committee for Human Rights, The Reagan Administration's Record on Human Rights in 1986 (New York: Americas Watch, 19871.

11 David P. Forsythe, Human Rights and World Politics (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), and Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Policy: Congress Reconsidered (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1988).

12 R. J. Vincent, Human Rights and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).

13 For example, in 1981 and 1982 I published articles in International Organization, American Political Science Review, and World Politics.

14 See, for example, Carleton, David and Stohl, Michael, “The Foreign Policy of Human Rights: Rhetoric and Reality from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan,” Human Rights Quarterly 1 (May 1985), 205–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cingranelli, David L. and Pasquarello, Thomas E., “Human Rights Practices and the Distribution of U.S. Foreign Aid to Latin American Countries,” American Journal of Political Science 29 (August 1985), 539–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Carleton, David and Stohl, Michael, “The Role of Human Rights in Foreign Assistance,” American Journal of Political Science 31 (November 1987), 1002–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McCormick, James M. and Mitchell, Neil, “Is U.S. Aid Really Linked to Human Rights in Latin America?” American Journal of Political Science 32 (February 1988), 231–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Steven Poe, C., “Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Aid: A Review of Quantitative Studies and Suggestions for Future Research,” Human Rights Quarterly 12 (August 1990), 499–512CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Poe, Stephen C., “Human Rights and Economic Aid Allocation under Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter,” American Journal of Political Science 36 (February 1992), 147–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 The one significant exception is a continuing realist uneasiness. For one of the best short statements focusing on the broader issue of morality and foreign policy in general, see Kennan, George F., “Morality and Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs 64 (Winter 1985–1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Lars Sehoultz. Human Rights and United States Policy Toward Latin America Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press. 1981.

17 Maynard, Edwin S.. “The Bureaueracy and The Implementation of U. S. Human Rights Policy,” Human Rights Quarterly 11 (May 1989). 175–248CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Cohen, Roberta. “Human Rights Diplomacy: The Carter Administration and the Southern Cone.” Human Rights Quarterly 4 (May 1982). 212–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar: Cohen, Stephen B.. “Conditioning U.S. Security Assistance on Human Rights Practices.” American Journal of International Law 76 (April 1982) 246–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Lisa L. Martin and Kalhryn Sikkink, “U.S. Policy and Human Rights in Argentina and Guatemala. 1973–1980.” in Peter Evans. Harold Jacobson, and Robert Putnam, eds. Double-Edged Oiplomdey: International Bargaining and Domestic Polities (Berkeley; Universtly of Calitornia Press. 1993).

20 On South Africa. see especialiy Christopher Coker. The United State and South Africa (Durham NC: Duke University Press. 1986).

21 The best books on human rights in the foreign policy of countries other than the United States are Robert O. Matthews and Cranford Pratt, eds., Human Rights in Canadian Foreign Policy (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1988); Jan Egeland, Impotent Superpower—Potent Small State: Potentialities and Limitations of Human Rights Objectives in the Foreign Policies of the United States and Norway (Oslo: Norwegian University Press [distributed by Oxford University Press], 1988); and David Gillies, Between Ethics and Interests: Human Rights in the North-South Relations of Canada, the Netherlands, and Norway (Ph.D. Dissertation, McGill University, July 1992). On aid policies more generally, see Olav Stokke, ed., Western Middle Powers and Global Poverty: The Determinants of the Aid Policies of Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden (Stockholm: Almquist & Wiksell International, 1989). See also the concluding sections of chapter 5 of Donnelly, International Human Rights. Other useful sources include Baehr, Peter R., “Concern for Development Aid and Fundamental Human Rights: The Dilemma as Faced by the Netherlands,” Human Rights Quarterly 4 (February 1982), 39–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Peter R. Baehr, “Human Rights, Development, and Dutch Foreign Policy: The Role of an Advisory Committee,” in David P. Forsythe, ed., Human Rights and Development: International Views (London: Macmillan, 1989); Irving Brecher, Human Rights, Development and Foreign Policy: Canadian Perspectives (Halifax NS: Institute for Research on Public Policy, 1989); Rhoda E. Howard and Jack Donnelly, “Confronting Revolution in Nicaragua: U.S. and Canadian Responses” (New York: Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, 1990); and Kathryn Sikkink, “The Power of Principled Ideas: Human Rights Policies in the United States and Western Europe,” in Judith Goldstein and Robert O. Keohane, eds., Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1993).

22 See, for example, Wolfgang Heinz, “The Federal Republic of Germany: Human Rights and Development,” in Forsythe, ed., Human Rights and Development: International Views.

23 Maurice Cranston, What Are Human Rights? (New York: Basic Books, 1964; London: The Bodley Head, 1973). For a shorter, article-length version of this argument, see Cranston, , “Are There Any Human Rights?” Daedalus 112 (Fall 1983), 1–18Google Scholar. For a somewhat more sophisticated version of an argument to the same conclusion but focusing on the character of rights as valid claims, see Feinberg, “The Nature and Value of Rights.”

