State Sovereignty, Human Rights and the Responsibility to Protect

by Lorna Salzman (October 2015)

The Lawfare Project in NYC headed by Brooke Goldstein has commendably taken on the issue of stealth jihad and one of its main tools, lawfare. Unfortunately the more glamorous and less sensitive topic of terrorism continues to hog the spotlight even though stealth jihad, in my opinion and that of some Lawfare workshop participants, presents a far greater threat to democracy and freedom in this country. In responding to the Muslim campaign of lawfare (using law as a weapon of war, to suppress free speech, promote ideology and undermine the law itself so as to allow the inculcation of shariah law into American institutions, legal system, academia, media and civil society), the importance of state sovereignty has been vigorously defended at the three Lawfare conferences in NYC, though admittedly most participants would be considered to be centrist or on the right. 

Some human rights activists, and even some on the left such as Michael Berube, insist that we must have credible international bodies to deal with conflicts within nation-states and especially with tyrannical and maniacal regimes like those of Saddam Hussein and Omar Bashir of Sudan. This notion is based on the need to prevent the intervention of states with ulterior motives and agenda (i.e. the United States invasion of Iraq, for starters), as well as provide time and space for non-violent responses to these conflicts. Of course many sanctions have not worked at all and can be circumvented. But more stringent ones have rarely been tried. In the case of Darfur, some groups proposed preventing fly-overs of planes or the tactic of harbor blockades. In most cases, though, humanitarian reasons have been raised that effectively rule out just about every non-violent alternative.

The argument against sovereignty needs to be examined closely. There is little doubt, for example, that the US resistance to abiding by the international criminal court , or any other supra-state body, is intended to defend American troops from being charged with human rights violations (as in Guantanamo) or war crimes, not to mention the indictment of Bush and Cheney themselves. Countering this is the argument that under present international and UN arrangements, and the influence of regimes and movements demanding sovereignty but committing crimes against their own people or gratuitous unprovoked acts of war (Hamas and Hezbollah), and absent any agreed-on criteria and oversight on who gets indicted and on what basis, political vendettas and acts of retribution could be protected under international law by any international body. The most egregious example was the threat by the UK, of all countries, to arrest Israeli minister Tzipi Livni if she entered the UK. She cancelled her trip, as have other Israelis under similar threats of arrest. 

In light of this, it is strange to see the article by the Bruges Group resisting the notion of further UK integration into the EU, and its concerns about sovereignty, which they were ready to deny to Israel but claim for themselves when they threatened Tsipi Livni with arrest.

Yes, international norms and criteria for judging human rights violations, war crimes and genocide are desperately needed. But unless and until ways can be found to structure and oversee these judgements, and to prevent the manipulation of such bodies by states as well as sub-state criminal elements such as Hamas and Hezbollah, the notion of state sovereignty should remain intact even if imperfect.

 

 

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Politics as if Evolution Mattered,” which addresses the intersection of evolution with socio-political policy. 

 

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