State Department throws Arizona under the bus
Why the State Department’s criticism of Arizona’s law is a strike for states’ rights
The AP reports that the US State Department listed its objection to Arizona’s immigration law as a step the State Department is taking to protect human rights. Understandably, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer disagrees, writing:
“The idea of our own American government submitting the duly enacted laws of a state of the United States to ‘review’ by the United Nations is internationalism run amok and unconstitutional.”
Let’s take these claims one at a time.
If the role of the High Commissioner on Human Rights is indeed to protect human rights, a state’s ability to criticize its own past decisions seems to be critical. Given the UN’s lack of hard power and unwillingness to intercede in state-level politics except when absolutely necessary (and often not even then), for there to be any kind of international human rights regime states must police themselves. The State Department’s actions seem to be internationalism of the best kind.
Further, the State Department’s decision is in fact a strike in defense of state sovereignty. By criticizing Arizona’s law, the State Department concedes Arizona’s ability to make laws that displease federal bodies. While the State Department is working through legal channels to overturn the law, in the meanwhile the immigration law remains on the books and seems to be a legitimate and likely target for human rights discussions.
It’s certainly not clear why Brewer thinks the state department’s decision is unconstitutional, other than the fact that things one disagrees with tend to be unconstitutional. In fact, the federal judge who ruled against Arizona’s law seems to believe that it’s the law itself that’s in the wrong.
-John
Image credit: Wiki Commons
Statelessness sucks
George Soros writes at Project Syndicate that the recent expulsion of the Roma from France is tantamount to collective punishment. His outrage is echoed by a French priest who prays for Sarkozy to have a heart attack.
Although every state obviously has a right to protect public order, critics of the expulsion wonder “what harm can a few hundred people do?”
They wonder too how it’s acceptable for an EU country to forcibly relocate EU citizens without due process, especially when all EU citizens are entitled to freedom of movement.
The Roma are the continent’s largest ethnic minority group. They are not native to Europe and are in fact descended from Indians. Their distinct ethnic identity combined with misperceptions has historically made them outcasts everywhere. The Roma presently being deported from France tried to escape dire poverty and discrimination in Romania.
Despite being EU citizens, the French government’s recent treatment of them signals that no state may reliably look out for them.
How should we respond to the problem of stateless people? For Theodor Herzl and the Zionists, the answer was obvious – to reclaim an ancestral homeland and establish a new nation. But the present Arab-Israeli conflict highlights the extraordinary difficulty and moral complexity of such a solution. And no reasonable person could suggest that the Roma try to re-conquer Punjab in northern India.
The solution will have to be the least impossible of impossible alternatives. The European countries should probably make a concerted effort to integrate the Roma and make them full members of their societies.
Not only does the “plight of so many millions of Roma… [make] a mockery of European values” as Soros writes, but the alternative is to allow a moral and social problem of enormous proportions to fester and ultimately truly undermine public order.
-Charles
Image by Flickr user Rivard used under a Creative Commons Attributions License
Poverty, choice and coercion
Should the poor be allowed to choose?
The New York Times reports that malnutrition and starvation remain stubbornly entrenched decades after India’s Green Revolution, which modernized agricultural practices, massively increased agricultural yields and eliminated the specter of famine.
The existing government food distribution system relies on bureaucratic rationing, through which the poor are given ration cards to purchase food from government-run distributors. It is notoriously inefficient and plagued by corruption. Some reform proposals emphasize improving monitoring and delivery within the system. Others favor entirely dismantling the system, replacing it with vouchers or cash payments to the needy. Read more
Water, water, everywhere, but not a drop to drink
Clean water as a fundamental human right: theoretical justifications and consequences
Last week the United Nations declared clean water a “fundamental human right.” This is not a large departure from the rights to food, education, and employment that have already been embraced by the UN, yet such “welfare” rights are still controversial. Critics have argued that access to things such as food and water are not rights, that governments are obligated to prioritize and deliver immediately, but rather important policy goals.
