Understanding global security - Peter Hough

SOCIAL IDENTITY AS A THREAT TO SECURITY
Convention on the Human Rights of the Disabled were postponed when a number
of states’ delegates indicated that they considered the disabled to be already adequately
covered in existing human rights legislation (O’Reilly 2003). Disabled rights
have advanced significantly in most countries over recent decades but the fact that
80 per cent of the world’s disabled people live in LDCs, where the means of facilitating
their involvement in social and economic life may be absent even if the will is present,
serves to heighten their vulnerability. An umbrella pressure group network, the
International Disability Alliance, are at the forefront of the campaign to plug this gap
and establish a UN convention for the disabled. It is envisaged that such a convention
would outlaw existing threats, such as forced sterilizations and abortions, and, in
general, ensure a better quality of life for the disabled through fuller participation
in society.
The 1999 Pinochet Case, when the British government rejected a Spanish prosecutor’s
request to extradite the former Chilean President who was visiting the UK,
proved to be a key test case for the status of politicide in international law. UK courts
would not accept the Spanish grounds of genocide as a basis for handing over the
former tyrant since his crimes were targeted against leftist opponents rather than a
national or religious minority (Robertson 2000: 229). However, although the Pinochet
Case outcome disappointed human rights activists, it was still a significant step
forward for global policy. Pinochet was released and allowed to return to Chile due
to ill health but the UK Law Courts made it clear that his crimes did amount to ‘crimes
against humanity’, against which sovereignty was no defence. The UK verdict also
indicated that diplomatic immunity (Pinochet claimed this as a former President and
‘life Senator’) was no protection against such crimes. The ICC looks set to finally end
the anomally of this most heinous and widespread of crimes being overlooked in
international human rights law.
Politicide
Towards universalism
As previously referred to in considering the case of humanitarian intervention, the
chief moral objection to the universal application of human rights is the position
commonly known as cultural relativism. This position argues that the world’s cultural
diversity makes any attempt to apply rights universally, at best, difficult and, at worst,
an immoral imposition of dominant cultural traits (see Table 5.6). President Jiang
Zemin of China articulated this view on his state visit to the USA in 1997 in defending
his government from criticisms of its human rights record. ‘The theory of relativity
worked out by Mr Einstein, which is in the domain of natural science, I believe
can be applied in the political field. Democracy and human rights are relative concepts
and not absolute’ (Kaiser 1997).
Zemin’s statement in support of cultural relativism came 50 years after the first
major articulation of this viewpoint in international politics in the run up to the 1948
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Concerns at the notion of a global bill of
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