Take this article in The Guardian today: Stephen Kinzer on human rights imperialism.

As pointed out in a lively little debate on Facebook, where I posted a link to the piece this morning, to some degree Kinzer’s piece can be read as a recital of ‘realist’ talking points, in the international relations sense of that word. But – underlying Kinzer’s observations, there is a deeper issue. It’s partially captured by the phrase attributed to Proudhon – “whoever says `humanity’ means to deceive”. That is, we should at the very least always be suspicious of the attempts to join particular interests to the universal of ‘the human’.

We might also reflect, just to take as an example Kinzer’s point about the purported virtues of a free press, how little those virtues are in evidence in our very thin “advanced” democracies.

Leaving aside, though, the arguments made in that piece (some of which are quite specious), it’s also very much worth reflecting on the invocation of humanity and liberal rights over the last decade in the name of war without end. It’s not difficult, taking a long view, to find parallels between George W. Bush’s rhetoric of democracy, Tony Blair’s liberal imperialism, and indeed the activities of aid agencies and NGOs in places like Afghanistan, and some similar controversies of the decades around the turn of the last century. Nor is it difficult to be sceptical about celebrity led humanitarian intervention: witness the Bono-isation of the Millennium goals, and the contemporary parallel of the eclipse of politics in the Wikileaks event (Julian Assange has just, incidentally, graced his many fans with a photo essay in Newsweek of his Christmas on a British country estate).

Let’s focus in on the rhetoric around women’s rights in Islamic countries. One could just as easily take the anti-Islamic pronunciamentos of various celebrity atheists and ‘human rights’ professors, QCs, and writers, of course. And there’s an obvious overlap in the work of Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Ostensibly, here, as might be recalled from various stoushes on female genital mutilation, ‘feminists’ and others are failing in their liberal universalist duty by somehow condoning abuses against the person in the name of respect for cultures. That is an egregious falsehood. But what’s forgotten in the proclamations of liberal imperialists is that there is a range of different traditions enabling respect for the integrity of the person and her choices which can be mobilised, not a singular universal and ‘Western’ one.

Returning to the criticisms Kinzer makes, or perhaps more broadly to the point I take from his article, I’d submit three arguments:

(a) The notion of ‘human rights’ is indeed an invention of European and Christian cultures;

(b) A singular notion of ‘human rights’ does not exhaust the resources of globally diverse traditions which are able to be mobilised in favour of liberty of choice as to style of life (on which see, in particular, the work of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum);

(c) If ‘human rights’ is a universal good, then it does not follow that the activities of the organisations and states which claim to be bearers of that good are unquestionable; or even if we’re to be consequentialist, necessarily positive. In any event, they should be opened to scrutiny and informed debate. That would seem to be particularly so in that the invocation of human rights is at least implicitly an invocation of a package of intellectual nostrums and political and cultural practices unified under the guise of ‘the Enlightenment’.

Crucial here are the mere facts that, from the late 1970s onwards, the discourse of ‘human rights’ has been so closely imbricated with the reality of force and the projection of military and ideological power; and that we find it so difficult actually to debate any of these ideological justifications without immediate recourse to picking sides.

What cannot be spoken, it would seem, is the fact that it has become increasingly clear that the Western imaginary is unable to fill the place of the global universal. As this is repressed, what results is that some of the most precious parts of these culturally delimited traditions – a commitment to rational deliberation, dialogue and respect for persons – all things which can actually be properly posited as traceable to a multitude of cultures past and present, disappear increasingly from our horizon.

None of this is to endorse everything Kinzer says; far from it. It is to say that if we really value human rights, we do need to think about both the call to pause and take stock, rather than act reflexively and as if our received wisdom constitutes truth, and about the fact that globalisation has consequences far beyond those envisaged by its liberal advocates of the 1990s.

