The International Human Rights Movement at 50

Dozens of organizations are involved every day in monitoring human rights abuses in countries throughout the world. How did this network of human rights groups originate, and how effective has it been in preventing or curbing human rights violations? A May 1998 Encarta Yearbook feature probed these and other questions.

Reason for Hope: The International Human Rights Movement at 50

By Marvin E. Frankel

The concept of international human rights owes its beginnings to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. During World War II (1939-1945), the Nazis murdered millions of Jews and hundreds of thousands of others, including Roma (Gypsies), homosexuals, Soviet prisoners of war (POWs), and the mentally ill in gas chambers, by firing squad, and other methods. The world had never faced such monumental crimes, and the Allied forces that were victorious in World War II set out to ensure that such a thing could never happen again. Both the concept and the word genocide—coined in 1944 by Polish legal scholar Raphael Lemkin to describe the horror of the Nazi Holocaust—were part of Hitler's legacy.

In the waning days of the war, four Allied nations—China, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the United Kingdom, and the United States—began working to establish a representative world body with a mandate to maintain world peace. Their efforts culminated in the birth of the United Nations (UN) in 1945. Two years later the UN created the Commission on Human Rights, headed by Eleanor Roosevelt, the widow of former U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. And on December 10, 1948, the UN adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, an event that marked the birth of the modern human rights movement.

Before World War II, the actions of a sovereign government within its own borders were, with rare exceptions, no business of outsiders or foreign governments. When repressive governments abused their own people, individuals or leaders in other countries might express outrage, but such protests had no standing in international law. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights gave the global community grounds on which to confront countries that fail to uphold human rights.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR), created in 1993 and headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, directs the UN's human rights efforts. But despite the efforts of the UN, regional bodies, and private organizations, millions of people around the world still suffer from human rights violations. Nevertheless, the fight to bring human rights to every corner of the globe has made remarkable progress over the last 50 years.

Defining and Codifying Human Rights

At the end of World War II, the Allies convened tribunals to try those accused of war crimes (violations of international agreements governing the conduct of war) and crimes against humanity, such as torture and genocide. The first trials, based in Nürnberg, Germany, prosecuted about 200 Nazi leaders, military officials, and civilians. Several dozen were sentenced to death, and most of the rest were imprisoned. Trials of Japanese leaders and enlisted men resulted in the execution of several hundred defendants.

These trials helped establish the principle of accountability before the international community. Three years later the UN declaration on human rights was created based on the shared values, the constitutions, and traditions of a number of countries, notably Canada, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The universal human rights outlined in the declaration include the right to life, liberty, and security of person; to freedom of conscience, religion, opinion, expression, association, and assembly; and freedom from arbitrary arrest.

But exactly what rights should be considered universal is a matter of continuing debate. Socialist countries, for example, often place a higher emphasis on the right to work and to adequate housing, while many liberal capitalist nations believe freedoms from government control—such as the right to privacy, a fair trial, and a free press—are more important. In some societies the concept of human rights is shaped by religion, such as in Islamic societies, where what many people from other cultures regard as the rights of women sometimes contradict religious teachings. And some governments claim that their citizens value social order over individual freedom. But despite these differences, there is wide agreement on fundamental rights such as protections against arbitrary arrest, torture, and summary execution.

The universal declaration was followed by a series of conventions and covenants that addressed specific issues and codified the rights outlined by the declaration. Examples include the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (adopted in 1948 and signed by 42 countries); the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966, signed by 59 countries); and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (1966, signed by 61 countries). Other documents addressed racial discrimination, the status of refugees, discrimination against women, the rights of children, and the use of torture and cruel, inhumane, or degrading punishment.

Unfortunately these steps did not quickly end human rights violations. The years since 1945 have seen gross violations by authoritarian regimes, including several instances of genocide. In the late 1970s about 1.7 million people died at the hands of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge movement. Indonesia's forcible incorporation of East Timor in 1976 reportedly led to the deaths of as many as 100,000 Timorese. And between 500,000 and 1 million members of Rwanda's minority Tutsi ethnic group and politically moderate members of the majority Hutu ethnic group were slaughtered by Rwanda's Hutu-led government in 1994.

Scrutiny and Enforcement

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights catapulted the issue of human rights to the forefront of international politics and touched off a worldwide human rights movement. But nations that sign UN covenants and other international treaties do not always uphold their responsibilities. To combat violations, many international human rights organizations have means for confirming and enforcing compliance.

Among the UN's most effective investigators are its “special rapporteurs,” who report on specific nations or on practices that violate human rights. Special rapporteurs have investigated violations in countries around the world. The light shed by these reports has helped expose and halt human rights abuses. The UN also uses other means, such as public censure and the threat of economic sanctions, to encourage violators to comply with international law.

