Julie Mertus

The impact of intervention on local human rights culture: A Kosovo case study

When and how are military and civil peacebuilding positive nurturers of human rights norms? And when do these efforts have unintended negative consequences? This article explores these questions using a case study of Albanian efforts to imagine and build a better society in Kosovo. Other scholars concerned with societies emerging from conflict have examined the role of human rights in peace agreements and, in particular, the mechanisms designed to deal with past human rights abuses, such as truth commissions and international tribunals. Here, I am concerned less with human rights institutions and more with human rights culture. I am interested in exploring the ways in which the flood of peacebuilding and democratization brigades into places like Kosovo impacts local human rights culture.

The New U.S. Human Rights Policy: A Radical Departure

The United States, as the most powerful state and as the self-appointed champion of human rights, has a profound impact on the way human rights norms are interpreted and applied throughout the world. The human rights foreign policy of President George W. Bush can be distinguished from the policies of other administrations in three crucial respects: (1) In identifying the values that Americans can and should promote abroad, it avoids human rights terminology and scorns multilateral institutions, and instead looks to divine inspiration; (2) in place of well-recognized human rights norms, it uses a concept of “dignity” that is narrow and self-serving; and (3) it engages in “exceptional exceptionalism,” continually holding others to standards that it does not apply to itself. This essay contends that the new U.S. human rights foreign policy drains human rights of its core meaning and limits its potential impact. Moreover, the United States lacks moral authority to act on human rights grounds as long as it fails to prioritize human rights explicitly and to uphold the same standards to which it holds other nations accountable.

Human Rights and Human Insecurity: The Contributions of US Counterterrorism

Counterterrorism campaigns that fail to recognize the critical connection between rights denial and terrorism are shortsighted. To fight terrorism without regard to human rights furthers terrorist goals by endorsing the same faulty thinking of the terrorists: the ends justify the means. Since declaring the “global war on terror” in 2001, not only has the Bush administration failed to place human rights promotion at the center of its counterterrorism campaign but it has repeatedly insisted on a “flexible,” self-serving interpretation of human rights. By promoting a culture of human rights violations, the Bush administration has guaranteed the failure of counterterrorism strategies. This article examines four illustrations of misguided US conduct in its aggressive counterterrorism strategy: (1) abuse of prisoner rights in detention; (2) erosion of civil liberties; (3) curtailing rights of ethnic minorities; and (4) manipulation of international law to serve narrowly defined national interests. The impact of US behavior has been dramatic, the essay contends, because many other countries have patterned their behavior on these issues following on the US example in undermining rights.

Grounds for Cautious Optimism

Humanitarian assistance organizations have made considerable strides in addressing gender issues. These efforts have fallen short, however, as organizations fail to adapt and apply a gender perspective consistently and to integrate local and international women into decision-making positions. This comment on Chris Corrins report on humanitarian assistance in Kosova outlines the reasons for this partial failure, some of which are gender related and others of which are endemic to the humanitarian field. It concludes that the emergence of women activists in conflict areas provides grounds for cautious optimism for future transformative change.

The War on Terror through a Feminist Lens

This chapter offers a feminist perspective for analysis of post-9/11 changes in international human rights theory and practice. In so doing, it suggests not a singular perspective, but the expansion of the international relations (IR) analytical toolbox informed by various feminist theories and their methodologies. A primary goal of this approach is to unpack the power dynamics within international relations and to expose the gender assumptions in traditional models of state security. At the same time, the chapter suggests a methodology that is also central to ethical human rights practice: honoring the individual narratives of those labeled as “victims”, and uncovering and valuing their roles as “subjects” (Tickner 2001, p. 47).

Power and Principle: Human Rights Programming in International Organizations

Power and Principle: Human Rights Programming in International Organizations. By Joel E. Oestreich. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2007. 243p.

Kosovo: How Myths and Truths Started a War

59.95 cloth,

Shouting from the Bottom of the Well The Impact of International Trials for Wartime Rape on Women's Agency

29.95 paper. The power of human rights to shape the mandate and operations of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) is vividly illustrated in this timely study. Highly readable and original, it holds great appeal for both students and scholars in the fields of international organizations (IOs) and human rights.