In particular, we might like to think about the fact that by no means all arguments for respect for human dignity are the preserve of educated white folks; and the consequent fact that such arguments should actually be advanced in dialogue, and not without reflexivity. Note, for instance, that in the debates about Islamic women’s rights, the voices of Islamic women in Australia were either unheard or drowned out, in favour of a whole bunch of powerful white blokes (and a few women) championing that of Hirsi Ali as place keeper for ‘the Enlightenment’. And therein lies the tale…

Phil Lynch writes:

A recent report of the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade (JCFADT) identified the Asia-Pacific region as ‘diverse and complex’ with a ‘mosaic of human rights challenges’.  The Committee highlighted gender discrimination and violence, human trafficking, capital punishment, restrictions on freedom of expression and association, and profound poverty, among others.  The Committee identified a ‘clear need to enhance mechanisms to protect human rights and to redress human rights violations’.

On Australia’s role, JCFADT found that Australia is ‘well placed to foster discussion and progress on a cooperative approach to human rights challenges facing the Asia-Pacific’.  It concluded that Australia has a ‘significant’, albeit ‘sensitive and cooperative’ role to play in the promotion and protection of human rights in the region.

So what concrete commitments would a human rights-focused policy on engagement with the Asia-Pacific include?

Human Rights as a Key Instrument and Aim of Australian Engagement in the Region

JCFADT recommended that the Australian Government should be ‘conscious of its human rights obligations in all of its regional relationships’, including in the area of trade.

• Australia should develop a comprehensive white paper on human rights and Australia’s engagement with the Asia-Pacific.  The paper should: explain the benefits and imperatives of a human rights-based approach to the Asia-Pacific region; set out Australia’s human rights and foreign policy objectives in the region; and detail the means by which the Government will pursue these strategic objectives.  The paper should identify priorities for action and make concrete, measurable commitments across all areas of Australian engagement with the Asia-Pacific which impact on human rights.
• Australia should develop and undertake Human Rights Impact Assessments as a key aspect of doing business in the Asia-Pacific, including in the areas of aid, development, trade, investment, business, labour, migration, defence, military cooperation, security and the environment.
• Australia should ensure that the promotion and protection of human rights are incorporated into the objectives and activities of all regional organisations and processes that impact on human rights and of which Australia is a part.
• Where appropriate, Australia should negotiate for bilateral and multilateral agreements to include human rights clauses and safeguards.

Adopting a Human Rights-Based Approach to Aid and Development Assistance

JCFADT also recommended that AusAID ‘adopt a human rights-based approach’ to aid and development projects.  This recommendation was underpinned by evidence that development and human rights are interdependent and mutually reinforcing, and that a human rights-based approach can enhance program effectiveness and efficiency.  Both the OECD and the Overseas Development Institute have identified that the integration of human rights in all aspects of aid programming can deliver more effective, sustainable and value-for-money development outcomes.

• Consistent with the Government’s commitment to strengthen the effectiveness of Australia’s aid program, AusAID should ‘adopt a human rights-based approach’ to aid and development projects.
• Australia should prioritise human rights as a key aim and instrument of Australia’s development cooperation with the Asia-Pacific.

Adopting a Human Rights-Based Approach to Military and Security Cooperation

In many countries in the Asia-Pacific, members of the security forces who are implicated in human rights abuses are neither investigated nor prosecuted.  Australia is playing an increasing role in training foreign security forces through exchange programs and joint training exercises.  Human rights should be central to these trainings both in content and in terms of who is invited to participate.

• Australia should develop a transparent vetting system to scrutinise all members of security forces who are put forward to participate in activities funded or coordinated by, or otherwise involving, the Australian government.  The vetting system should be codified in a publicly available policy document initially and later through legislation.  Members that have themselves been implicated in human rights abuses, or are stationed with a unit that is implicated in such abuses, should be excluded from the trainings unless they have been charged with criminal offences relating to the abuses and found not guilty.  National human rights institutions and human rights NGOs should be consulted to determine whether members or units are implicated in such abuses.
• Australia should ensure that all activities involving members of foreign security forces, particularly training activities, funded or coordinated by, or otherwise involving the Australian government, includes practical human rights training.
• Bilateral military assistance and training programs that involve security forces should be contingent on respect for human rights and accountability for violations.

