Comments on: Amnesty annual report

By: pepi

pepi — Sat, 29 May 2004 09:12:46 +0000

Thorley, sorry to have to be such a pain in the neck here, but what exactly is wrong with outlining that human rights issues have gone unaddressed? or that there’s too little spending and commitment put on social issues? Yes, those are opinions, conclusions, complaints and criticism. Of course one can address what you describe as the “root causes” of human rights violations and lack of democracy, in making reports thereof. Doh. Doesn’t mean there’s “vote for xyz” sticker in there. Every opinion is political, more or less overtly. That’s still a long way from being political as a political party is, and even the most overt political statements – condemnation of x action by y government – still doesn’t detract from the facts and figures outlined in reports. You might also keep in mind the area of interest for an international organisation is the entire world. So there’s no need to filter everything through American political discourse for which it would seem sometimes that even a simple mention of “social and economic justice” is an endorsement of socialism.

By: Thorley Winston

Thorley Winston — Sat, 29 May 2004 03:35:03 +0000

Christ Bertram wrote:

Libertarian Cain and Socialist Abel may disagree on a lot of things. Cain believes that socialized medicine is the first step on the road to serfdom and Abel believes that the capitalist system inevitably leads to exploitation and oppression. No matter. They can work together to protest against torture, extrajudical killing and so on — which they agree are bad things. An organization that insisted the everyone sign up to an analysis of underlying causes would be sectarian and ineffective. But because the smart thing for an organization like Amnesty to do is to stay out of the business of root causes, that doesn’t mean it is committed to the positive view that Jacob now attributes to it in a further post.

However when upon reading the two articles from AI that Jacob Leavy linked to in his piece, we find the following:

“While governments have been obsessed with the threat of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, they have allowed the real weapons of mass destruction—injustice and impunity, poverty, discrimination and racism, the uncontrolled trade in small arms, violence against women and abuse of children—to go unaddressed,” said Irene Khan.
There are unequivocal signs of a global justice movement—the millions of citizens who took to the streets around the world in solidarity with the Iraqi people, Spaniards who marched in the name of humanity after the attacks in Madrid, global citizens who gathered at the World Social Forum in Brazil.
“Governments need to listen. In times of uncertainty the world needs not only fight against global threats, but to fight for global justice,” said Irene Khan.
http://news.amnesty.org/mav/index/ENGPOL100162004

And

We must campaign to redress the failure of governments and the international community to deliver on social and economic justice.
. . .
Iraq and the “war on terror” have obscured the greatest human rights challenge of our times. According to some sources, developing countries spend about US$22 billion a year on weapons and, for $10 billion dollars a year, they would achieve universal primary education. These statistics hide a huge scandal: the failed promise to attack extreme poverty and address gross economic and social injustice.
http://web.amnesty.org/report2004/message-eng

Looks like AI has gone far beyond “protest[ing] against torture, extrajudical killing and so on” and has gotten into the “business of root causes.” Leavy’s point seems even more poignant in light of the fact that AI seems to take positions on issues beyond “torture, extrajudical killing and so on” and is now offering opinions on issues such as education, poverty, defense spending, etc. all of which undercut any claims that this is a “non-political” organization that some have used to justify its unwillingness to “notice the difference between liberal democracy as a system and theocracy, military dictatorship, or totalitarianism as systems” in its “human rights agenda.”

