Human societies are becoming ever more interlinked and interdependent. The
development and dispersion of new communication and transportation technologies and the
increased integration of the global economy have brought people from around the world into
closer contact with one another and made cooperation more necessary. Crises in one part of
the world now ripple out to affect people in distant quarters. In their report “The
Responsibility to Protect,” the International Commission on Intervention and State
Sovereignty reflect on these new realities: “There is no longer such a thing as a humanitarian
catastrophe ‘in a faraway country of which we know little’.”
Civil conflicts are fuelled by arms and monetary transfers that originate in the
developed world, and their destabilizing effects are felt in the developed world in
everything from globally interconnected terrorism to refugee flows, the export of
drugs, the spread of infectious disease and organized crime (2001, 5).
As the world of human affairs has become smaller and flatter, the security and justice of one
people has increasingly come to depend upon the security and justice of others (Friedman
2005).
This increased interdependency among peoples has helped to bring normative
questions to the fore of international relations theory and practice.
If the people of the world
are to get along and cooperate with one another, we need to be able to identify some common
values that everyone (or nearly everyone) can reasonably agree to follow and enforce. If we
are to look out for the welfare and justice of one another, we likewise need to be able to give
some generally acceptable account of what human welfare and justice require.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and International Covenants on
Economic and Political Rights currently provide the central frameworks for thinking about
normative issues in international relations. These rights documents have been ratified by
most of the world’s governments and provide the substance for most international
discussions about just governance. Unfortunately, these documents are not always especially
useful guides for international norms. The body of rights contained in the UDHR and
International Rights Covenants is so broad, for example, that they invite selective
enforcement. Since virtually no government even attempts to enforce all of the rights
contained within these documents, none can unhypocritically criticize others for failing to
protect the rights of their citizens. The United States and Chinese governments, for instance,
each routinely issues reports condemning the other for failing to uphold some of the rights
contained in the UDHR. The basic rights of people are lost in this shuffle.
The UDHR and International Rights Covenants are also sometimes criticized for
reflecting a Western individualistic bias. The leaders of China, Singapore and several other
Asian and African states have argued that a number of the political and civil rights contained
in the UDHR are incompatible with the collectivist values of the majority of people in their
societies (Bell 2000; Donnelly 2003, 71-123; Hamdi 1996; Kausikan 1993; Tang 1995;
Vincent 1986, 37-57; Zakaria 1994). Some Islamic leaders and scholars have likewise
maintained that the imperative of obeying the Shari’a, or Islamic law, overrides human rights
guaranteeing equal treatment to women and religious minorities and outlawing certain forms
of punishment (An-Na’im 1990; El-Affendi 2001; Hamdi 1996; Mayer 1991; Rishmawi
1996; Tibi 1994). Rulers and elites no doubt sometimes use cultural relativist arguments
cynically to justify their own power and interests, but many cultural challenges are not so
easily dismissed (Bell 2000; Pollis 1996; Pollis and Schwab 1979; Renteln 1990; Rorty
1989). While nearly everyone agrees in principle about the value of basic rights to life and
well being, reasonable differences exist about the universal legitimacy of democratic
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Convention