Phil Lynch writes:

Of the myriad issues inadequately covered in the election campaign thus far, Australian values and identity — and the question of how these values shape the way we understand our role and responsibility in the world — rank high. In the leaders’ debate, for example, the only discussion of Australian foreign policy and our place in the world arose in the context of the “Timor Solution” and the war in Afghanistan.

This is not the way things should be. With real leadership, elections present an opportunity to tap into admirable but often latent aspects of national identity, a concept explored by Canadian political scientist Alison Brysk in her new book, Global Good Samaritans: Human Rights as Foreign Policy. Why, Brysk asks, do a small number of countries sacrifice their national interest to promote human rights and help strangers? Her answer is simple: they don’t. Instead, she explains, countries such as Sweden, Canada and the Netherlands have nurtured national identities that have a deep commitment to human rights at their core. Global good samaritans, Brysk posits, see the “blood, treasure, and political capital they contribute to human rights as an investment, not a loss”. Both at the local and international levels, they have learned to see themselves, she says, “as interconnected members of a community that works best for everyone when human rights are respected”.

What I’d really like to see in this election is our national leaders appealing to and mobilising the most constructive and admirable aspects of Australia’s national identity and committing to the nation’s development as a principled, persistent, fearless and forceful human rights champion in the region and on the international stage.

Certainly, we are well placed to be an effective human rights promoter. We are democratic and politically stable. We are globalised and multicultural. We have an active and well networked civil society. We enjoy low levels of social stratification and high levels of economic development. We are a secure regional middle power.

We also have much to gain from pursuing the human rights agenda and much to lose in failing to do so. The positive side of the ledger includes the development of more stable and predictable international and regional policy environments, enhanced international credibility and diplomatic capital, strengthened policy coherence, and the mobilisation of universal, unifying national values. Conversely, a failure to multilaterally address urgent human rights challenges, such as climate change and food and water insecurity, will have grave implications for global, regional and national peace, security and development.

What then, could Australia do to most actively and effectively contribute to the agenda of making human rights a human reality in the 21st century?

As a first step, Australia should develop a comprehensive strategy on human rights and foreign policy. That strategy should mainstream human rights across all areas of Australian foreign affairs, including aid, development, trade, investment, migration, environment, business and security. It should contain concrete measures and commitments to promote and protect human rights in the region and internationally. Such a policy could enhance our international reputation as a human rights leader and build significant diplomatic capital.

Australia’s 2013-2014 UN Security Council candidacy could be a flagship for this policy. As a Security Council candidate, we should commit to taking a principled, persistent and consistent approach to human rights internationally and to ensuring that our domestic policies and practices are human rights compliant. We should use our Security Council candidacy to promote our national interest in international human rights, the rule of law and good governance.

Australia should similarly take a proactive and principled approach to the UN Human Rights Council, whether as an active observer state or member. We have an important role in ensuring the Council fulfils its mandate, and achieves its potential, as the leading multilateral forum for the discussion, promotion and enforcement of human rights.

Both through the Security Council and other international and regional bodies, including trade and financial institutions, we should push a fearless and forceful human rights agenda. This agenda should address existing human rights challenges – including poverty, financial instability and inequality – and pursue progressive initiatives, including operationalisation of the responsibility to protect, the abolition of the death penalty, the advancement of Indigenous peoples globally, and the regulation of business and human rights.

It is often observed that human rights begin at home. The fulfilment of human rights at home is inextricably linked with our national identity and our capacity and ability to promote human rights abroad. Domestic human rights protection must be recognised as a core aspect of any comprehensive and coherent foreign human rights policy.