By: pepi

pepi — Fri, 28 May 2004 16:47:32 +0000

To clarify – Levy also says he does have problem with the universal declaration of human rights itself, with the definition of rights that it is based on. He doesn’t say what kind of problems he has with it, only that it’s not the best or truest definition. But he cannot ignore that that declaration is signed on and accepted as is by all democratic nations of the world. Whose governments have no problem in dealing with human rights orgs on that very shared definition of human rights. And yes I did spot the paragraphs where he praises AI’s reporting work. I wasn’t implying he said the contrary. But when he writes “a human rights agenda that doesn’t notice the difference between liberal democracy as a system and theocracy, military dicattorship, or totalitarianism as systems is so incomplete as to be distorting” – he’s addressing AI as if it was a nation’s government or a political party that is not actually enforcing any policies or taking any stance in crucial matters. He’s projecting onto AI expectations about something AI or any other such organisation was never meant to be. He’s also ignoring that the very reports about non-democratic countries and regimes and dictatorships do point it out very clearly where there is systematic abuse and lack of democracy and whole systems operating completely outside of international law. They sure “notice the difference” between a democracy and a dictatorship. Otherwise they wouldn’t be in teh business of human rights at all. Besides, it’s not as if people didn’t know about that distinction in the first place that we need AI to tell us that Cuba is not as free as the United States. But that kind of top secret information is also evident in reports! How can anyone pretend it’s not? That’s also why I find it paradoxical that anyone would consider morally obtuse the lack of condemnation for something… that is already implicitely “condemned” by the very fact it’s reported as functioning essentially outside of that legal democratic framework AI refers to as a standard. That’s such a giant straw man he’s addressing. It’s like when people ask AI to “explicitely condemn terrorism”. As if killing of civilians by armed groups was ever condoned by a human rights organisation.

By: pepi

pepi — Fri, 28 May 2004 15:37:28 +0000

No, Thorley, no, I did not dismiss or misrepresent anything. Levy is having trouble with that impartiality – that refusal to oppose systems that systematically abuse human rights, and to support or at least “praise’ those who don’t. Yeah, I got all that. I understand all that. But what he’s asking of AI is what political parties do. It’s what political groups do. It’s what entire governments or at the very least their Foreign Ministers do, often, when business ties don’t make them look the other way. It’s not what organisations monitoring human rights do, or should do. It’s beyond their scope. What I find amusing in a way is to see how some people have trouble seeing AI for what it is. And evaluating it for what it actually says and does, ie. what it specifically set out to do in the first place. Nothing more and nothing less. The condemnation and support should be demanded of politicians, of governments, maybe also of businesses. Not just in terms of embargoes but of pressures. To take the classic instance raised these days – which governments are putting pressures on Sudan? Zimbawbe? To take another instance – what pressures are being put on China to stop all violations of human rights? AI at least is pointing them out in detailed reports. Should we consider it morally obtuse simply for not doing ALSO the work that governments and the so-called international community, whatever it means, should do? Isn’t that rather paradoxical? to me, it is.

By: Thorley Winston

Thorley Winston — Fri, 28 May 2004 15:00:50 +0000

pepi wrote:

It’s interesting how Volokh criticises AI for the opposite reason – because for him it’s too impartial.

Actually it’s more that he (or rather Jacob T. Levy who wrote the post) considers them morally obtuse and lacking moral credibility by failing to judge the political systems which he believes results in an incomplete and distorted picture:

This impartiality is in part a necessary pose, in part justified, and in part moral obtuseness. It seems to me necessary to remember simultaneously that torture is torture, and is reprehensible under whatever regime it takes place and that some political regimes and systems are built on and centrally dedicated to the violation of human rights and some aren’t. Not to oppose “any government or political system”—not Nazi Germany, Stalin’s USSR, apartheid South Africa, Mao’s China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, Pinochet’s Chile, or insert-your-least-favorite-example-here—isn’t being an honest impartial assessor of human rights violations. It’s radically misunderstanding where human rights violations come from, and how they’re stopped. AI does great work embarrassing governments into releasing what the organization terms “prisoners of conscience.” But some political systems rely on, and endorse as a matter of principle, punishing people for their religious and political views. Others don’t. The one-prisoner-at-a-time, don’t-judge-the-system approach maintains the organization’s credibility with some governments. But it damages the organization’s moral credibility.
. . .
None of this is to say that AI shouldn’t draw attention to human rights abuses committed by democracies. It is to say that a human rights agenda that doesn’t notice the difference between liberal democracy as a system and theocracy, military dicattorship, or totalitarianism as systems is so incomplete as to be distorting.

But I suppose you can simply dismiss this to be an attack on “impartiality” if you are unwilling or unable to answer the concerns he raised.

