Humanitarian Issues in International Politics - Assignment Example

Refugee Studies, Humanitarian Issues in International Politics A Humanitarian Protection and Relief The concept of humanitarian protection encompasses the various activities that are aimed at achieving full respect for the rights of individuals in accordance with the letter and the spirit of the relevant law bodies. Moreover, the relevant bodies of humanitarian, human rights and refugee law shall conduct the activities of protection and relief impartial and not on the basis of nationality, race, gender, ethnic origin, language or gender. Basically, the concept of humanitarian protection and relief relates to the delivery of fundamental humanitarian assistance in accordance with supplying essential basic needs such as food, water, health and shelter to vulnerable populations. In other words, humanitarian protection applies to the various actions that are contrary to the humanitarian principles, positive actions of solidarity whereby there is a need for material assistance or protection to victims of man-made or natural disasters, and lastly, prevention and the/or the sanctioning of actions that violate humanitarian principles. Generally, political parties, demagogues, political leaders, members of special agencies like the police, intellectuals, and even "ordinary people have in history perpetrated actions that are against human rights and the principles of humanitarianism. As a result, their actions have often led to wars between states, internal conflicts within countries, terrorism, totalitarian regimes hence causing political intolerance, genocide and other crimes against humanity. The victims of these violent actions in many times flee to neighboring or even far countries in search for safety while those who cannot flee have their rights violated severely and sometimes deaths are reported. Due to the conflicts and actions of violence, the outcome is normally a human, political, economic and societal consequence which is the challenge of the international community. In response to these illegal ends, the international community has based its protection and human rights concerns upon three pillars. The first pillar is the International humanitarian law and action (ICRC) is a set of rules that aim at limiting the effects of armed conflicts. In this regard, it protects people who are not participating in these hostilities and also restricts the means and the methods of warfare. The second pillar is the International refugee regime (UNHCR). The UNHCR has the mandate of providing international protection to refugees and further finds solution to the problems in consultation with relevant governments, NGOs, and other international organizations. The last pillar is the Human Rights which emphasizes that the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world is through the respect of human rights. The first pillar of international protection is implemented by the International Committee of the Red Cross. It defines the legal basis through which the committee acts. Concerning the conduct of hostilities, the international law regulates the methods of warfare with an aim to strike a balance between the legitimate military objectives and the humanitarian objective of reducing suffering among civilians. In order to accept the International humanitarian law, individual states must enact legislation and take practical measures for the rules to be fully effective. There is an ICRC advisory service that provides assistance and documentation for the countries. The Universal declaration of human rights is a foundational document that contains thirty general statements about human rights. The Commission on Human Rights is the main policy-making body that investigates allegations of human rights violations and communicates issues regarding them. This document has been followed by subsequent treaties that have translated the principles into many recognized specific rights which are necessary to a life with dignity. The International law states that the violation of the absolute core rights constitutes gross and major violations of human rights. The international community has put in place a system of international jurisdictions that tries people accused of genocide, war and crimes against humanity. The international law protects human rights, though today they are still seen to be governed by national law. Human rights apply to everyone, everywhere since they are concerned with all the aspects of human life and have a greater impact on public opinion than International humanitarian law which is applicable in armed conflicts. Today, the UNHCR refugee regime focuses on security, containment and humanitarian action and assistance as compared to its beginning when it focused on refugee protection. In this regard, the regime is solution oriented when confronting impending crises for refugees. Moreover, the UNHCR provides care for refugees on location and emphasizes international presence so as to encourage potential refugees to stay. In addition, the UNHCR adopts a homeland-oriented strategy in which it tries to reintegrate displaced persons to their former countries and communities. Again, the UNHCR takes care of migrants who do not fit into the conventional refugee definitions hence helping IDPs, asylum seekers, and persons threatened with displacement. Lastly, the UNHCR is increasingly involved in the rectification of gross violations of human rights in the international community. In this case, the security council of UNHCR perceives the refugee issue as a threat to international peace and security and hence focuses on the freedom of movement, free access to international staff and security for refugees and IDPs. In conclusion, the International humanitarian law, refugee law, and human rights law are complimentary law bodies that share a common goal of protecting lives, dignity, and the health of persons. The office of the High Commissioner (UNHCR), the commission of Human rights is addressing humanitarian law in both countries and thematic work. On the