Ideological (Mis)Use of Human Rights - David Chandler

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124 D. CHANDLER as an ethical challenge to law (IICK, 2000). To some commentators, using ethical arguments of human rights to undermine UN Charter law against war was dangerous or an ‘abuse’ of ethics; for others, as outlined with respect of Habermas, this, on the contrary, was a valuable ‘use’ of ethics. However, the rights of the ‘human’ (of ‘human security’ or of human rights) that are enforced are not the rights of legally constituted subjects, they are not the rights of states, the subjects of international law. As the rights being enforced are not those of legal subjects, the content and enforcement of human rights is dependent on the ad hoc agency of states willing to shoulder the burden of paying for and participating in intervention. Th e ad hoc nature of human rights enforcement means that the ethico-juridical undermining of UN Charter law cannot take a universal form, but is inevitably dependent on a case-by-case approach, with the decision making dictated more by the interests and concerns of the powerful than the needs of the powerless. a For some critics, such as Danilo Zolo (2002), it is the global hegemon, the United States, that is empowered by more informal and ad hoc decision making, but for others, such as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, it is global neoliberal capitalism itself, taking the postnational form of Empire (Hardt and Negri, 2001). Whether the case of Kosovo, where human rights were held to trump sovereignty and international law (HRW, 1999), is understood as a positive step toward a more universal order or as a reactionary step toward a more hierarchical order may be a matter of normative choice. What is beyond dispute is that the existing legal order was challenged and undermined by states powerful enough to take the decision to wage war against the Serbian state. Th e US and most of the European powers, which backed the war, unilaterally decided to wage war outside the legal restrictions of the UN Charter order. In doing this they claimed that they were waging war on behalf of the rights of the Kosovo Albanians. But the nature of human rights claims is that, while Kosovo Albanians were the subjects of these rights, the active agents in enforcing them were the NATO powers, who in doing so accrued or claimed the right to wage war independently of the UN. Today, human rights, the rule of law, and good governance provide the key framework of international institutional policy practices. However, when it comes to the international sphere, the lack of mechanisms to generate global consensus, the increased power inequalities, and the limited safeguards make any attempts to institutionalize human rights regimes outside the mutual agreement of sovereign states much more problematic. Th e problem with constituting frameworks of sanction, intervention, and war on the basis of non-socially constituted legal subjects is that it leaves wide open the problem, raised by Schmitt, of ‘who decides?’ (Schmitt, 1996, 2003). Whether the intention is to (mis)use human rights ideologically or to genuinely do good in the world, the outcome is the same: ultimately, greater decision-making power and authority accrue to the states (or some would argue the USA as the sole remaining great power) that have the capacity to take on the responsibilities of deciding and enforcing. KEY POINTS The human rights-based approach has facilitated humanitarian aid being denied in some circumstances and in support for more militarized humanitarianism—for example, the NATO war over Kosovo. Human rights approaches appeared to directly challenge sovereignty in the 1990s, but in the 2000s have sought to redefi ne sovereignty as being compatible with international human rights protections. Central to this shift has been the ICISS report ‘The Responsibility to Protect’ (ICISS, 2001). Human rights approaches tend to redefi ne war fought in the post-colonial world as a matter of human rights crimes and human rights victims; they also tend to redefi ne war fought by Western powers, seeing intervention in the cause of human rights as more akin to police action than war making. Human rights approaches have facilitated a more fl exible and positive framework for military intervention, shifting away from UN Charter approaches that saw war as the ‘scourge of humanity’. 08-goodhart-chap07.indd 124 12/9/08 3:06:00 PM
Human Rights and the Search for Meaning Michael Ignatieff has emphasized that the universalism of human rights and humanitarianism represents a very diff erent type of universalism than that traditionally associated with human rights as a progressive demand based upon human rationality, autonomy, and self-determination. Rather than expressing human aspirations for a better future, the modern universal ethic of human rights tends to view humanity itself as problematic. Here, what draws humanity together as a universal is our capacity to commit crime and to suff er it. He argues that, ‘Modern moral universalism is built upon the experience of a new kind of crime: the crime against humanity.’ (Ignatieff , 1998, p. 19.) Th e universal human subject is the victim: ‘genocide and famine create a new human subject—the pure victim stripped of social identity’ (Ignatieff , 1998, p. 20). Human Rights and Political Disillusionment Rather than universal discourses of human rights expressing a new progressive political era, Ignatieff highlights that the focus on human rights expresses disillusionment with political engagement and social change: the concern that ‘there are no good causes left —only victims of bad causes’ (Ignatieff , 1998, p. 23). He notes (Ignatieff , 1998, p. 250) the danger of this modern moral universalism, which ‘has taken the form of an anti-ideological and anti-political ethic of siding with the victim; the moral risk entailed by this ethic is misanthropy.’ Th ere is a danger that our modern anti-political sentiments and disillusionment with progress and collective aspirations may take the form of a misanthropic view of humanity rather than a critique of economic and social relations in which our political lives are constructed and constrained. Th is misanthropic view is universalist, but also extremely divisive and self-comforting. Ignatieff (1998, p. 95) suggests that in seeking to rationalize the problems of the world, a depoliticized human rights perspective fi nds it easy to blame non-Western societies and governments and, in so doing, portray better off Western society as blameless and morally superior. IDEOLOGICAL (MIS)USE OF HUMAN RIGHTS 125 In fact, it is oft en diffi cult to separate our concern for others and the construction of our own self-image or identity. As people and politicians in the West lack a sense of mission and purpose and strong shared or collective self-image, there is a danger that we seek personal and collective affi rmation in our relationship to the non-Western world: ‘. . . when policy was driven by moral motives, it was oft en driven by narcissism. We intervened not only to save others, but to save ourselves, or rather an image of ourselves as defenders of universal decencies. We wanted to show that the West “meant” something.’ Th e view that the shift toward framing international politics through the lens of human rights refl ects the fact that major Western states and societies lack positive political goals or a strong sense of their own social cohesion, gives a diff erent angle to the (mis)use of human rights than that discussed above. Rather than an assertion of Western (or neo-imperial) interests and power and global aspirations of domination, the human rights discourse expresses a post-Cold War loss of confi dence and lack of clear aims among leading Western and international policy actors. Alain Badiou (2001, p. 31) suggests that citizen rights and the domestic political process no longer provide individuals or societies with a sense of meaning or purpose: ‘Parliamentary politics as practiced today does not in any way consist of setting objectives inspired by principles and of inventing the means to attain them.’ Rather than representing a new social collectivity, for Badiou, the focus on consensual ethics refl ects the ‘end of ideology’ and political contestation and the lack of instrumental aims or social goals of state leaders (see Box 7.5). Human Rights and the Lack of a Political Project Th e work of Zaki Laïdi (1998) provides some valuable insights into how to tie together the themes of loss of instrumental goals and collective meaning with the search for social cohesion and legitimating ‘mission’ through the international discourse of human rights activism. Ethics and moral values can be seen to have 08-goodhart-chap07.indd 125 12/9/08 3:06:00 PM
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