Regional organizations also play a role in enforcing human rights laws. Among the first were the European Commission of Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights, both created by the Council of Europe in 1950. The commission and court are empowered to enforce the rights outlined in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), established in 1950. Under the ECHR, member governments or individuals may bring charges of human rights violations against other member countries. Individuals may also charge their own government with violations. Disputes are resolved by the commission, or, if that fails, charges may be submitted to the court. The system has functioned well. In the majority of cases, member governments have accepted and complied with judgments issued by the court.

Another significant step in the enforcement of human rights was the Helsinki Accords, a series of agreements reached between 1973 and 1975 among participants in the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), now known as the Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Intended to ease Cold War tensions, the Helsinki Accords granted concessions to the USSR and its allies—such as official recognition of the division of Germany—in return for commitments from the USSR and Eastern European nations to respect human rights. The accords resulted in relaxed surveillance and reduced brutality by the Soviet secret police and in freedom for Jewish and human rights activist Natan Sharansky, human rights activist Vladimir Slepak, and others.

Nations of the western hemisphere, united in the Organization of American States (OAS), followed the European example and created the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in 1959 and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in 1978. These organizations play much the same roles as their European counterparts. But the United States, the OAS's largest and most influential member, has never fully participated in the system, thus weakening the OAS apparatus.

Africa has also followed Europe's lead. In 1986 the Organization of African Unity (OAU) created the African Commission on Human and People's Rights. A human rights court is also planned.

Nongovernmental Organizations

Human rights play an important role in international relations, but the issue sometimes takes a back seat to other concerns. Compromises and tradeoffs on human rights are not always admirable, but they do happen. In the era of the Cold War, for example, the United States and its allies overlooked and downplayed human rights violations in anti-Communist countries such as Chile, Turkey, and the former Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). Meanwhile the United States vigorously assailed violations committed in Communist countries such as Cuba and the USSR.

Unlike international and regional bodies, private human rights organizations focus exclusively on the issue of human rights. As a result, these nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have played a major role in exposing human rights violations and achieving remedies.

The earliest and best-known NGO is Amnesty International (AI). Founded in the United Kingdom in 1961, AI primarily concerns itself with Prisoners of Conscience (defined by AI as “people imprisoned because of peaceful expression of their beliefs, politics, race, religion, color, or national origin”). Through letter-writing campaigns, fact-finding missions, annual human rights reports, and other means, AI has helped bring freedom to incarcerated people around the world.

One of the most prominent human rights groups in the United States is Human Rights Watch (HRW), founded in 1978. HRW monitors human rights violations and issues annual reports assessing the state of human rights in countries around world.

A number of other NGOs work patiently and sometimes in dangerous circumstances to protect human rights, including the International Commission of Jurists, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland; Article 19, a British organization; the French organization Fédération Internationale des ligues des Droits de l'Homme (International Federation of Human Rights leagues); Israel's B'Tselem (in the image of); and Argentina's Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (Center for Legal Studies). Besides monitoring violations and publishing studies, these organizations hold demonstrations, file legal actions, organize petitions and letter-writing campaigns, and testify before national and international committees. Their efforts are central to the human rights movement.

One grim story, which unfolded over nearly two decades, illustrates the vital role these groups can play. On December 2, 1980, three nuns and a Catholic lay worker from the United States were seized, raped, and murdered in El Salvador. The family of one victim, together with members of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (LCHR)—a nonprofit human rights organization based in New York City—began investigating involvement by El Salvador's National Guard, an elite national security agency.

In 1984 five low-ranking Salvadoran National Guardsmen were convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison. But the LCHR continued to press its belief that the order to kill the women came from higher up. Finally, in April 1998, four of the convicted guardsmen told the LCHR that they had acted on orders from superiors.

Truth and Reconciliation

Violations such as those committed in El Salvador often occur in secret, making it difficult to determine who was responsible for any single incident. The desire to unmask those responsible for human rights abuses such as those in El Salvador gave rise to institutions known as truth commissions, investigative bodies with a mandate to document and assign responsibility for abuses. Truth commissions work on the principle that airing the truth about what happened during a period of repression offers catharsis to a population and a chance for the rebuilding process to begin in a society.

Sometime after 1950 the Spanish word desaparecido (disappeared) became a noun used to describe people who had been kidnapped and tortured or killed by government or rebel forces in Latin America. The thousands of tragic disappearances began in Guatemala in the 1960s. The practice spread to Chile following that country's U.S.-backed military coup in 1973, and into Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina, and finally to countries outside of Latin America such as Afghanistan and the Philippines. Beginning in the late 1970s, however, many of these countries replaced dictatorial regimes with democratic governments. A key factor was popular pressure for human rights, generated by groups like Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo (Mothers of the May Square, an Argentine group made up primarily of mothers whose children had disappeared) which marched through Buenos Aires with photographs of their loved ones, crying “Give us back our children!”

For countries such as Argentina, which reverted from military rule in 1983, the transition to democracy introduced a new problem. Thousands of victims of abuse and the relatives of those who were murdered cried out for retribution. Punishment, these groups argued, would send a signal that human rights are valued and that violators would be brought to justice in the future.