By: pepi

pepi — Fri, 28 May 2004 11:59:56 +0000

Correction – obviously that’s not Volokh himself saying that but one of the authors at the Volokh Conspiracy site (from the trackback).

By: pepi

pepi — Fri, 28 May 2004 11:58:34 +0000

It’s interesting how Volokh criticises AI for the opposite reason – because for him it’s too impartial. It’s funny really. Governments and political parties and systems that do have power over people, in democracies as in regimes, can get away with anything, from disregard of conventions to genocide and all that’s in between. A monitoring organisation with no power to enforce a thing is accused of being either too much or too little political and, in either case, of having no moral authority to speak on human rights at all. What a wonderful world.

By: Eve Garrard

Eve Garrard — Fri, 28 May 2004 09:20:06 +0000

q: Thanks for your points above, they’re helpful, and raise some interesting issues about making comparative claims.

By: pepi

pepi — Fri, 28 May 2004 08:54:17 +0000

As a last point – the debate on whether anti-terrorism laws are being used by governments to repressive ends or to expand their powers and violate certain legal frameworks exists even among those who supported the war in Iraq and/or do support the wider purpose of the war on terror. All those discussions on the Patriot Act etc. Or the UK anti-terrorism laws. And the section on the war on terror from the AI report specifically makes instances like Colombia and the Philippines and Cuba and Morocco. The issue is not war in Iraq, but governments – of democracies and non-democracies alike – passing anti-terrorism laws that have raised questions about compliance with human rights. Those questions have been raised and debated not just by AI! They’ve been raised by other organisations and groups, by political parties within parliaments, by lawyers and scholars, by media and think tanks, you name it. Of all kinds of political leanings. You don’t have to be against intervention in Iraq to appreciate the extent of that problem of defining exactly how anti-terrorism should be framed legally, and what are its interaction with human rights. And that, not a judgement on who is the worst human rights offender of the past 50 years, is the scope of that report section.

By: pepi

pepi — Fri, 28 May 2004 08:41:40 +0000

In short – Eve, you asked this: What I want to know is why the action in Iraq is supposed to count as a sustained attack on international frameworks and human rights, worse than any that’s happened in the last 50 years, when we have the examples of Sudan, the Congo, Cambodia, Rwanda et al to consider. The reply is: AI is not saying that the action in Iraq is worse than anything that’s happened in the past 50 years including Rwanda Congo or Cambodia or currently, Sudan. It’s just not saying that. You’re taking issue with something that is not there. For one thing, it’s talking of the wider “war on terror”, ie. all the actions taken by any government, including the Arab nations they cite in the Middle East report, that has been justified in terms of anti-terrorism measures. So it’s not even directly talking of Iraq. It’s about the whole wider field of anti-terrorism. Second – the “worst” is relative to the current framework of international law and multilateral action. That’s the term of comparison. Not “anything”. I do hope that’s clearer. And I hope I haven’t bored “lurker” to bits by now!

By: pepi

pepi — Fri, 28 May 2004 08:30:10 +0000

Eve: no, we’re not even communicating here, eh… It’s not a matter of logic. Or what you or I or anyone reads into the report and infers about what AI supposedly meant. It’s about reading it for what it is and what it says. It is a report. From a Human Rights organisation. Human Rights belong to international law. International law is a vast field. OF COURSE if they’re making the point that the framework for resolving international disputes (that’s the wording of the UN Chapter) is being used by governments also to erode human rights, they’re talking about huamn rights too. Yeah. That’s absolutely obvious. But the phrase you took issue with – that qualification of “worst attack on”, which in your view seems to be saying that the war on terror is worse than genocide in Sudan (!) – that phrase, is so clear and specific I don’t know why you have to discuss its meaning at all. You’re intent on finding a judgement that is not even there! Try again:

The current framework of international law and multilateral action is undergoing the most sustained attack since its establishment half a century ago. International human rights and humanitarian law is being directly challenged as ineffective in responding to the security issues of the present and future. In the name of the “war on terror” governments are eroding human rights principles, standards and values. The international community appears unable or unwilling to halt this trend. Armed groups, meanwhile, continue to flout their responsibilities under international humanitarian law.