The UN “declares the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of the right to life.” It is easy to see how a right to life would entail a right to clean water, as well as rights to food and medicine. In fact, some might even argue that rights to employment, education – indeed, all the welfare rights, including the rights to a certain standard of living – stem from the right to life. To many American ears, however, this would be going too far. Read more
Crimes against humanity: with oppression and injustice for most
For his role in 16,000 deaths during the Khmer Rouge, Kaing Guek Eav, alias “Duch,” was recently sentenced to 35 years in prison. That he may walk free in 19 years at the age of 86 due to time served has baffled and infuriated Cambodians. The worst tyrants of the last century mostly escaped formal justice (Hitler, Stalin, Mao); others did die in ignominious circumstances and were effectively the victims of mob violence (Mussolini, Ceausescu, arguably Saddam). Duch’s case and surprisingly light sentence brings to mind the perennial question of justice for politically-motivated atrocities.
We seem to know what crimes against humanity are when we see them. But the story is often more complicated in places like the most impoverished parts of the Third World, where politics is a life-or-death affair. Interest groups are divided along ethnic, class, or religious fault lines and power is a means to extract resources for the favored group at the expense of all others. An old Kenyan aphorism holds that to seize the machinery of the state means that “it is our turn to eat.” In these cases murder, rape and torture may become routine tools of political intimidation.
How do we evaluate crimes against humanity and the justice that should follow when the only clear distinction between victim and victimizer is that the latter is stronger than the other, and when it seems likely that the other side would behave just as monstrously if the circumstances permitted?
-Charles
Photo by Flickr user Sebr used under a Creative Commons Attribution license
Do enemy combatants take checks?
How does cost affect where we should house suspected terrorists?
The Washington Post ran a detailed article today on the $500 million that has been invested in renovations at the Guantanamo Bay base that has housed many of the enemy combatants we’ve captured since the 9/11 attacks.
Among the more amusing expenditures:
The cost of the marquee, along with a smaller sign positioned near the airfield: $188,000. Among other odd legacies from war-on-terror spending since 2001 for the troops at Guantanamo Bay: an abandoned volleyball court for $249,000, an unused go-kart track for $296,000 and $3.5 million for 27 playgrounds that are often vacant.
It’s always easy to cherrypick seemingly useless expenses to show waste, although an abandoned go-kart track really does feel egregious. Also, I’m not sure playgrounds are as fun when you are cuffed and hooded. Or maybe slides and tunnels are a new “enhanced interrogation” technique. Ok, ok, enough bad one-liners.
The real concern is the disparity between Guantanamo’s $150 million annual operating cost and what it would likely cost to house these prisoners on U.S. soil. The Post cites a White House estimate that Guantanamo costs “double the amount for a comparable U.S. prison.”
There have been some interesting arguments about whether it would be appropriate to move suspected terrorists to a U.S.-based maximum-security prisons. The main debate was whether such a move would put American lives in danger.
But the spending issue adds a new and important perspective. There’s little question that safety arguments tend generally to trump waste arguments. If moving these prisoners to the continental U.S. really would significantly risk American lives, the best argument would be to show that keeping the prisoners in Guantanamo actually puts more lives at risk (or increased the risk level for the same number of lives).
If the risk is relatively low, the spending level (the Post estimates about $2 billion total) really does trade-off with other morally good things. Today’s Los Angeles Times reported that political pressures heading into the midterm elections have even many Democratic lawmakers leery about education and unemployment expenditures expected to be taken up by Congress.
If I were a father of four, I wouldn’t want Guantanamo-USA near my hometown. But if I’ve been unemployed for a year, I might need my unemployment check.
How should we choose?
-Sam
Flotilla folly
The startling simplicity of a tragic clash
Over the weekend, Israeli military forces raided a flotilla of Turkish activists who attempted to pass through Israel’s blockade of Gaza and provide aid to the Hamas-governed population. Some of the activists were killed in skirmishes with Israeli commandos; hundreds of others are in custody.
While the international reaction has been harsh, Israel says that the blockade is legal and defends its right to enforce it.
There is little question that any loss of life is grave and this incident underscores the importance of continuing to seek a mutually-agreeable way forward on Israeli-Palestinian relations. At the same time, we should not be surprised to hear commentators add needless complexity to an issue that, to my mind, is not that morally confusing.
For Israel, the Gaza blockade is an issue of national security. It’s no secret that it exists, and they rely, where possible and appropriate, on non-violent efforts to enforce it. Five of the six Turkish boats were stopped using a technique that interferes with rudders. The sixth was apparently too large for the technique. While an investigation is in order, early reports suggest that commandos were met with armed resistance on the sixth boat.
