Justice? Variably Human
We have a world body formulated to ensure, to attempt to ensure that representatives of countries, nations around the world come together in an effort to work together in the promotion of world harmony, of peace between nations, of the wealthy assisting the poor, the advanced nations holding out a helping hand to the under-developed world. To achieve, eventually, some kind of parity where no country's population goes hungry or remains gainfully unemployed without the others feeling compelled to answer their need.For the most part it works reasonably well. The United Nations is a mandated world body to oversee the health and fitness of our globe, country by country, region by region. It is also a court of public opinion, an arbitrator, an interlocutor, a source of humane succouring to those in need. It is an institution where those who come together for the purpose of trying to make the world a better place can work together in good faith for the good of all.
That is the ideal. The reality is in there somewhere, half way between trying and inertia. Assembled countries, singly and in allied groups are able to point out what they take to be egregious behaviour on the part of other UN members and hold a vote of non-confidence in those countries within the world body. Now a powerful UN policy committee feels this should be done otherwise, that the world body should no longer shame human rights violators.
Canada has yearly tabled a condemnation of Iran's human rights record in the UN, since the 2003 torture and murder in a Tehran prison of an Iranian-Canadian. Iran was able, through its influence on other countries dependent on it for its vast natural resources in oil, to gather almost enough nay votes to avoid censure. One hundred and three countries in the United Nations indicated they did not agree that despite a dreadful record of human rights abuses, Iran should be held accountable.
In many instances this is also a form of self-protection, since a good many of those countries also bear an unenviable reputation for human rights abuses. Arab and Muslim countries direct country-specific attacks in the General Assembly on a regular basis, lining Israel in their sights for general approbation for what they term as aggression, and what in reality is defensive actions against attacks from those same regimes.
If the Arab and Muslim countries had their way, along with their many dependent supporters they would ideally like to engineer a situation where individual countries are never named or called to public account for their obvious and well-publicized (outside the countries of origin) human rights abuses. And to make a sole exception for the State of Israel.
The idea behind dialogue without finger pointing is that human-rights-abusing countries will be spoken to quietly, behind closed doors, diplomatically, with a view to encouraging them to alter priorities and change long-ingrained habits of abusive conduct from state-sponsored murder to long-term incarcerations, torture and appalling instances of state harassment against minorities, religious minorities, and what is considered deviant sexual behaviour otherwise known as same-sex alliances.
These countries should then, the reasoning goes, be encouraged to make changes with the delivering of funds or technical assistance to assist them in improving their human rights performance. They insist that dialogue on human rights should "not be used for political purposes", however they define that.
Another case in point is the UN Commission for Human Rights and its current commissioner Louise Arbour, a product of the Canadian judicial system, and an exemplar of the Canadian Quebecoise leftist elite who love to champion an underdog, and who harbour vestiges of their culture's predeliction for anti-Semitism.
This all represents yet another face of human-directed justice. We always hope to be able to expect better from the world body, but then they are only comprised of humans, and humankind is so very terribly compromised with all its self-promoting advantages one over the other.
At least we're talking.
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, November 23, 2006
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