It even specifies the debate is also about how to legally define terrorism, which influences the legal framework you use to fight it – AI says that terrorist actions are:

“…actions by armed political groups or individuals which are already prohibited by national and international law”

ie. the legal framework is already there, so it needs to be respected – that’s their view. Then, read on, because the whole page expands the concept and makes it unequivocally clear. For instance this phrase makes it also a lot clearer: All governments have an obligation to protect the security of those under their jurisdiction. Since 11 September 2001, many have adopted draconian new “anti-terrorism” measures, arguing that the existing legal framework is inadequate for combating such threats. That’s what the whole debate on how to fight terrorism is about! Whether the current legal framework for multilateral action and international law is still valid and effective today. As an aside, the Red Cross spokesman, when interviewed recently about Abu Ghraib, and asked that very question – ie. if perhaps current laws like the Geneva conventions, since they were made right after the world wars, are perhaps to be modified to be more suitable to anti-terrorism intervention today, which is different from wars of hte past – replied, we’re always very open to discussing etc. but as long as those laws are in place they need to be respected by ALL signatories. So I don’t know how you could read a reference to that debate as blaming the US-led war on terror as the worst crime against human rights ever. You are projecting a ton of bias in there. Even if you do NOT think that the war on terror is disrupting international law, even if you do not think that even non-democratic Arab governments using anti-terrorism to pursue their own internal political agendas is a big deal in terms of violating international laws AND human rights, you cannot turn a simple comment on the whole problem of how anti-terrorism relates to international law into an indictment of the US as the worst criminal ever and a dismissal of genocide in Sudan! There is no such blanket judgement and no such gigantically impossible comparison there. You’ve been projecting a whole ton of bias into the reading. By doing that, you just proved Chris’s point, again.

By: q

Fri, 28 May 2004 02:00:43 +0000

How topical! An article in the FT on justice, the US and UN. Lessons in justice from The Hague – By David Scheffer Published: May 27 2004 21:26 In August 1992, bleak images of emaciated Muslim prisoners at the Trnopolje Camp in Bosnia seized the world’s attention, with their strong evocation of similarly disturbing photographs from Nazi concentration camps. The Bosnian pictures helped spur the United Nations Security Council to establish an international war crimes tribunal in The Hague to try individuals accused of maltreating prisoners in Bosnian Serb detention camps and committing other atrocities, including genocide, in the Balkans.

By: q

Fri, 28 May 2004 00:04:52 +0000

What I want to know is why the action in Iraq is supposed to count as a sustained attack on international frameworks and human rights, worse than any that’s happened in the last 50 years, when we have the examples of Sudan, the Congo, Cambodia, Rwanda et al to consider. Eve- Thanks for the sharp clarification. Human Rights: I suppose you could value human rights in themselves on a per unit basis – such that 60 million miserable Brazilians is 30 times worse than 2 million miserable Peruvians. On that basis, you could probably produce league tables of abuses, tortures, deaths, rapes, beatings. Thus I suppose it would be very hard to find the misery of 2003 of the the “war on terror” in the top 20 of many tables that catalogued abuses since 1945. Frameworks: Amnesty and the international community use political frameworks to put some semblance of order on things to avoid another World War 1. Here the calculation is more difficult. Some people in Amnesty probably worry that the USA currently is a bit like the strongest boy in the school suddenly deciding to go around and punch anyone he doesn’t like, leading to a breakdown and to anarchy, with everyone doing it. In a sense, the USA is in the priviliged position that it can act unilaterally to an extent than noone else can. Events after World War 1 are very complex and it is a little difficult to generalise, but it does seem that the unravelling of the work of the League of Nations in controlling competing rivalries of countries like Germany, Japan, Italy and China was one of the factors that led to World War 2. So given this plus the pivotal role of France, Britain, Russia and the USA in setting up the new world order with the UN after 1945, anything that impinges upon these institutional frameworks will be viewed with caution. From a “framework” point of view, the tally of events will be interpreted differently. For example, the decision of countries to opt out of UN processes would be regarded suspiciously. I imagine South Africa, Israel, China, Russia, US have all had their difficulties with the UN! If we produce a league table of attacks on “frameworks” some of the abuses in Third World countries would not make the top 20, simply because it does not change the institutional structures. US unilateralism in 2003 also comes under that category. There are for example grounds for insisting that the cold war, or US Middle East policy in general is also a candidate for the “worst sustained attack”. I can’t speak for Amnesty. One explanation of where Amnesty is coming from relates to the history and the unilateralism as outlined above, another is simply that Amnesty “hates America”, and a third one is that they have made a mistake in their conclusion. A good option now would be to compile an ordered list of attacks on human right institutions, check Amnesty’s report for more details, and maybe even write to Amnesty for a fuller justification of what they are saying.

