What are human rights and what place have discussions on human rights found in international relations?

Résumé du document

Though they may disagree on the importance of this phenomenon, most international experts now admit that there is a growing concern, both from states and from people, for Human Rights in international relations. Human Rights are often used to legitimate an action (diplomatic pressures, economic embargo, or even war) against one state, and are now placed at the core of international law. They have therefore become a rich subject for International Relations researchers. One thing that needs to be said about this trend is that interest for Human Rights did not derive from the structure of the international society. Indeed, international law, by definition, regulates the relations between states : the international society being anarchical, international law is considered a ‘law of co-operation' and co-existence, and not a ‘law of subordination' (like internal law, which is based on a vertical hierarchy). Inter-state treaties are based on the pacta sunt servanda principle, that is to say on reciprocity : if one state fails to meet its obligations towards another state, the other one has the right to retaliate by stopping to meet its own obligations towards the other.

Extraits

[...] Snyder, “Democratization and the Danger of in M. Brown et al. Debating the Democratic Peace, pp.301-334. - Andrew Moravscik, “Taking Preferences Seriously. A Liberal Theory of International Politics”, International Organization, fall 1997, p. 513-533. [...]

[...] That is to say, a change in the international structure would bring change in international relations; in other words, they were not doomed to remain based on ‘power politics.' In the eighties, realism faced the challenge of critical theory, that aimed at de-constructing “problem-solving theories” of International Relations so as to stress their often unconscious normative content or fundaments. Broadly speaking, critical theorists such as Robert Cox, Ann Tinkner or Richard Ashley focused on the aspects of international relations that had been ignored by dominant realist and liberal theories, such as aspects of life associated with femininity. [...]

[...] This proves Human Rights were not ‘destined' to have a place in international law and International Relations, and that they owe their now important place mainly to the (worldwide) debate on the idea of Human Rights. Let us now define the concept of Human Rights. Human Rights are fundamental, inalienable and universal rights, that is to say rights everyone, wherever he was born and whoever he is, possesses simply by virtue of being human, and that cannot be taken away from him. [...]

[...] Neoliberal, critic and trans-national approaches thus unsurprisingly became more important in the eyes of International Relations analysts. One can think of Francis Fukuyama's best-selling 1992 essay on The End of History, in which he notably re-actualised the old theory of democratic peace : as liberal countries do not make war among themselves (with the exception of transitional democracies), the now predictable of economic liberalism - that will eventually lead to political liberalism - will usher in the reign of global peace. [...]

[...] The least we can say is that there is absolutely no place for Human Rights in international realism. This marginalisation was re-enforced by the international debate over the nature and the existence of Human Rights, with the Communist block refusing to consider the rules of international law as superior to its own internal law on account of its inadequacy with socialism, or pretending the so-called universality of Human Rights was a form of Western imperialism. In the Soviet and Chinese view, “group rights” such as economic, cultural and social were prior to civil and political rights which were merely an invention of the bourgeoisie aiming at ensuring its domination over the proletariat, and the Western domination over the Third World on the international level. [...]