No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Human Rights and the War Problem
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 May 2009
Extract
The recognition that man as such, irrespective of persons, without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion, has the right to live in circumstances in which his humanity can develop, has a long history.
In our civilization the rights of man have been wrested from authority in the national sphere by a gradual process. Magna Charta formulated as universal human rights certain rights to freedom, but at that time the liber homo, who was supposed to have a claim to these rights, was only the human being who belonged to a small group of “lords temporal and spiritual”. In the Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen, it was rather the rights of the “citoyen” than of man as such that were formulated: it was mainly a matter here of the rights to freedom of the bourgeois citizen. There was a gradual development in the law systems of the West European countries of the universal rights of man, as they were expressed, both in our country and elsewhere, in universal suffrage. In Russia the recognition of the human rights was achieved by revolution with the Declaration of the toiling and exploited masses, in which the human position of the dispossessed was strikinglyformulated. Thus it was by different ways that not merely the nobleman and the bourgeois, but every one came be regarded as a full human being.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © T.M.C. Asser Press 1968
References
1 It should be observed here that the aversion of slavery which had grown in the white world came to be used later by the non-white (and East European) world to express the violence of their repugnance to apartheid and colonialism. Since 1966 the Economic and Social Council has correspondingly extended its original slavery formula, speaking of “slavery and the slave-trade in all their practices and manifestations, including the practices resembling slavery of apartheid and colonialism” (ESC res. 1126 XLI and 1232 XLII, quoted in van Boven, Th. C.'s excellent lecture: “Reckten van de mens op nituwe poden” (The rights of man on new paths), Deventer 1968, p. 10).Google Scholar Some more examples of this practice of grafting new invalidities on to old emotionally charged ones will be given below.
2 On these periods see further my “International Law in an Expanded World”, Amsterdam 1960.Google Scholar
3 Peace as a title to discrimination is, for instance, an obvious element in the special status of the permanent members of the Security Council, and in the Non-Proliferation Treaty. See about this my “Niet-verspreiding van kernwapens als onderdeel van em vredespolitiek” (Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons as Part of a Peace Policy), in van Geusau, F. A. M. Alting's: Kermoapens voor alle landen? (Nuclear Weapons for All Countries?), Baarn 1967, pp. 166–193).Google Scholar
4 However, by Resolution V 446, 12 Dec., 1950, the Members responsible for the administration of non-selfgoverning territories were requested to transmit in their reports (on the basis of art. 73 e, UN Charter) information as to how far the Universal Declaration was applied.
5 Tammes, A. J. P.: Intemationaal Publiekrecht (International Public Law), Haarlem 1966, p. 147.Google Scholar
6 Montreal Statement of the Assembly for Human Rights, inserted in the Journal of the International Commission of Jurists, Special Issue 1968, Part Two, pp. 94–109, p. 95.
7 Humphrey, John; Human Rights, UN and 1968, in Journal of the International Commission of Jurists, Special Issue 1968, pp. 1–13, p. 11.Google Scholar
8 Wilde, Oscar: Lady Windermere's FanGoogle Scholar, in which Lord Darlington says to Lady Windermere: “Do you know I am afraid that good people do a great deal of harm in this world. Certainly the greatest harm they do is that they make badness of such extraordinary importance”.
9 Lasswell, H. D. and Kaplan, A.: Power and Society, New Haven 1950, p. 252.Google Scholar
10 See further my essay: De burgtroorlog in de internationale verhoudingen (Civil War International Relations), in Roling, B. V. A. (ed.): Opstand en Revolutie (Revolt and Revolution), Assen 1965, pp. 9–24.Google Scholar
11 Univ. Decl. art. 28: “Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this declaration can be fully realized.” International Cov. on Ec., Soc. and Cult. Rights:
art. 2. 1. “Each Party to the present Covenant undertakes to take steps, individually and through international assistance and cooperation, especially economic and technical, to the maximum of its available resources, with a view to achieving progressively the full realization of the rights recognized in the present Covenant by all appropriate means, including particularly the adoption of legislative measures.”
art. 11, with respect to “the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living”: The States Parties will take appropriate steps to ensure the realization of this right…”.
12 See for instance, the papal encyclical Populorum Progressio of 20 March, 1967, which states:
30. “There are certainly situations whose injustice cries to heaven. When whole populations destitute of necessities live in a state of dependence barring them from all initiative and responsibility, and all opportunity to advance culturally and share in social and political life, recourse to violence, as a means to right these wrongs to human dignity, is a grave temptation.
31. We know, however, that a revolutionary uprising—save where there is a manifest long-standing tyranny which would do great damage to fundamental personal rights and dangerous harm to the common good of the country—produces new injustices, throws more elements out of balance, and brings on new disasters. Real evil should not be fought against at the cost of greater misery.”
According this standard, revolution is apparently considered admissible in the case of such manifest long-standing tyranny.
13 Holmes-Laski, , Letters I, p. 8.Google Scholar
14 The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights is less explicit on this point. Art. 23 clearly goes less far, for it does not mention any right to an adequate international order.
15 It is the irony of the history of the world that the technically highly developed world is developing the weapon which in due time will be available to the poor world, the (inexpensive) bacteriological and chemical weapon. Gunnar Myrdal has rightly called the B- and C- weapons “the poor man's opportunity to commit genocide” (Commencement Address, Temple University Philadelphia, 14 06, 1968).Google Scholar
16 The resolution was adopted with 89 votes for, 2 against and 12 abstentions (among which were the Netherlands).
17 There are many other resolutions from the last few years in which the policy of racial discrimination, that of apartheid, and violations of the economic and social rights, are called crimes against humanity (Res. XX 2022, XX 2070, XXI 2144, XXI 2184, XXI 2202, XXII 2262). The working party which drew up the scheme of a treaty on the non-applicability of statutory limitation to war crimes and crimes against humanity gave the following definition:
“crimes against humanity which, for the purpose of the Convention shall mean inhuman acts such as genocide, murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, eviction by armed attack or occupation, or persecution, including inhuman acts resulting from the policy of apartheid, committed in time of war or in peace-time against the civil population on social, political, economic, racial, religious or cultural grounds by the authorities of the State or by private individuals acting at the instigation or with the toleration of such authorities” (A.C. 3L 1503, para. 54, cited by van Boven, , op. cit. pp. 11–12).Google Scholar
It may observed here that in this case too, the aversion to Nazi crimes and the aversion to colonial conduct gave rise to definite legal developments. It might be said that the condemnation of colonial conduct was grafted on to the condemnation of Nazi practices.
18 The Netherlands ministry of foreign affairs gives the following comment on this in its publication No. 84 “De Veiligheidsraad in 1966” (The Security Council in 1966), The Hague 1967, p. 50Google Scholar: “With the adoption of this resolution measures binding upon all the States under Chapter VII had been fixed for the first time in history”. In the Resolutions of the Security Council of 7 Aug. and 4 Dec., 1963 (S 5386 and S 5471), only a solemn appeal was made—“solemnly calls upon…”— to all the States “to cease forthwith the sale and shipment of equipment and materials for the manufacture and maintenance of arms and ammunition in South Africa”. The Security Council, in making this appeal, had taken into consideration in the last-named resolution that the situation in South Africa “is seriously disturbing international peace and security”.
19 Guevara, Ernesto Che: Toespraken, brieven, geschriften (Speeches, Letters, Writings); edited by Stibbe, Th., Amsterdam 1968, p. 75.Google Scholar
20 On this concept see further my Inleiding tot de Wetenschap van Oorlog en Vrede, (Introduction to Peace Research) Assen 1968, p. 59 v.v.Google Scholar