If you need urgent support, call 999 or go to your nearest A&E. To contact our Crisis Messenger (open 24/7) text THEMIX to 85258.
Read the community guidelines before posting ✨
Options
sovereignty and human rights
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Why violate other nations' right to rule themselves simply because they violate 'human rights'?
0
Comments
Or, to put it another way, where does the 'right to rule itself' come from?
And why is another country obligated to attack another simply because it's citizens are mistreated?
With no right to rule, you have international anarhcy! Either you have full self-government or you don't.
There doesn't seem to be international anarchy in the Council Of Europe states who all submit to the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights when it says they have breached human rights - even when the state disagrees vehemently that it has!
I'd be interested to know what you mean by "there is no objective role of government".
Fourthly I am unconvinced that we have anything approaching "self-government" at the moment ... the decisions taken by individuals selected by a party winning well under half the votes cast and therefore something like no more than a third of the country voting for them doesn't seem to be "self government".
Which explains why the US and UK spent so long trying to get the UN to pass another resolution before invading Iraq - and so many words trying to explain that the UN had actually given them authority to use force to make Iraq comply with the anti-WMD resolutions.
But Sole Liber is trying to argue that each country has the same right to 'bodily integrity' that a human has. I'm not sure. After all, government can punish people if they harm other people - maybe countries can punish countries if they harm other people too?
a precedent is being set ...by the US.
refusing to sign up to war crimes kinda stuff and then commiting those crimes immediately is fing scary.
we don't attack countries who have bad human rights records becuase they have bad human rights records ...we attack, we invade ...cos of money and power. nothing less.
if e attacked cos nations were breaking the international rules ...israel and amerca would be on the list of t ...i'm pissed.
Because we can.
Why should it be justified?
Huh? What gives this Court an absolute right to usurp countries' sovereignty.
Across the political spectrum, only anarchists would state that government is 'evil' or unnecessary. Most others would accept government but would differ in WHAT the ROLE AND DUTIES of that government should be. A member of Respect would not agree that the state should onluy protect rights to person and property!
Well that's called representative democracy, son. Self-government in this instance pertains to a government possessing total control of its own domestic affairs.
War illegal? If a nation isn't a member of the UN why are they bound to accept such a thing?
When did I mention bodily integrity? You seem a bit muddled. Sovereignty is the basis on which a country can govern itself fully WITHOUT interference from other nations or bodies.
Wonder why some people dislike the EU? It's because the EU requires member states to cede some sovereignty in order to co-operate. This in turn means that member nations (in some areas of policy) have FEWER MEANS to control their OWN affairs!!
I'm stating that if, according to the principle of sovereignty, nations must respect other nations' right to govern themselves how can you violate such a right if they treat their citizens 'badly'?
To me it's a big double standard!!
I'm trying to work within what I see to be your libertarian ideas. It's difficult when I don't share them, but that's what I was trying to do!
A few brief points: 191 countries are members of the UN. I can't think of any countries that aren't but there are probably some. Afghanistan, Iraq, the United States and the United Kingdom all are!
Equally, members of the Council of Europe joined of their own free will. The Council of Europe has no army to enforce the decisions of the ECHR - the member states choose to comply because they believe in protecting human rights and the role of an independent body to help them in doing so.
I suppose the wider question is this: why do we have state soverignty? What is its purpose and what are the proper limits on it in a global situation?
There are over 200 countries in the world and not all are members of the UN. UN membership isn't mandatory.
Sovereignty is important since it is the basis of how a nation-state can have total control over its own affairs.
That's rather circular ... why is it a good thing that a nation-state has total control over its own affairs? Why do we think that each does and should have?
If we didn't have state sovereignty as a principle and you were suggesting we introduced it, what arguments would you use?
After all, it's a rather new idea all told. I think the idea would have been quite novel to Europe in the fourteenth century - and to the Pope in particular!
Why?
Why should human rights be upheld? Why should an abstract notion such as human rights prevent governments' from having total control over their own affairs?
A government is the supreme authority in an area. Why shouldn't it have complete control over its alloted territory?
For the reason that the state is in part MEANT to be a supreme authority over a given area.
Human rights is a 'new idea'. Why should that have primacy over slef-government? If anything, human rights treaties were largely influenced by the horrors of the Holocaust.
Really? That was one of the reason why we attacked Iraq!
'democracy is only for those who are ready'
so by all means support a people if they want assistance to stop their government, but dont force to people to accept it
Human rights are rights 'inherent' to humans. But in reality such rights only exist because humans say they do; there ARE no natural rights in my view.
But that doesn't equate to why human rights must always be respected. Or their primacy.
That's what human rights are designed to be dipshit. Keep up. And you didn't read what I said properly; I didn't necessarily say inherent rights existed.
Why should welfare exist?
any brief study of the history of philosophy, ethics, and I think anthropology & sociology would show that human rights are given and not inherited. this can be seen in countries where such rights are usurped. Civilised societies adopt rules and behaviours that promote harmonious living.
okay this is simplistic, but the point I make is human rights only exist because we are given them by each other. (okay, they might be enshrined in a declaration, or a constitution, but that doesn't mean they actually exist)
that is why it is just as easy for someone to take them away.
Those rights aren't inherent. None probably are.
Of course rights are a human construct, the language of universal rights is simply an intellectual exercise aimed at defining a good society, not some law of nature, as is obvious..........
And how can you prove these 'natural rights' do exist?
You're contradicting yourself. If you believe that rights exist because humans say so, how can you then say that natural rights do exist?!
Look at it this way. Say you were living on a desert island. Any right to health care would be meaningless since they may not be someone with the expertise to provide it for you!
But you could easily acquire things to maintain your existence. In that sense, that is what property is. So it may not be an 'inherent' right, but it's one of the most basic rights one can claim in my view.
Saddam may have been heavy-handed, but lets face it, it worked bcos it kept everyone in line.......US and UK may well have plunged Iraq into anarchy for a good while, but that doesnt matter because contracts have been secured for the big American oil companies........Iraq should have been left well alone.
and Israel probably win the award for shittiest human rights, Palestinians dying everyday (bombed by American helicopters)and noone bats an eyelid, but thats okay because they're in bed with the US and the US has the world by the balls......
Dont get me wrong I dont condone what the terrorists are doing, but noone is innocent and America is paying the price for stirring the shit up......rant over.
the sole liber has quite the point about "natural" human rights. They are indeed human constructs, and far from natural. My favourite example is the "right to life". As one of R.A. Heinlein's characters pontificates in Starship Troopers, "What 'right to life' has a man drowning in the Pacific? The ocean will not hearken to his cries... What 'right to life' has a man who knows that he must die to save his children? If he chooses to save himself, is that his 'right'... and is it right? If two men are alone on an island and cannibalism is the only alternative to starvation, which one's 'right to life' takes precendence?" (Approximate quote; I don't have the book to hand.)
Yes, we have gradually adopted the idea of "rights" (in contrast to the notion of "right" as in morally correct) over the course of our history: you can start to see the dual use of the word in Roman law. What's interesting to me is that we somehow forgot that we had thought them up and started declaring them to be immovable features of the universe, somehow intrinsic to our existence. It's almost religious in a way, as if no-one would obey the rules if they were known to be human ideas rather than the will of the universe or a god.