Human Rights, Human Security, and State Security [3 volumes]: The Intersection

828 Pages·2014·2.893 MB·English

by  Saul Takahashi

Human Rights, Human
Security, and State Security
This page intentionally left blank
Human Rights, Human
Security, and State Security
The Intersection
Volume 1
SAUL TAKAHASHI, EDITOR
Praeger Security International
Chapters Open Recto/Verso
Copyright 2014 by ABC-CLIO, LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion
of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the
publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Human rights, human security, and state security : the intersection /
Saul Takahashi, editor
volumes cm. — (Praeger security international)
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-313-39760-8 (hardback) — ISBN 978-0-313-39761-5 (ebook)
1. International law and human rights. 2. Terrorism—Prevention—Law and
legislation. 3. Responsibility to protect (International law) I. Takahashi, Saul,
editor of compilation.
KZ1266.H86 2014
341.4’8—dc23 2013048293
ISBN: 978-0-313-39760-8
EISBN: 978-0-313-39761-5
18 17 16 15 14 1 2 3 4 5
This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook.
Visit www.abc-clio.com for details.
Praeger
An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC
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This book is printed on acid-free paper
Manufactured in the United States of America
Chapters Open Recto/Verso
Contents
Set Introduction: The Perils of Sectionalism vii
Volume Introduction: Human Rights xxv
1 The Responsibility to Protect: “Never Again!” for the
21st Century? 1
Aidan Hehir and Eric A. Heinze
2 Humanitarian Interventions: A Clash of Recent History 27
Conor Foley
3 The International Criminal Court and the Arab Spring:
Overcoming Bias, Increasing Engagement 43
Maryam Jamshidi
4 Protecting Those We Like: Arab Civil Society Perspectives
on Intervention and Protection 79
Fateh Azzam
5 Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Human Rights 99
Matthew Pollard
6 Suspension, Exception, Silence: Antiterrorism Discourses
and the Challenges to Human Rights from State Security 125
Jeffrey Stevenson Murer
7 Human Rights and Drug Control: The Importance of
Children’s Rights 145
Roxana Stere
Chapters Open Recto/Verso
vi Contents
8 The League of Arab States and the Arab Revolts 161
Mervat Rishmawi
9 Applying International Human Rights Standards to the
International Financial Institutions 185
Sanae Fujita
Index 211
About the Editor and Contributors 221
Chapters Open Recto/Verso
Set Introduction:
The Perils of Sectionalism
My great-grandmother was very fond of saying a velt mit klein veltalach—
a world with many little worlds. I always thought this was some kind of
proverb, but my Internet research into the phrase has left me with nothing
except the title of a song, so I’m not sure what exactly the origin is—but
the idea was that, though we are fond of thinking there is one world, the
reality is that we tend to gravitate toward small groups of people who
share our views and make small, self-enclosed cliques that have very little
contact with the infinite number of other small cliques in the world.1
My great-grandmother lived in what was many ways a far simpler
world, and if anything, the phenomenon of small, exclusive groups has,
I believe, got far worse. The complexities of today’s globalized world de-
mand in-depth thought into, and targeted policy responses toward, pretty
much every issue under the sun. Since no one person—far less a political
decision maker—could possibly have that kind of expertise in each and
every issue, this points to the necessity of having specialists, who can pro-
vide advice in their individual fields of expertise.
Since the issues get more and more complicated, the depth of specializa-
tion continues to become ever the more extreme. The atomization never
ends.
To a certain extent all of this may be inevitable. The issues that are faced
by policy makers are not simple; they require specialists with in-depth
knowledge of the nooks and crannies and of every implication particu-
lar policy directions might have. However, what is neither inevitable nor
desirable, but what unfortunately is the reality, is that the specialists of
each area do not, as a general rule, engage with specialists of other areas.
viii Set Introduction
By and large, the specialists of area A do not meet with the specialists of
area B (or C, or D, etc.); they spend the bulk of their time talking with each
other, reinforcing and solidifying their exclusive system of values and
their own worldview. The result is a gigantic mass of academic and policy
related work that is piecemeal and inconsistent, with no one presenting a
holistic picture. The infinite groups of specialists end up spending their
time jockeying for influence, instead of working with other groups toward
a common, more comprehensive worldview.
This phenomenon is prominent in three broad (and extremely impor-
tant) areas of public policy, namely human rights, human security, and
national security. It is obvious that all three of these are crucial, and that
most (indeed, probably all) large issues that policy makers face have im-
plications for these three areas. Just to give an example, the human rights
lens is clearly important in dealing with a large-scale refugee flow, as
states have international legal obligations toward refugees and need to
