In international law and the practice of international politics, partitioning countries is generally seen as a bad thing and something to be avoided almost always. So with Europe's newest independent country, Kosova. Some have suggested that the country should be partitioned by giving to Serbia the northernmost strip of Kosova's territory, where ethnic Serbs are in the majority. This has been rejected by Kosova's leadership, and it is unlikely that the international players who count will take up this idea.
However, partitioning Serbia by taking the province of Kosovo and letting it become an independent state seems to be less problematic, at least to the major Western powers. The idea seems to be that Serbia under Milosevic essentially alienated itself from Kosovo by systematically oppressing its people and launching a campaign of outright ethnic cleansing prior to and during the NATO bombing campaign of 1999. This looks a bit like international law being made on the hoof, and it will be interesting to see whether highly oppressed regions of the world start having their independence from their oppressors recognized. The evolving principle does at least suggest in the Kosovan case that if the new state ultimately fails to protect the civil and personal rights of its ethnic Serbs, then they will have a legal right to have their majority areas secede and reintegrate with Serbia.
The Kosovan leadership are perhaps mindful of the extent to which their state's legitimacy hangs on it managing to be a country for all its citizens. Prime Minister Hashim Thaci and President Fatmir Sejdiu have both pledged to end discrimination against ethnic Serbs; symbolically, their pledge was delivered in both Albanian and Serbo-Croat. But such talk is cheap, and plays well in Western Europe. Anecdotal evidence suggests that in much of Kosova you would be in danger of literally being killed if you were heard speaking Serbo-Croat in public. Kosova's leaders may face an uphill battle to integrate the country's Serbs into Kosovan life.
Showing posts with label International Law. Show all posts
Showing posts with label International Law. Show all posts
17 February, 2008
09 February, 2006
The Magic of International Law - Part two
And so to that old bugbear about how the stuff in International Law is applied so erratically that it is hard to take it that seriously. I take a more optimistic view. Seventy years ago, the idea that a national leader could be taken to court abroad for any kind of human rights violation would have been laughable. Now, though, the world has moved in a direction where people have been banged up by international courts for taking part in the most serious of crimes against humanity. Now, you may well say that it is only losers who will find themselves in the dock at The Hague. However, any world leader will be familiar with the proposition that all political careers end in failure. Today's winner could be tomorrow's loser, and today's friend of the United States could be tomorrow's Saddam Hussein. So if we assume even a degree of rationality on the part of national leaders, the increasing prospect of indictment for heinous crimes might serve to deter them from engaging in them.
Those of us living in Europe have had the good fortune to live in states that signed up to the European Convention on Human Rights. Council of Europe states signed up to it as a bland declaratory we-wuv-rights kind of thing, and it then turned into this friendly monster bringing new rights and stuff to the people of Europe. Like in Ireland, where it led to the decriminalisation of voluntary sexual acts between men.
I also read somewhere once that the human rights bits of the Helsinki accords that setup the Organisation for Security Cooperaton in Europe were a serious contributor to the fall of Communism. The Sovs had signed up to them more or less for the laugh, but they saddled them with a series of intrusive human rights inspectors and reports that basically made them look like the cockfarmers they were.
More generally, there are a lot of human rightsy stuff that states have signed up to in order to look good which then have a rolling effect on how they conduct their internal affairs. There is some international convention on torture, for instance, which is contributing to the improvement of conditions in prisons and mental institutions in our countries. And then there is the European Union's human rights requirements for its members... if any of the candidate countries are shown to have knowingly collaborated with the operation of illegal torture camps by the USA then their application process will be fucked. And if any member countries are shown to have operated the secret gulag on their territory then they could notionally have their EU membership suspended. I concede that that is unlikely to happen, but any EU country who was allowing US torture centres on its territory would see the collapse of its ability to influence events within the Union.
Sorry if this is all a bit disjointed… that’s what you get when you cut and paste from mailing lists. And sorry if anyone from Spy School is reading this with an air of déja vu.
Those of us living in Europe have had the good fortune to live in states that signed up to the European Convention on Human Rights. Council of Europe states signed up to it as a bland declaratory we-wuv-rights kind of thing, and it then turned into this friendly monster bringing new rights and stuff to the people of Europe. Like in Ireland, where it led to the decriminalisation of voluntary sexual acts between men.
I also read somewhere once that the human rights bits of the Helsinki accords that setup the Organisation for Security Cooperaton in Europe were a serious contributor to the fall of Communism. The Sovs had signed up to them more or less for the laugh, but they saddled them with a series of intrusive human rights inspectors and reports that basically made them look like the cockfarmers they were.
More generally, there are a lot of human rightsy stuff that states have signed up to in order to look good which then have a rolling effect on how they conduct their internal affairs. There is some international convention on torture, for instance, which is contributing to the improvement of conditions in prisons and mental institutions in our countries. And then there is the European Union's human rights requirements for its members... if any of the candidate countries are shown to have knowingly collaborated with the operation of illegal torture camps by the USA then their application process will be fucked. And if any member countries are shown to have operated the secret gulag on their territory then they could notionally have their EU membership suspended. I concede that that is unlikely to happen, but any EU country who was allowing US torture centres on its territory would see the collapse of its ability to influence events within the Union.