In order for Australia to adopt not only a principled and consistent, but also effective, approach to human rights in international affairs — from the death penalty, to child labour, to people trafficking, to a regional solution on asylum-seekers — human rights must become core business in internal affairs. As US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton recently recognised, “By holding ourselves accountable, we reinforce our moral authority to demand that all governments adhere to obligations under international law.”

Australia’s status as the only Western democracy without a national human rights law undermines our authority and legitimacy on international human rights issues and in regional human rights dialogues. A national Human Rights Act — rejected by the Rudd/Gillard Government – could promote more responsive and accountable government, improve public services, and enshrine fundamental values such as freedom, dignity, respect and a fair go. Perhaps most importantly, however, a comprehensive national Human Rights Act could provide a framework for international, regional and domestic policy coordination and create a “virtuous circle” in which a constructive national identity is mobilised which places human rights at the centre of our internal and external affairs. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has played precisely this role, placing human rights at the centre of both Canada’s self-perception and external engagement.

Australia has what it takes to be a human rights promoter at home and abroad. For Australia to realise our potential, however, will require real political leadership and legislative and institutional reform, Most critically, it will require the mobilisation of a national identity that values human rights every bit as highly as beaches, barbecues, boomerangs, the Anzac spirit and the Ashes. That is the opportunity that this Federal Election presents and the responsibility that the next Australian Government confronts.

Australia provides $414.3 million a year in aid to PNG. About $30 million of this ($150 million over five years) goes on the law and justice sector program, which funds prisons, courts, and the police. While half of that money goes on consultants, the core fact remains: Australia is funding the PNG police, an agency which engages in widespread and systematic torture. You are paying for the truncheons, rifles, axes and machetes used to commit these crimes.

Australia should not be doing this. Instead, it should make law enforcement funding conditional on human rights. And as long as the PNG police force engages in torture, that force should not receive a single cent of Australian money, unless it is directed towards stopping torture and bringing those responsible for it to justice.

The government appointed a committee to consult on methods of protecting human rights, headed by Jesuit priest and lawyer Frank Brennan, early in its term. McClelland has now released the government’s response, which is a masterpiece of ambiguity and weasel words.

The Rudd government certainly hasn’t distinguished itself in the realm of civil liberties.

I find myself in agreement with the conclusion of Guy Beres’ post:

All things considered, it’s hard not to view the government’s performance on this issue as rather weak, and the outcome here as an indictment of the Rudd Government’s use of the public consultation as a mechanism for guiding policy. If you’re going to make public consultations part of your modus operandi as a government, you better well make sure that you provide a robust explanation for why you have flatly rejected the recommendations of the people you are consulting.

And also with this:

However, I am somewhat confused by the assertion that the introduction of a national act would be somehow “divisive” or would create an atmosphere of “uncertainty or suspicion”. Surely one could argue quite effectively that the absence of any legal bedrock on human rights in Australia is a fairly considerable source of division and uncertainty? A federal Human Rights Act would lay Australia’s human rights cards on the table for all to see.

Indeed. A Charter of Rights seems divisive only to hardline religious figures, conservative commentators, Tony Abbott and John Howard and NSW Labor hacks.

Elsewhere: Woolly Days, Andrew Norton.

The above, which translates as “not twice for the same”, is one of the fundamental principles of modern law. Once you’ve been tried for something, and that trial has reached a final verdict (either to convict or acquit), you can’t be tried for it again. And if convicted and sentenced, you can’t then have additional punishments heaped on you for the same offence.

The government of New South Wales has just announced its intention to abandon that principle, with plans to subject violent criminals to indefinite detention when their sentences are complete. So, despite being handed a finite sentence by judges, these prisoners will now be given an effective life sentence by political fiat.