ensure their rights. At the same time, there are related issues that go be-
yond rights based ones; issues that pertain to the management of migra-
tion, public health care, and others that might more usefully be looked at
within the paradigm of human security. It would also be foolish to claim
that a large refugee influx is not relevant to the national security of the
state concerned; though human rights and human security specialists may
not like to admit this fact, it is a pertinent one that needs to be addressed.
Therefore, the important issues often overlap between the three areas,
demanding a more holistic worldview. Despite this need, the barriers that
these three groups put up between each other—the distance that sepa-
rates each of the groups—remain almost insurmountable. The specialists
from each field tend to stay in their own little corners, not venturing out
to where they might meet the others.
At the beginning, there was national security. National security is closely
interlinked with national sovereignty—after all, it is the sovereign, that is,
government that has the monopoly over the legitimate use of force both
against other countries (i.e., the waging of war) and within the country
itself (through the enforcement of laws). These are the bedrocks of the na-
tion state system, and of the international system since Westphalia.2 This
international system continues to the current day—“wishful thinking” ar-
guments advanced by some notwithstanding, the reality as it stands now
is that the primary goal of the United Nations is to maintain international
peace and security, with the question of human rights being a secondary
one.3
And national security is of course important. Experts in this field like to
think that national security is the ultimate basis, the bedrock upon which
all else stands. Without security, they argue, nothing can be sustained,
and life would be nasty, brutish, and short—the famous words of Hobbes
(cited by several contributors to this book). Or, as put more crudely by Ser-
geant Barnes of Hollywood film Platoon fame: if the machine breaks down,
Set Introduction ix
we break down. It is indeed difficult to argue with the notion that war or
extreme insecurity must be dealt with as a matter of supreme urgency—
however, the obvious question arises: if national security justifies every-
thing, where are the limits to what can be done in its name? Barnes is
portrayed as a necessary evil, but an evil nonetheless, and there is clearly
the need within human nature for something more noble.
Perhaps it was this longing that brought about human rights, start-
ing with Nuremberg and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Not many people in the real world realize just how much of a revolution
human rights was; for the first time, the people were the subjects of in-
ternational law. Until the advent of human rights, international law was
about the relations between states, full stop. States negotiated treaties and
sued each other in international tribunals, but individual citizens didn’t
feature in the picture. Most importantly, due to the principle of national
sovereignty, what the sovereign did to its own citizens was its own busi-
ness. If the government of state A mistreated citizens of state B within state
A, this was a big deal and could (and sometimes did) lead to war between
the two countries. However, people were pretty much at the mercy of their
own government; if you were tortured by the police of your own country
and your courts didn’t help, there was basically no further recourse.
Human rights changed that. For the first time, states were being held to
account for how they treated the residents of their countries. Individual
citizens could, and did, appeal to international tribunals against their own
countries. Many states were not thrilled about these new developments—
at least when they were on the receiving end—and often cited concerns of
national security or sovereignty to escape fulfilling human rights obliga-
tions. A competitive relationship was created, whereby human rights in
many ways defined itself in opposition to national security. This pattern,
of course, continues until today.
Human rights people tend to be somewhat dismissive of national secu-
rity (“of course there are legitimate national security concerns, but. . . .”).
This is understandable, since they have spent decades fighting arguments
based on national security to establish the importance of their field. Nev-
ertheless, important questions about the balance between security and
human rights often remain unanswered, or answered only in the most
vague of terms. The classic example is that of the detained terrorist who
knows the location of a bomb—is torture to extract this location legiti-
mate? The human rights/international law answer is a resounding “no”—
but rhetoric about international obligations will only ring hollow in the
ears of the law enforcement officer, who believes (with some justification)
that the fate of the community rests on his shoulders. Amnesty Interna-
tional once had excellent material showing the slippery slope of torture,
deteriorating step by step from “I know he is a terrorist, I know there is a
bomb, I know the bomb is set to explode soon, and I know he knows where
the bomb is” to “maybe he is a terrorist and maybe there is a bomb”—but