By: Eve Garrard

Eve Garrard — Thu, 27 May 2004 23:44:10 +0000

Lurker: what a very nice thing to say! And yes, it does make the frustrations seem more worthwhile. Thanks for bothering to say it. Pepi: Tell you what, let’s do a deal. I’ll do more reading if you’ll tighten up your logic. The quoted AI section said that international frameworks were under the worst attack for the last 50 years, and it identified the form of this attack as including the actions of governments engaged in the “war on terror”, eroding rights, principles, values and standards. You seem to be saying that AI meant by this things like Egypt and Syria using the war on terror as an excuse to legitimise existing bad practices, and some other governments introducing new practices involving moving individuals in and out of the region, doubtless from bad motives and to their detriment. Now I specifically said that I didn’t think that Amnesty failed to criticise Arab governments, so you can’t be citing this just as an example of such criticism. So you must be citing it as an example of what AI thinks is part of the sustained attack on international frameworks. I can’t believe you’re really telling me that this is what AI regards as an erosion of rights, principles, values and standards that amounts to a sustained attack on international frameworks, worse than any in the last 50 years. And even if you are telling me that, I can’t believe that Amnesty thinks that’s true. And even if Amnesty thinks that’s true, I can’t believe they’re remotely correct in that view. Amnesty itself is claiming that the sustained attack comes from (among other things) the actions of governments eroding human rights, values, standards, etc. But how could the undoubted erosion of rights, etc involved in the cited behaviour of Arab governments possibly compare to the erosion resulting from the horrors in Rwanda and Cambodia, say? If Amnesty really does think that, it’s got bigger problems than the double standards I’m concerned about. But I don’t believe for one minute that it does. Whatever your argument about Amnesty’s single standards is, it shouldn’t be the one you’re giving here. But now I really am done.

By: Nat Whilk

Nat Whilk — Thu, 27 May 2004 23:30:14 +0000

Pepi wrote: “I have no idea why you got involved with AI in the first place.” Because I believe political prisoners should be freed and I believe torture should be opposed. “AI has tons of lawyers,” And you didn’t think AI could use some more money! ;-) “I don’t understand what you mean with the appealing to people’s decency etc.? Is that all AI does? asking people to write letters?” It’s not all, but the Freedom Writers was one of the most prominent aspects of AI 20 years ago when I was a member. As I recall, they’d send us out packets periodically with names of “prisoners of conscience” and names and addresses of people who could maybe do something about it, and we’d send them our appeals. I don’t recall making any legal arguments in those letters, but it’s been a while. “It’s just a bit rich for someone labelling anti-dp campaigners as protectors of mass murderers” Which is tautologically true. “to get on a high horse about an “oh dear”. I don’t remember an “oh dear”. I remember a “That’s just so dumb” and a “dear g_d”, though. Perhaps it’s your rapier wit that is “the highest form of torture and abuse”. ;-) “Oh, and your hypothetical extreme instance I was referring to was the situation in which one would be asked to choose between torture and death,” Sorry, choosing between torture and death is also neither hypothetical nor rare. Would that it were.