This unquestionably violates the rights against retroactive penalties, double jeopardy, and arbitrary detention affirmed in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (and as a party to the ICCPR and First Optional Protocol, Australia will no doubt become the subject of complaints to the UN Human Rights Committee as a result) . But it also violates the rule of law. It arbitrarily changes the rules after the fact, with retroactive effects. The result is not only arbitrary decisions – criminal sentences determined by the whether a politician can gain votes by squicking someone rather than the severity of the offence – but also that no one can rely on the law as a guide to their behaviour. When sentences are arbitrary, there is no deterrence. And when they are arbitrarily large, there is no incentive to accept them (which could be unpleasant for witnesses, or those tasked with enforcement. Sadly, such injustices never seem to come back on the politicians…)

This is simply a monstrous move, but Australia has no formal human rights mechanisms which would prevent it (New Zealand has the BORA, which would at least force the politicians to admit what they were doing – not that that seems to help). And so it gets chalked up as yet another example of why Australia needs a Bill of Rights…

<img src="http://larvatusprodeo.net/files/2010/03/29-03-2010-10-50-17-AM1.jpg"

The image of the paper’s Sunday cover comes courtesy of Crikey:

Over the weekend Brisbane’s Sunday Mail dispatched its snapper to Toombul shopping centre north of the city to pap its front-page target. But this wasn’t a celebrity. It wasn’t a crook on the run. This was a mother and her two daughters — “suspected immigration detainees” as the paper captioned them.

We don’t know their names, but thanks to the paper’s sleuths we do know what they purchased while “enjoying” their tour through Coles — “home brand Hawaiian pizza, Smith’s potato crisps and cartons of Coca-Cola.”

The Sunday Mail splashed the supermarket scoop across their front page — headlined “THEY’RE HERE” (surely not a nod to Poltergeist?) — in a story that ran prominently in all of Rupert’s rags yesterday.

And if you somehow missed the implication, Piers Akerman filled in the blanks in the Daily Telegraph this morning: this “happy Afghan women” (Piers has the inside word on her mental state and nationality) and her fellow “fast-tracked” asylum seekers with their “overflowing shopping trolleys, courtesy of the Australian taxpayer” send a “strong message” that Australia’s doors are open.

Yet, when I went to the aforesaid Toombul shopping centre today, it was still standing, the sky hadn’t fallen in, and the social fabric appeared intact.

Last week, emboldened or embiggened by his defeat in the Great Health Debate, Tony Abbott challenged Kevin Rudd to a debate on asylum seekers [h/t tigtog].

As a number of commenters on this morning’s thread about the latest Newspoll noted, any time the Coalition’s kooky plans go hay wire, the first thing they can think of to do is to shout “Brown people in boats!”.

(To be fair to Abbott, it’s not the only thing they can think of; he gave an anodyne speech on economic policy today short on any actual policy and long on warnings about the evils of Labor debt.)

Yet, what would have happened had Rudd taken up Abbott’s gauntlet? The only two things we know about the Coalition’s ‘border protection’ policy is that they’d reintroduce TPVs (or, in other words, deprive people lawfully in this country of civil rights) and that it’s all teh government’s fault!!!

Although Rudd would never have taken up the invitation, for a whole range of reasons, I think it’s a bit of a pity that he didn’t. Crikey‘s editorial bemoans the damage the sort of story the News Limited Sundays ran as destroying the possibility of a reasoned debate.

Between 2001, when John Howard started the whole ‘people on boats’ scare, and 2007, when his government came to a well deserved end, Australia granted 78 475 humanitarian visas. You can see the whole gamut of statistics at this page maintained by the Refugee Council of Australia.

For a number of those years, a massive rhetorical onslaught was launched by the Howardistas – terrorism, Australian values, “we will determine”, etc, etc., madly dehumanising its objects as it went.

Yet, the urgency of the shock tactic, and its emotional force, appeared to diminish over time. Labor’s policy on asylum seekers can still, and should be still, criticised as imperfect on humanitarian grounds, but I think the emphasis on the Coalition’s detention of children, and then Kevin Rudd’s emphasis on people smuggling, contributed to a reframing of the issue in public opinion.

While no doubt there are some hardcore xenophobes in the electorate who respond on cue every time the dog whistle blows, I’m not at all sure that other shoppers buying home brand Hawaiian pizzas at the Toombul Woolies (in Wayne Swan’s seat of Lilley, incidentally) are as amenable to these sort of scare campaigns as once may have been the case.

