David P. Forsythe

Legal Management of Internal War: The 1977 Protocol on Non-International Armed Conflicts

At the Diplomatic Conference on Humanitarian Law held in Geneva from 1974 to 1977, it was pointed out that eighty percent of the victims of armed conflict since World War II have been created in noninternational armed conflict.1 Whatever the precision of this estimate, as of the mid-1970s a number of important actors in world affairs were concerned about destruction of human values in internal war and sought restraints on that form of violence. This concern produced, as of June 10, 1977, a Protocol to the Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949 relating to the protection of victims of noninternational armed conflict.2 This Protocol on human rights in internal war is the product of a long diplomatic struggle.3 Some of those who participated in this undertaking are optimistic about its future impact. Serious questions exist, however, as to the ameliorating effect this Protocol will have on internal war, if it is brought into force. Probably the Protocol will not bring to an end, or even diminish to any substantial extent, the inhumanity of noninternational armed conflict, but it may be another incomplete step of longrange and symbolic importance in the continuing search for a more humane world.

Human rights and development : international views

This collection of papers presents an argument in support of action for human rights in the Third World, emphasizing not economic or historical determinism but rather the importance of political choice by elites in deciding which rights to violate or respect.

Human Rights, National Security, and the U.S. Senate: Who Votes for What, and Why

The chief concern of this study is to determine how members of the U.S. Senate perceive the linkage between human rights and national security, and to explain what domestic factors affect this perception. Regression analysis of eight human rights votes during the Ninety-Third and Ninety-Fourth Congresses shows that strongly prodefense perspectives on national security have a heavy and significant negative effect on human rights voting in the Senate. Party identification is a distant second, with Democrats exhibiting a greater tendency to vote for human rights issues than Republicans. The analysis also shows that two constituency variables are significant, though weak, influences: region and safeness of seat. Senators from the southern states are somewhat less likely to take a pro-human rights position, as are those with larger electoral margins in their most recent election. Other variables (seniority, educational level in state, and defense spending in state) do not have discernible effects on human rights voting in the Senate. The strong negative effect of national security may indicate that senators with more prodefense, or “hawkish” orientations vote against human rights measures largely because they want to give unfettered primacy in American foreign policy to national security policy.

US foreign policy and human rights

(2002). US foreign policy and human rights. Journal of Human Rights: Vol. 1, No. 4, pp. 501-521.

On Contested Concepts: Humanitarianism, Human Rights, and the Notion of Neutrality

This article starts with a discussion about the international law of humanitarianism and human rights and what they indicate about trends in international relations (also known as world affairs), moves to a discussion of neutrality, and then discusses concrete examples of neutral humanitarianism in context. Its central theme is an argument for care in usage of terms, and for the utility of traditional forms of neutral humanitarianism—within definite limits.

Human Rights and the International Committee of the Red Cross

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has become a unique and important actor for human rights during the past 130 years. It is in essence a private, nongovernmental organization (NGO) although it has received formal status in public international law. Despite this recognition, the ICRC remains mostly private for three reasons: (1) it makes its own policy as a Swiss private association rather than taking instructions from public bodies; (2) it presents itself frequently to public authorities as a private actor, sometimes even when operating in an armed conflict supposedly governed by public international law; and (3) it gives its detailed reports privately to the authority in question rather than publicizing them, although other information is released. Not all observers have been prone to think of the ICRC as a human rights actor. It has been traditional to view the agency as a charitable organization, perhaps even as a humanitarian do-gooder. The agency itself has historically preferred terminology related to charity and humanitarianism rather than human rights. But the ICRC has now acknowledged what others have been saying for some time:

Human Rights in the World Community: Issues and Action

Specifically designed for educational use in international relations, law, political science, economics, and philosophy classes, Human Rights in the World Community treats the full range of human rights issues, including key paradoxes and contestations surrounding human rights, implementation problems, and processes involving international, national, and nongovernmental action. This new, expanded edition reflects the global, large-scale change that has occurred in the field of human rights, including the rise of terrorism and the triple threats of climate change, nuclear proliferation, and poverty, and each section features, as in previous editions, provocatively probing discussion questions. For the first time, the books set of appendices are available online: a bibliography, which encourages further study; an annotated human rights filmography; and the texts of, and citations to, key human rights instruments.

Humanitarian protection: The International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

H umanitarian protection — the effort to protect the fundamental well-being of individuals caught up in certain conflicts or “man-made” emergencies — has moved from the periphery of world affairs to centre stage over the past few decades.This is both good and bad. It is good in the sense that the welfare of persons in dire straits because of war and forced displacement is receiving more attention from various actors. It is bad in the sense that many millions of persons each year continue to wind up in dire straits from these and similar emergencies.

US Foreign Policy and Enlarging the Democratic Community

The Clinton administration proclaimed that enlarging the democratic community abroad was one of the basic pillars of contemporary US foreign policy. This statement built on initiatives from the past, and it was difficult to imagine any future Administration saying it was uninterested in democracy abroad. Moreover, modern international law called for popular participation in public affairs, and many other actors operated across borders to further democratic policy making. Thus, the US emphasis on democracy in foreign policy was not likely to end with this one administration. This article offers a brief but broad overview of US efforts to advance democracy abroad during the 1990s. No other article of which we are aware has attempted this type of summary evaluation.2 We argue that although it is not possible to chart the overall US influence and impact in this domain, because of the range of decisions taken and the other actors involved, the general orientation toward advancing democracy should remain-as long as Washington works to advance liberal democracy, and places its concern for civil and political human rights within an appropriate economic context. But the creation and consolidation of liberal market

Socioeconomic Human Rights: The United Nations, the United States, and beyond

A majority of states in the U.N. General Assembly tends to emphasize the priority of socioeconomic rights, perhaps to the exclusion of civil-political rights. President Jimmy Carter signed and sent to the Senate the U.N. Covenant on Social, Economic, and Cultural Rights. President Ronald Reagan, however, does not like to speak about socioeconomic rights; indeed, spokesmen for the Reagan Administration have strongly suggested that socioeconomic rights do not exist. This essay first charts these two polarized positions, then offers reflections on the clashing conceptions. The point of these reflections is to suggest that neither of these two views completely comprehends reality. The subject of socioeconomic rights involves some weighty matters: the overall effect of capitalism, the relation of capitalism to civil-political rights, the history of the West since the industrial revolution, the result of state intervention in Latin America, the nature of the structure of international economics, the extent of equality in America, and more. The reader will no doubt understand that in the following short article I do not pretend to provide the definitive answers to these questions, which after all have been examined in countless volumes through the years. What I do attempt is to distill some of the major points from these previously published perspectives and present them in a provocative think piece.