other hand, the ICRC has appropriately provided informal expert advice on international humanitarian law to the two bodies. B.1 Goldhagen on New Threat and Need of Anti-eliminationism Discourse According to Goldhagen, the new threat to the international community is not war, but eliminations which include genocide (2009, p. 13). The book Worse than War asserts that hundreds of millions of people are potential victims of genocide and related violence where masses are killed as a political strategy for eliminating millions of lives. Genocide is the deliberate killing of a large group of people and in most cases, those of a particular ethnic group or a nation. Typically, eliminationism is associated with genocide since it is the belief that political opponents should be eliminated from the public because they are a ‘cancer’ in the political system that must be exercised. Consequently, the elimination or separation from the public may include censorship or may be done through outright extermination. In this case, using extensive fieldwork, Goldhagen explores the anatomy of genocide emphasizing the need for anti-eliminations discourse. Genocide has resulted in more deaths from the beginning of the twentieth century than the conventional military operations. For this reason, it should be at the center of the discussions in the international security and foreign policy making. Moreover, the entire orientation of the international community should be recast to clearly specify that genocide and mass slaughter are the major problems of lethal violence in the world today. Often, genocide is not treated this way because of the obfuscations about it where people feel somewhat helpless when thinking about what can be done. In explaining this reasoning, Goldhagen observes that people view a genocide as the results of ethnic conflicts that get out of control and hence not much can be done to protect them. However, genocide is a political instrument that is used to achieve clear political goals which is in most cases to get rid a country or even some group of people that need to be gotten rid of for one or another political reason. In fact, Goldhagen argues genocide is a form of politics that can be termed as eliminationism. In this regard, eliminationism refers to that desire to eliminate some group of the population that is deemed a threat or as an impediment to what one has or the good life of the future. Further, genocide is just but one method for achieving this objective of elimination, the other forms include severe repression like forced incarnation or confinement in concentration camps, preventing reproduction and expulsion. The key argument of the Goldhagen in his “Worse than the War” book is that the desire to conduct genocides should be seen as an overarching category and also a core act. This is because, those who perpetrate these acts using methods such as repression, prevention of reproduction, expulsion and at times extermination considers them as equally functional equivalents for what they feel has to be done. In this regard, by examining the horrors of the 20th century, the book concludes that eliminationist assaults have leaders and the leaders in most cases are political leaders who want to achieve some political outcome. Since a genocide is an ultimate political act, as disincentives for starting a war can be created, so can also be made disincentives to tackle genocide head on. Therefore, the acts of mass elimination can be prevented by their cause has been identified as a conscious political choice. This implies that the international community should re-conceptualize genocide to be eliminationism so as to eliminate all forms of eliminationist assaults discussed. The international community today does very little to when genocides begin and next to nothing about preventing genocide and nothing about eliminationism. From the perpetrators of genocide to the victims on the ground agree that the genocides they conducted are indeed deliberate choices that they took because they had been made to believe what they were doing were right. For this course, a lot of attention should be focused to the killers and specifically how they were made to believe and make themselves conduct the killings. In addition to understanding the perpetrators and the victims, there I a need to rethink how the genocides begin and for what reason they begin. As discussed, it is normally begun by one moment in which a leader or some groups of people decide to begin an elimination assault that may include mass murder. Political leaders after calculating the benefits the policy of elimination will bring to them against to be incurred; they consider it a winning policy. This implies that if this particular leader or group that made the decision to start the policy had decided not to, then no manslaughter could ever take place and millions of lives could have been saved. anti-eliminationist system is supposed to have a prevention system, an intervention system and a system of justice and punishment. The prevention system created should be able to function automatically and should not have specific applications so that it is not reliant on when one knows about a potential genocide. Further, the prevention system should change the calculation of the leaders cost/benefit analysis so that it becomes costly to implement an elimination policy. For instance, to make it costly for political leaders perpetrate genocide, the international community may have a policy that any regime that starts genocide shall have its armed forces bombed. The current justice system centered on the International Criminal Court is good, but is slow and ineffective in offering justice and punishment as required in order to stop elimination tendencies (Golghagen 2009, 57) C.2 Issues Regarding Family and the Human Rights Discussion The family unit has a different definition from the conventional one when it consists of members living in different countries. Consequently, in the international community, as it regards the term ‘a right to a family unit is shorthand for