I have learned a new fakt in my human rights class: it turns out that my human rights have been violated! I was really excited to discover this when I read the UN Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. Apparently, it is illegal to deprive citizens of their nationality where doing so would leave them stateless because they have not acquired another nationality. But that totes happened to me. I am a victim! So, logically, my next question was, who can I sue about this?
Turns out, no one. For one thing, the Soviet Union never signed on to the Convention. For another, there is apparently no international jurisdiction for this kind of thing.
Kind of a disappointment. Now I have to return to my baseline belief that human rights are meaningless.
First, the critique assumes the dominant (and I should say liberal, since I imagine that would annoy MSI) view that justice amounts to the claiming and enforcement of rights. I won't deny those are conditions we would want met for any claimed human right, but rights don't magically cease to hold any value if they are violated. The rhetorical and aspirational features of the human rights project matter a great deal.
To use the most obvious of cases: states still commit genocide from time to time. It would be a strange argument that said, for that reason, the Convention on Genocide is 'meaningless.' It would be more correct to say that its meaning and importance is a complicated political/legal/ideological process whose value does not stand on whether it is universally agreed to (much less applied).
Second, I find it hard to believe anyone who has a cursory familiarity with the 20th century needs an explanation of why the denial of nationality is important. I am broadly sympathetic to the idea that the human rights project is now trying to enshrine things not properly considered human rights (I have two chapters on this topic in my dissertation/book manuscript), but the correct target for one's ire is something like 'paid holidays with leave,' not nationality.
4 comments:
I wholeheartedly agree! (How delightful!) This is in my chapter, as you will see (although not argued very clearly). Eric Voegelin agrees with you, too...
In fairness, I'm sure if you were sitting at the Kennedy School listening to a bunch of DoGooder types asserting right after right, you'd lose it too. Maybe not. I dunno. You could always swing over to WoodyWoo and find out I guess.
Well, I had (on my committee) someone who thinks human rights should be much more extensive than I think--and he gave me a good deal of (reasonable, fair) grief about it at my defense. But, to me, it's actually much more important that we agree about the central cases of human rights. You can build a workable agreement with someone who agrees with you on that point, and have out the rest of the argument on the side (afterward). Someone who denies the importance or efficacy of human rights isn't even engaging in the same project. As you might guess, I feel strongly about this.
My international law professor said something similar on our first day of class: just because a rule of international law is violated doesn't mean the rule doesn't exist. His analogy was, just because people steal doesn't mean domestic laws prohibiting theft aren't real or meaningful, so why should we believe that just because people violate international law - and don't always get caught - the law isn't "real?" The same applies to human rights; in fact, we often think about their existence solely *because* they are being violated.
As far as what should qualify as a human right, well, as someone who published a note arguing that nondiscriminatory access to housing is a human right, maybe I'm in the camp that makes up too many rights. :-)
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