So, then, a reasoned debate on asylum seekers might be just the ticket in this election year.

A volcanic decade in global politics ends amid deep unease about the world’s ability to rise to key 21st-century challenges. openDemocracy writers draw breath and look ahead by reflecting on three questions:

1) What was the most significant trend in the century’s first decade?

2) What do you most hope for, and most fear, about the decade to come?

3) What idea do you see fading and/or emerging in 2010 and beyond?

Their reflections and prognostications can be found here and here.

Reading through the responses, a number of common themes emerge. One is the rise of China and the end of a unipolar world (and in this context, it’s interesting to observe more evidence surfacing about the snubs Beijing has been giving Barack Obama). Associated with this theme is the end of the liberal optimism of the 1990s, the decline of effective peacekeeping and conflict resolution, and the rise of the anti-terror security state in the 2000s. Whatever the views of the ideologues of globalisation, it’s difficult not to conclude that the first decade of this century saw the state come back. While much could be written critical of the emergence of international human rights law and international co-ordination which was one of the important trends of the 90s, conversely urgent problems like climate change are insoluble without concerted world action (while the last years of the late decade showed that the global financial sector could be bailed out at all deliberate speed).

Here too, it might be germane to observe that the sort of authoritarian state led capitalism characteristic of the Chinese model has both its parallels and echoes in the West (as civil liberties decline and torture becomes an acceptable subject of public discourse) and that its rise challenges the 90s end of history/democratisation thesis that market activity brings civic virtue in its wake. For many of the writers, the 2000s were a somewhat dark decade, characterised by rising inequality. Notable is a focus on the practice of multinationals buying up huge swathes of agricultural land in developing countries (particularly in Africa); for instance the leasing of almost half Madagascar’s arable land by a South Korean corporation. This issue warrants more attention than it’s received. It’s in stark contrast with pronouncements such as the Millennium Goals, and symbolises the end of the discourse of development and the entrenchment of a core/periphery model in the global economy, aside from its obvious human and ecological implications.

There’s much to ponder here.

Interestingly, only a small number of contributors referred to the rise of social media and the dissemination of the internet as a key development of the 00s. That’s something I’ll take up presently in another post.

In the run-up to the 2007 election, then-Australian Prime Minister John Howard decided to repeat his successful racial wedge tactics with Aborigines as the victims, declaring a “state of emergency” in Northern Australia, taking over townships, and suspending anti-discrimination laws so it could subject aborigines to authoritarian and paternalist controls on the basis of race. Now, James Anaya, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of indigenous people, has pointed out the obvious: that this was fundamentally discriminatory. And he didn’t mince his words in saying so:

“There is entrenched racism in Australia,” Anaya told reporters in the capital, Canberra, after visiting several Aboriginal townships in the past week. “These measures overtly discriminate against Aboriginal peoples, infringe their right of self determination and stigmatize already stigmatized communities.”

The Australian has more:

Compulsory income management and blanket bans on alcohol and pornography were “overtly discriminatory” and further stigmatised already stigmatised communities, he said.

“People who have a demonstrated capacity to manage their income are included.

“It’s inappropriate to their circumstances but is also, as expressed by them, demeaning.”

The indigenous rights expert was also scathing of federal Labor’s insistence that housing funds would only flow if indigenous communities signed over their land.

“It’s a mistake to assume that indigenous peoples … aren’t capable of taking care of their homes,” Prof Anaya said.

“Indigenous control can be appropriate to indigenous peoples’ development, to their aspirations, to indeed being in control of their lives like all others.”

As for compensation for indigenous people taken from their families by government agencies, the UN rapporteur was unequivocal: “There should be reparations,” he said.

That’s a pretty stunning condemnation of a government we all expect to behave better. It will be interesting to see how the Rudd government, which has moved a long way from Howard’s position, responds.