Human Rights Quarterly

Human Rights Quarterly 23.2 (2001) 370-401

The Search for International Human Rights and Justice: Coming to Terms with the New Global Realities

Mahmood Monshipouri
Claude E. Welch

I. Introduction

It is frequently argued that defining, developing, and applying international human rights standards are ultimately "political ends," and that the question of which values are to be excluded from or included in the so-called "emerging global moral culture" of the post-Cold War era is a purely political one. ¹ Humanity's life on earth and the development of international human rights standards have yet to transcend social conflict and politics. ²

Reflecting this reality, the past two decades provided a mixed picture of the unfolding drama of human rights in world politics. Although human [End Page 370] rights violations were largely state-inflicted, in some cases, the abuses resulted from a more passive lack of support for human rights. Evidence abounds of large-scale abuses of human rights, including imprisonment of dissidents, forced disappearances, torture, and extrajudicial and ruthless killings. Mass violations of individual and group rights still frequently occur. These included, among others, the crackdown at Tiananmen Square in China (1989), the humanitarian crises in Somalia (1992) and Haiti (1994-95), the ethnic cleansings and genocide in Bosnia (1992-95), Rwanda (1994), and Kosovo (1999), civil wars in the Sudan and Sierra Leone (1999), as well as the suppression of the calls for independence by East Timor (1999) and Chechnya (1999-present).

The widening gap between the world's rich and poor, along with the unprecedented numbers of children living in poverty around the world, a rise in homelessness, the lingering discrimination in gender-oriented cultural tradition, and the expansion of the desperate urban disenfranchised all demonstrate that the living conditions of many people around the world have deteriorated in one form or another.

Despite the continuing threats to human rights throughout the world, the struggle for freedom and dignity made significant strides since the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa and of the Communist dictatorships in Eastern Europe. Some trends seem to have strongly favored international human rights. Since the Nuremberg and Tokyo Trials (1946-48), declining state sovereignty and expanding universal jurisdiction have marked international politics, complicating the tasks of policymakers. More recently, for example, the "right to intervene"--on the grounds that systematic and massive violations of human rights pose a "threat to peace" and that human rights are a subject of international law regulation--has become a recurring topic of debate among human rights scholars and practitioners.

Our purpose in this article is to show that the post-Cold War era has posed many challenges to states, forcing them to make hard ethical, legal, and political choices. The article seeks to contribute to the current debate over the evolution of the international legal order, while demonstrating that the perennial question of how to take "politics" out of the system remains. To examine this proposition, we shall address three questions: (1) How are the changes associated with the post-Cold War period affecting state conduct and policies? This question is central given that global economy tends to push wages down and states, which are pressured into attracting foreign investment, find it imperative to adjust their policies accordingly. Moreover, growing transnational networks for human rights advocacy lead to globalization (from below) and compel states to conform to internationally recognized and established standards regarding the treatment of the poor, women, children, and minorities; (2) are these changes narrowing or widening these policies; and (3) have new moral standards become [End Page 371] essential to building a stable international society, or are they ill-suited for handling the complexities of the post-Cold War world? To assess the evolution of international human rights since the end of the Cold War, we analyze a complex array of issues, from sovereignty to intervention, from globalization to international justice, issues that have brought enormous pressure to state policymakers as they face these new realities.

II. Winds of Change...