Sorry if this is all a bit disjointed… that’s what you get when you cut and paste from mailing lists. And sorry if anyone from Spy School is reading this with an air of déja vu.
07 February, 2006
The Magic of International Law
They’ve been talking about International Law and human rights-y stuff over on the Helicopterview mailing list. I’ve just finished a semester long course on International Law, so you would think I am well placed to discuss this kind of thing. Sadly, you would be wrong, as I did not pay sufficient attention and have got back completely suckass grades for my coursework. But hey, ignorance has never stopped me before.
One thing about the course I did is that it was very law-y, in that it focussed on what the International Law in a variety of situations was. I would have preferred something that looked at International Law in terms of what it is meant to do and whose interests it is meant to serve, together with an analysis of how it works in practice and who benefits from it.
One of my Helicopterview correspondents raised the idea that the whole idea of states having rights – such as the right to have various types of weapons or whatever – is a bit dubious, given that a state is an abstraction and surely the whole idea of law ought to be to give people rights. Maybe so, but my understanding is that in International Law as it stands, states are both the primary actors and the primary subjects. International Law is based on the idea that states have both duties and rights with respect to other states, and also (increasingly) towards private individuals. This conferral of rights on an abstraction is not completely insane, and has parallels with the way domestic law bestows rights on corporations.
The International Court of Justice and the new International Criminal Court were mentioned, with it being suggested that these are a bit useless given their ineffective remit. The ICJ does seem to work in a funny way... basically, you can only be taken to court there if you agree to it. |n practice this means that it tends to be used to resolve interstate disputes where neither power sees a fundamental interest as being at stake. So you get cases about whether the border is 50 feet this way or that way. That said, some serious cases have come before it, either where both parties felt they couldn't opt out of it or where some FULE let themselves be taken to court there by mistake (the case about the USA arming the Contras and mining Nicaraguan ports was one of these).
The ICJ is nevertheless not a body designed to promote human rights, and faulting it for not doing so misses the point of its existence. The ICJ is actually there to help resolve interstate conflict, an entirely different matter. The distinction is important, because, as already mentioned, International Law has historically been primarily about how states operate with respect to each other, and not about how they treat their citizens or other subjects. All this human rights stuff in International Law is something novel and exciting.
Of the International Criminal Court, I say give it time before writing it off. It is only new and it will need to be in operation for a while before we can say what difference it makes. The ICC actually has universal jurisdiction, or will have once enough countries in the world ratify the ICC treaty (this may already have happened). This means that the ICC can indict even people from countries which are vehemently opposed to the ICC, making things potentially sticky for them should they ever want to travel beyond their homeland’s borders. One suckass country hostile to the ICC has signed lots of treaties with ICC states saying that they will not hand over its citizens to the ICC... however, these are thought to have no practical legal validity. It will be interesting to see what happens in practice should someone from this pro-war crime state ever be indicted by the ICC.
One thing about the course I did is that it was very law-y, in that it focussed on what the International Law in a variety of situations was. I would have preferred something that looked at International Law in terms of what it is meant to do and whose interests it is meant to serve, together with an analysis of how it works in practice and who benefits from it.
One of my Helicopterview correspondents raised the idea that the whole idea of states having rights – such as the right to have various types of weapons or whatever – is a bit dubious, given that a state is an abstraction and surely the whole idea of law ought to be to give people rights. Maybe so, but my understanding is that in International Law as it stands, states are both the primary actors and the primary subjects. International Law is based on the idea that states have both duties and rights with respect to other states, and also (increasingly) towards private individuals. This conferral of rights on an abstraction is not completely insane, and has parallels with the way domestic law bestows rights on corporations.
The International Court of Justice and the new International Criminal Court were mentioned, with it being suggested that these are a bit useless given their ineffective remit. The ICJ does seem to work in a funny way... basically, you can only be taken to court there if you agree to it. |n practice this means that it tends to be used to resolve interstate disputes where neither power sees a fundamental interest as being at stake. So you get cases about whether the border is 50 feet this way or that way. That said, some serious cases have come before it, either where both parties felt they couldn't opt out of it or where some FULE let themselves be taken to court there by mistake (the case about the USA arming the Contras and mining Nicaraguan ports was one of these).
The ICJ is nevertheless not a body designed to promote human rights, and faulting it for not doing so misses the point of its existence. The ICJ is actually there to help resolve interstate conflict, an entirely different matter. The distinction is important, because, as already mentioned, International Law has historically been primarily about how states operate with respect to each other, and not about how they treat their citizens or other subjects. All this human rights stuff in International Law is something novel and exciting.
Of the International Criminal Court, I say give it time before writing it off. It is only new and it will need to be in operation for a while before we can say what difference it makes. The ICC actually has universal jurisdiction, or will have once enough countries in the world ratify the ICC treaty (this may already have happened). This means that the ICC can indict even people from countries which are vehemently opposed to the ICC, making things potentially sticky for them should they ever want to travel beyond their homeland’s borders. One suckass country hostile to the ICC has signed lots of treaties with ICC states saying that they will not hand over its citizens to the ICC... however, these are thought to have no practical legal validity. It will be interesting to see what happens in practice should someone from this pro-war crime state ever be indicted by the ICC.
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