Penguin.
A book review by Danny Yee © 2000 http://dannyreviews.com/
In
Crimes Against Humanity lawyer and human rights campaigner Geoffrey Robertson
combines a passion for justice, an honest acceptance of unpleasant realities,
and skill in explaining complex legal issues. He provides an introduction to
the history and philosophy of human rights: to the various treaties and
covenants, their enforcement or lack thereof, and the slow progress towards
their incorporation into international law. This involves a fair bit of legal
detail, but he makes this both accessible and interesting to the lay reader.
Robertson
begins with a brief history of human rights in two chapters. The first starts
with the idea of natural rights, progresses through the American and French
Revolutions and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the nineteenth century
aversion to natural rights, and H.G. Wells, and ends with the 1948 Universal
Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The second traces the “inglorious” history
of human rights in the post-war period, looking at the ineffectual Human Rights
Commission (responsible for enforcing the UDHR) and Human Rights Committee (set
up with the later Civil Rights Covenant). Regionally the European Convention
and the European Court of Human Rights have been more successful, while the
African Charter is a “sad joke”. Realpolitik — such diverse factors as China’s
seat on the UN Security Council and CNN television broadcasts — is unavoidable
and successes have been marred by failure in Rwanda and Srebrenica.
Going
into more detail, Robertson then explains the gradual progress of some of the
rights in the various treaties and covenants towards at least notionally
enforceable international law. He explains the bases for such law:
international agreements, the custom and practice of states, principles of law
recognised by civilized nations, and judicial decisions and texts. Legal
complexities and an assortment of Latin tags (such as opinio juris and erga
omnes) are made clear in plain English. Among the best recognised rights in the
UDHR are such individual freedoms as safety of the person, fairness and due
process in trials, and property. Controversial areas not or poorly covered
include freedom from execution, minority rights, and economic and social
rights. Robertson describes the ongoing debates over capital punishment (and
the methods used to make it as difficult as possible where actual abolition has
proved impossible) and the progress in extending indigenous and minority rights
beyond a bare “right to exist”.
Turning
to war law, Robertson covers old ideas of “just war”, the Hague conventions,
the 1949 Geneva conventions, and the 1997 Geneva protocols (the latter “badly
drafted exercises in cynical diplomacy”). And he chronicles the limited success
of attempts to restrict chemical and nuclear weapons and conventional weapons
such as landmines. The Nuremberg trials were a turning point in war law, a
procedural as well as a legal precedent. Robertson covers them in some detail,
as well as the broader move to universal jurisdiction over the crimes of
genocide, torture, and apartheid (in addition to earlier staples of international
law such as piracy and slavery).
Some
governments with appalling human rights records have been toppled in the last
few decades. But bringing offenders to justice has been hindered by broad (and
sometimes self-granted) impunities, immunities, and amnesties. Robertson looks
at the workings of truth commissions and amnesties in “transitional” regimes in
South and Central America, Cambodia, South Africa, and elsewhere.
In
1993 the UN created the Hague Tribunal to try crimes against humanity (“serious
violations of international humanitarian law”) in the former Yugoslavia.
Analysing the Tribunal’s strengths and weaknesses, Robertson describes its legal basis, procedures, and actual
operation in the case of Dusko Tadic, the first to be convicted by it. In a
similar vein he then looks at the International Criminal Court, describing the
political struggles behind the 1998 Rome Statute that created it, its
jurisdiction and powers, and the procedural machinery (trial process, appeals,
punishments) established. Though the Court was weakened to appease the United
States, neither they, China, or India voted for it. Despite this and other
problems Robertson is guardedly optimistic about the Court’s future, suggesting
that “its seven-year review conference may be the occasion for making universal
jurisdiction over crimes against humanity truly universal”.
The
final chapter looks at the case of General Pinochet, still before the courts
when Crimes Against Humanity went to press.
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