Future of Human Rights

Future of Human Rights

Human Rights Implementation

This particular batch of readings was of extreme interest and aided in contextualizing the international struggle for the establishment of human rights in a global context. This aspect of the readings was definitely the strong point of them, for each and every article addressed the implementation of establishing human rights on an international basis. Whereas previous readings were useful in presenting the ideology of human rights in an ideal sense, the readings in this particular group were considerably more utilitarian in the fact that they demonstrated the tangible application of such ideology which, in a word, is enforcement. All of the readings, including Jack Donnelly's "The Relative Universality of Human Rights," Tom Farer's "Restraining the Barbarians: Can International Criminal Law Help?," and Mark Osiel's "Why Prosecute? Critics of Punishment for Mass Atrocity" -- all of which appeared in Human Rights Quarterly -- addressed the fact that the greatest challenge facing the relatively newfound practice of instituting and preserving human rights on an international basis is actually enforcing these rights within the territory in which some egregious human rights violator exists.

In several ways, the main point of Donnelly's article was to describe the limitations of human rights in its ability to successfully begat enforcement on an international basis. The thesis of this article, in which the author described a number of different applications and varieties of definitions and conceptions of human rights, was that human rights are inherently "contingent and relative" (Donnelly 289). This article was particularly interesting in its elucidation of some of the historical developments of human rights within varying ethnic cultures such as that of Europe, Africa, and Asia. However, the author's primary focus was to emphasize the fact that despite various notions in which human rights may have existed within a nascent form (such as that relating to a particular political system or a to a specific religion and its ideology), human rights as it is presently known is a rather recent development. Furthermore, this article was extremely helpful in providing a succinct and readily accessible definition of human rights, which is "the idea of equal and inalienable rights that one has simply because one is a human being" (Donnelly 285).

While Donnelly primarily alludes to the difficulties inherent in the enforcement of human rights, Farer's articles delves into the myriad of difficulties associated with pursuing criminal prosecution of those accused of committing human rights crimes. In fact, the primary basis of Farer's article is to provide a list of highly specific obstacles that exist for prosecutors attempting to pursue judicial action against these types of criminals. One of the strongest points about this piece of literature is the author's perspective; it is quite clear that he truly wishes to punish those who have wantonly transgressed the human rights of others, and the tone and voice in which the article is written reflects this point-of-view accordingly. Unfortunately, the author's unflinching realism in the pursuit of legislation that could lead to penal consequences for such transgressors demonstrates, among other things, that there are numerous complications to the implementation of such measures, including difficulties with extrapolation and other judiciary procedures (such as plea bargains, wide sweeping counts of conspiracy, and trials in absentia) (Farer 96). The principle weakness of this article is merely in its conclusion, which is of no fault of the author, and which states that the practicality of bringing human rights violators to justice and to incurring punitive measures is more difficult than it initially appears.

By comparison, Farer's article is outright optimistic in terms of the rather bleak outlook of Osiel's piece, which elucidates in painstaking detail nine key reasons why human rights violators actually should not incur any sort of punishment for the unspeakable acts of horror that they commit. Still, Osiel deserves plenty of credit for enlightening his readers to several points that they more than likely were not aware of themselves, such as the fact that the novelty of many of these crimes leaves them out of the scope of Western law and inherent issues with the degree of culpability assigned to various parties engaged in these horror (Osiel 119-120). The only perceivable weakness in this article, which essentially holds for the other two as well, is that the author's certainly seemed a little one-sided in their opinion of the difficulty of rendering justice to these types of criminals, and really did not attempt to present a balanced viewpoint of the likelihood for this scenario occurring.