But others worried about the risks involved with putting the military on trial. In Argentina, as elsewhere, the change to more democratic governments had been achieved gradually, and the military remained powerful and often resentful of calls for prosecution. In some countries the military threatened to resist any efforts to punish them.

Still others questioned whether it was right to seek retribution instead of reconciliation. It might take years to punish all those responsible for the violations, a period during which feelings of bitterness would continue to divide the population.

Confronted with these arguments, Argentina developed a way of addressing the abuses that came to serve as a model for countries around the world. The Comisión Nacional para Investigatar el Destino de los Desparecidos (CONADEP, National Commission on the Disappeared) was created to recall and record abuses committed under military rule. Led by Ernesto Sábato, a distinguished writer, the commission heard testimony from hundreds who suffered or who lost relatives at the hands of the junta and reported on some 9000 persons who had disappeared. This process revealed some of the unspeakable acts committed by the junta, such as the practice of drugging victims and dropping them into the sea from airplanes, and the separation of children from parents.

The commission's final report, titled Nunca Más (1984; Never Again, 1986), catalogued the agonies inflicted by the military junta and became a best-seller. In it Sábato described the chilling effect that Argentina's so-called dirty war had on its society.

A feeling of complete vulnerability spread throughout Argentine society, coupled with the fear that anyone, however innocent, might become a victim of the neverending witch-hunt…anyone was at risk—from those who were proposing social revolution, to aware adolescents who merely went out to the shanty towns to help the people living there.

A few junta leaders, such as General Jorge Videla, president during the junta years (1976-1983), were tried and imprisoned. A few years later, however, President Carlos Menem granted pardons to those who had been convicted or were standing trial, a move triggered partially by pressure from the military and the need to curb military unrest.

Argentina's commission was the first significant example of a truth commission. Not every such commission has been successful, but others have functioned effectively in Chile and El Salvador. In South Africa, the Commission of Truth and Reconciliation, formed in 1995, continues to play a vital role in the transition from minority to majority rule in that country.

Chaired by Nobel Peace prize-winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the South African commission has a mandate to investigate human rights violations committed during South Africa's period of apartheid (Afrikaans for “separateness,” South Africa's system of racial separation that lasted from 1948 to 1990). To further that goal the commission has the power to grant amnesty to violators who provide full, detailed, and truthful accounts of the crimes they committed. The more famous cases documented by the commission include the 1977 murder in police custody of antiapartheid activist Stephen Biko.

Those seeking amnesty from the South African commission have not been limited to officials from the former white-dominated government. Officials from the African National Congress (ANC), now South Africa's ruling party, have sought amnesty for instances of beatings, torture, and the execution of people believed to have spied or informed on the ANC.

Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, and the Need for Justice

Some violations are so heinous that societies feel the only way to address them is to put the perpetrators on trial. In the early 1990s the breakup of the former Yugoslavia triggered savage fighting in the former republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The region split into areas controlled by three ethnic groups—Serbs, Croats, and Muslims—each of which participated, to varying degrees, in a genocidal practice known as ethnic cleansing: the elimination, through forced expulsion or murder, of rival ethnic groups. Thousands of civilians were killed outright or held in concentration camps where they were starved, beaten, raped, and murdered.

These acts so shocked the world that in 1993 the UN Security Council ordered the creation of “an international tribunal…for the prosecution of persons responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia since 1991.” The first international war crimes court since World War II, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was granted the power to impose a maximum sentence of life in prison.

In May 1997 the tribunal delivered its first verdict, convicting Dusan Tadic, a Bosnian Serb, of war crimes and crimes against humanity. But high-level figures such as Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadić—one of the masterminds of the ethnic cleansing campaign pursued by the Bosnian Serbs—remained at large, and the ICTY came under fire from critics who deplored the slow pace of prosecutions. Nevertheless, the tribunal's existence served as some assurance that human rights violations would not be ignored or casually forgiven. By April 1998 the ICTY had publicly indicted 74 people and placed 26 in custody. Several others were named in sealed indictments.

Meanwhile, in 1994, Rwanda was torn apart by civil strife. Members of the majority Hutu ethnic group slaughtered hundreds of thousands of minority Tutsi and politically moderate Hutus. In response, the UN Security Council created the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in November 1994.

The ICTR, located near Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania, has its own judges but shares its chief prosecutor and appeals judges with the tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The ICTR registered its first conviction in May 1998 when Jean Kambanda, who was prime minister of Rwanda during the massacres, pled guilty to charges of genocide. Kambanda also agreed to testify against other members of the Rwandan government, a major breakthrough for the ICTR. A total of 35 people have been indicted by the ICTR, and 24 of those are in custody.

Unlike the Nürnberg trials and those held in Japan at the end of World War II, the ICTY and ICTR cannot be accused of having been imposed by victors upon defeated nations. But they are less than perfect because they were established ad hoc (for the particular case at hand). Many experts believe it is necessary to establish a permanent court to consider cases involving allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

A movement to establish just such an institution has been underway for several decades, and UN delegates were scheduled to begin work on a proposal to establish a body known as