24 Hugo Adam Bedau. “Human Rights and Foreign Assislanee Programs.” and Henry Shue, “Rights in the Light of Duties,” in Brown and MacLean, eds. Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Policy; Henry Shue, Basic Rights: Subsistence. Affluence, and U.S. Foreign Policy (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press. 1980).

25 Shue. “Rights in the Light of Duties.” 70.

26 Shue, Basic Rights, 41–46, 51–60.

27 Shue, “Rights in the Light of Duties,” 72–75.

28 This is particularly clear in the common defense of the right to property by critics of economic, social, and eultural rights. A right to property is clearly an economic right, not a civil and political right—if control over wealth and the means of production is not an economic right, it is hard to imagine any economic rights at all—and a rather extravagant economic right at that, Furthermore, the standard defenses of a right to properly also support other economic and social rights. For example, rights to work and social insurance no less than a right to private property provide a sphere of personal economic security.

29 The principal exception, which ironically linked the Reagan administration and its enemies in the Soviet bloc, was the literature on the so-called socialist conception ot human rights, discussed below.

30 See especially Jack Donnelly. Universal Human Rights (Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 1989), chap. 2.

31 For a discussion of arguments over development-rights tradeoffs, with special attention to Korea, see Donnelly, Universal Human Rights, chaps. 9 and 10.

32 For a critical discussion of such arguments, see Donnelly. Universal Human Rights, chap. 9. and, more briefly, the following section below.

33 The reader should be warned that I was a central participant in these debates. What follows, then, is not an entirely impartial account, although I do believe that it is accurate and fair.

34 There are several useful readers that deal entirely or principally with issues of cultural relativism. I list them here in chronological order of publication. UNESCO, Human Rights: Comments and Interpretations (London: Allan Wingate, 1949); Adamantia Pollis and Peter Schwab, eds., Human Rights: Cultural and Ideological Perspectives (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1980); Kenneth W. Thompson, ed., The Moral Imperatives of Human Rights: A World Survey (Washington DC: University Press of America, 1980); Claude E. Welch, Jr. and Virginia A. Leary. eds. Asian Perspectives on Human Rights (Boulder CO: Westview Press, 1990); Jan Berting el al. eds., Human Rights in a Pluralist World: Individuals and Collectivities (Westport CT: Meckler, 1990); Ahdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im and Francis M. Deng, eds., Human Rights in Africa: Cross-Cultural Perspectives (Washington DC: The Brookings Institution, 1990); Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im. ed., Human Rights in Cross-Cultural Perspectives: A Quest for Concensus (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991). Alison Dundes Rente In has presented perhaps the most radical relativist account. See her “The Unanswered Challenge of Relativism and the Consequences of Human Rights.” Human Rights Quarterly 7 (November 1985), 514–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar. and International Human Rights: Universalism versus Relativism (Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 1990).

35 Khushalani, Yougindra. “Human Rights in Asia and Africa.” Human Rights Law Journal 4 (1983). 403–42Google Scholar. at 404. Compare Adamantia Pollis and Peter Schwab, “Human Rights: A Western Construct with Limited Applicability,” in Pollis and Schwab, eds. Human Rights, xiv, 15.

36 In Peter Schwab and Adamantia Pollis, eds. Toward a Human Rights Frame work (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1982). A revised version appears in Richard Claude and Burns Weston. eds. Human Rights in the World Community. 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 1992).

37 Howard, Rhoda E. and Donnelly, Jack, “Human Rights, Human Dignity, and Political Regimes,” American Political Science Review 80 (September 1986), 801–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar. More generally, see Donnelly, Universal Human Rights, chaps. 3–8. For a more detailed version of Howard's arguments focusing on concrete problems in Africa, see her Human Rights in Commonwealth Africa (Totowa NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1986), especially chap. 2; “Evaluating Human Rights in Africa: Some Problems of Implicit Comparisons,” Human Rights Quarterly 6 (May 1984), 160–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and “Women's Rights in English-Speaking sub-Saharan Africa,” in Claude E. Welch, Jr. and Ronald I. Meltzer, eds., Human Rights and Development in Africa (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984), which includes a balanced brief discussion of the issue of female genital operations.

38 For a good example of such an argument applied to Africa, see Howard, “Evaluating Human Rights in Africa.”

39 Sec his contributions in Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im. ed. Human Rights in Cross-Cultural Perspectives: A Quest for Consensus, and An-Na'im and Deng, eds., Human Rights in Africa: Cross-Cultural Perspectives. For a particular application to a difficult case, sec “Religious Minorities Under Islamic Law and the Limits of Cultural Relativism.” Human Rights Quarterly 9 (February 1987), 1–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 There are, of course, exceptions, perhaps most notably Rhoda Howard, a sociologist who has made human rights the center of her research for the past decade. Nonetheless, a perusal of the shelves of the human rights sections of any good library will show a striking pattern: considerable scholarly work on theoretical and international issues, with the vast majority of country-specific, national-level studies being descriptive reports by international human rights NGOs.