a sum of interrelating rights. In this case, a family unit is defined depending on different contexts. For example, in migration the family unit touches on the issues of stay, admission and expulsion, when relating to constraints, it may touch on efforts by a country to separate an existing family through means such as expulsion of one of the members. Contrary, reunion refers to the efforts of a family that has been separated by force or voluntary to regroup in another country. Therefore, the international community applies the much broader meaning of the term family unit. The humanitarian law and the international human rights, protect the family’s right to live together and are entitled to respect, protect, assistance and necessary support. The right to live as a family unit recognizes the family as a group unit and entails the right to marry and found a family. Further, this right prohibits any interference with the family, recognizes the right for children to live with their parents, and that both the father and the mother have a shared responsibility in upbringing the child irrespective of their marital status. Further, this right recognizes cross-border family units and is not limited to citizens living in their own states. However, issues of cross-border family units have arisen, for example, when the host state attempts to deport a non-citizen family member or denies entry to a member seeking reunion. In fact, the right for cross-border family units conflicts with the right of individual states to make decisions about entry and stay of non-citizens. Actually, todays migrations consist mostly of people seeking economic opportunities of globalization as opposed to the migrations of the past due to the prevalence of the war and other human rights violations. On the other hand, several countries are confronting the issue of migration as a problem by enacting and enforcing laws against immigrations to them for various economic reasons. The case of refugees is a different one, however, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees focuses on the refugee family unit and reunion for humanitarian reasons. Because it is common for many refugees to be separated, the international community considers family reunion as a means of promoting the integration process and serving the rights of the migrants. In consideration of the need for reunion, the immigration status of the family members determines how the right to a family unit shall be implemented. This is in line with the fact that there is no internationally accepted definition of a family unit, but international law recognizes various forms. Different categories of people claiming the right to a family unit demonstrate some of the issues that may arise and how they are normally addressed. For instance, national who have married non-citizens encounter issues where the spouse is denied entry, or encounters significant delays in transmitting citizenship to the children. Also, it has been observed that in many cases that the female citizens have fewer rights as compared to their male counterparts. The United Nations General Assembly under the International Convention of the Rights of All Migrants and members of their families intend to put measures in place that will ensure that any migrants are able to free to reunite with their families at will. With respect to refugees, the family unit means the refugee has the right to family members accompanying them recognized refugee and further the asylum country should provide reunification to close family members who are in the country since the refugee cannot return to the country of origin. Notably, this right applies equally in all situations, whether of mass influx, managed under a temporary scheme of protection or an international agreement. In another scenario, those who have not been recognized as refugees, but are in need of international protection are entitled to human rights including the right to a family unit. In another case, persons with analogous situations that make it unable for them to return home benefit from the same application of the human rights of the host country. In the case of persons seeking asylum makes a unique case as it becomes difficult to identify where they should enjoy this right of reunion in. In principle, there is an understanding that children should be left out of proceedings concerning asylums seeking their rights, but generally many countries are unwilling to process reunifications for asylum seekers. When it comes to a country to expel or admit a family member, the state may be a constraint in a family reunion. For expulsion, the host country must balance the states interest of deporting a citizen against that of not violating the right of the family to remain intact. In this regard, the country hosting the individual considers the length of the stay, the age, and the degree of familys financial and emotional dependence on the individual and weighs them against the interests of safety promotion and enforcing immigration laws. In most cases, when the reason for expulsion is violation of immigration laws and the person in question has children and an intact family, the immigration laws are sacrificed for the sake of respecting an intact family. However, in the case of criminal law violation the human rights are violated for the sake of enforcing immigration laws. As for admissions, states are also bound by international law as well. Specifically on the situation of minor children and their parents, the state has the obligation to keep a family united and also determines states action regarding families living across borders. In another incidence for reunification, the humanitarian and international law may require that the right of entry also means the right fro departure especially for children. Lastly, the international law allows either children or their parents to join the other. Works Cited Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. 2009. Worse than war: genocide, eliminationism, and the ongoing assault on humanity. New York: PublicAffairs. Read More