For activists who see a serious moral wrong occurring in Gaza and feel the need to provide aid, there is little question that they should do everything they can to deliver that aid. If they feel the moral obligation is high enough, it’s not outlandish to resort to force.
These two sides are morally opposed, but both can mount legitimate arguments for their respective positions.
This problem can only be addressed through a blockade policy that assuages the Israeli security interest and the desire for activists to see adequate humanitarian capital flowing into Gaza. If only a total blockade satisfies Israel or if activists really are after some kind of political outcome beyond the provision of necessary supplies, conflict will inevitably follow.
You can’t think your way out of that kind of dispute.
-Sam
Human rights organization unites with human rights antagonist
For the sake of human rights?
Gita Sahgal, head of Amnesty International’s gender unit, objected publicly to Amnesty’s collaboration with Moazzam Begg, a former Guantánamo prisoner working with Amnesty to convince European nations to take current Guantánamo detainees. “To be appearing on platforms with Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban, whom we treat as a human rights defender, is a gross error of judgment,” Sahgal said. Here are two pieces that discuss the competing definitions of human rights involved in the resulting brouhaha: One by D.D. Guttenplan and Maria Margaronis in The Nation and another by Christopher Hitchens in Slate.
-Jake
Must we call genocide “genocide”?
The Armenian genocide? Or The Armenian mass killings? And does it matter?
In a debate that seems to recur every few years, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs voted today to condemn as “genocide”, the mass killing of Armenians during and after World War I. Like in 2007, the last time an Armenian Genocide resolution came up, the Administration (then Bush, today Obama), sought to halt the vote – both times to no avail.
Unlike with the situation in Darfur, the hesitancy to use the word “genocide” stems not from worries about the responsibilities to which the use of the word would commit the United States, but from simple geopolitics. Turkey, while acknowledging that as many as 1.5 million Armenians died at the hands of Ottoman Turks, has always denied that the deaths were part of a planned orchestrated campaign – a prerequisite for calling them “genocide.” And fearing the genocide label would tar their national reputation, Turkey has long fought the official declaration by other governments of the events as such. Because of this lobbying, only twenty countries, to date, have recognized the Armenian genocide. Read more
Religion and foreign aid
I owe thanks to Nicholas Kristof for publishing a piece on religious missionaries in the NYT the day after I was discussing this issue with friends.
Kristof reminds us that religious groups are doing great humanitarian work. He reminds us that
Some Americans assume that religious groups offer aid to entice converts. That’s incorrect. Today, groups like World Vision ban the use of aid to lure anyone into a religious conversation.
I’m sure I’m one of the “some Americans” Kristof has in mind. I’ll freely concede that humanitarian work is good regardless of the reason why it’s done. I think a convincing argument could also be made that humanitarian aid would still be good even if it was used as a “lure” for conversion, if that’s the only way that the aid would be allocated. However, I don’t think Kristof takes seriously enough the case against faith-based intervention. He writes:
A root problem is a liberal snobbishness toward faith-based organizations. Those doing the sneering typically give away far less money than evangelicals. They’re also less likely to spend vacations volunteering at, say, a school or a clinic in Rwanda.
Accusations of elitism or “snoobbishness” generally point to poor argumentation to follow. The critique against faith-based groups is more serious than Kristof believes.
It’s never clear where commitments end and humanitarianism begins. The issue of condoms is a good example. Faith-based organizations that do not provide condom distribution are doing their constituency a grave disservice. if secular international organizations are not on the ground because the most pressing needs are being addressed (hunger, disease) by faith-based groups, there’s no locus in which good policy can be made. When aid money is channeled through government organizations, there’s room for an open debate on best practices. This debate cannot happen when aid money is simply granted to religious organizations. Fundamentally, Kristoff is ignoring that to at least some extent, the aid channeled through religious organizations trades off with aid provided by secular NGOs or governments.
The tragic case of Ugandan efforts to pass a law punishing homosexuality by death are another example. This farce was supported by a few US evangelical groups; probably the groups Kristof praises had nothing to do with it. But what will those groups do to actively oppose such initiatives? (Perhaps this is colonialism, and therefore should also be opposed by us snobs.)
But of course, Kristof is right in his central point — that many faith-based organizations do a lot of good and do not actively contribute to these harms. However, while he’s able to mention one group that seems to keep it’s religious commitments away from its humanitarianism, us pointy-headed liberal snobs are right to stay on guard.
-John
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