Who has primary responsibility to uphold, protect, and respect human rights? Individuals, governments, or other entities? Why/why not?
In this essay I will show that states have primary responsibility to uphold, protect and respect human rights. I consider that individuals have unlimited interests, finite resources, and varied capabilities, and that this produces an inherent tension which requires systematic facilitation to avoid a state of war. I say that this is the reason we have states, to provide the facilitation and seek to satisfy citizens' interests. I argue that human rights are a high priority subset of individual interests. I show that these special interests, human rights, are subject to the same pressures of finite resources and varied capabilities as other interests, and furthermore are too important not to be secured, so individuals must not bear primary responsibility for human rights duties. I consider that a worldwide body could bear primary responsibility for human rights, but reject this notion on account of it the inefficiencies and difficulties with transferring the necessary knowledge, resources, and legal powers from states. I settle on the notion that states are the bodies most appropriate to take primary responsibility for human rights. I consider the problem of rogue and weak states who do not uphold this primary responsibility. I contend that states have a secondary responsibility to pressure states that fail to protect their citizen's human rights. I evaluate two problems of states exerting this pressure on rogue and weak states - violating state sovereignty and worsening human rights violations, and endorse Luban's (Luban: 1980) perspective that extreme pressure is justified only when a state violates its citizens most basic human rights in a systematic and sustained way, in which case the state is actually illegitimate and has forfeited sovereignty rights. When citizens' most basic rights are not met, intervention that may worsen their situation in the short term can be justified by the prospect of long term improvement. Finally I conclude that this notion of states taking primary responsibility for the human rights of their own citizens and secondary responsibility for human rights worldwide is likely to provide a powerful incentive for rogue and weak states to protect those most basic of human rights.
Individuals have interests, some of which are unique and some of which apply to all. An interest that might apply to all is the ability to earn an income or to use preventative health care; a unique interest could be a desire to read all of Shakespeare's plays. But interests are unlimited, and resources are finite. The capability of an individual to satisfy their own interests also varies greatly; some are stronger or smarter than others for example. Without a systematic method of distributing resources and maintaining law and order, few citizens’ interests would be met. Something like Hobbes state of nature would result - all citizens would be in a state of war, or anticipation of war, at all times. To prevent this, we have states. States are organizing bodies that try to address the problem of infinite interests and limited resources, in a way that satisfies their citizens' interests.
A subset of an individual’s interests is those fundamental interests known as human rights. Human rights are high priority justified claims to objects of rights that all humans are entitled to, equally and universally. Human rights are necessary for a life of minimal decency, which includes a range of civil and political rights such as the right to participate in government and economic, social and cultural rights like enough food to eat and basic healthcare.
If every individual has human rights, perhaps every individual should be responsible to uphold and protect them? But individuals would still need an organizing body to facilitate these interests, for the same reasons I argued individuals needs states. And I think there is a more important reason why individuals should not bear the duties of human rights - human rights exist to protect human beings, who are not always capable of meeting their own interests. Human rights are too important, too necessary, to risk them not being secured. To saddle individuals, who may not be able to meet their own basic needs, with responsibility for serving everyone else's interests generates too great a risk they will not be met.
Perhaps it is plausible that the duties of human rights could fall on a worldwide organizing body to address the subset of individuals’ interests that we call human rights. There is something initially attractive about this idea. If all humans have the same interests in the objects of human rights, it could be sensible that a universal body address these needs equally. But there are major flaws with this concept. In short, it would be too difficult to make such an enterprise work. Upholding and protecting human rights requires legal systems and resources, and a specialized understanding of each community’s needs. If a worldwide body was responsible for human right, states would need to transfer some of their knowledge, resources, and some scope of their own legal system. This notion seems problematic and inefficient to orchestrate, at best, and at worst (and most likely) ineffective.
States are experts in the concerns of their citizens and the infrastructure, resources and means of production available to them. States already have legal and political systems; they already operate in a role of redistribution and consideration of the needs of their citizens. So it is very plausible that states could and should bear the duties to uphold and protect their citizen's human rights. States have the necessary frameworks and the necessary powers, so they are the most likely bodies to succeed. This idea is not incompatible with a single state that comprising the whole world, but it is not a practical or necessary notion. For the foreseeable future, existing states should bear primary responsibility for upholding their citizens’ human rights.
So states have primary responsibility for their citizens’ human rights, but what of the states that do not fulfil their responsibilities? A state may simply be too weak to do so - lacking in resources, expertise, or effectiveness in governing. There are also rogue states, which practice blatantly unjust policies, and choose not to respect and uphold human rights. (O’Neill: 2001, p182)
We need an expanded understanding of state's responsibilities regarding human rights. States have primary responsibility to uphold their own citizens’ human rights, but also have secondary responsibility for the human rights of all the world's citizens. In practice, states must exert pressure on weak and rogue states that violate their citizens’ human rights. States may operate in alliance with other states (like the United Nations) to coordinate this, but membership of a coalition is not a necessary condition for states to bear this duty. Any and all states bear secondary responsibility to uphold the human rights of all the world's citizens. (Luban: 1980)
There are two problems with this secondary duty states have to global human rights. The first problem is that some types of pressure a state may exert will violate state sovereignty. The modern idea of state sovereignty is that other states cannot and should not intervene with the operation of a state. This idea is essential for a state to function, so there is a paradox here. A weak or rogue state that does not uphold human rights may lose its’ ability to function at all as a state, if other states violate its’ sovereignty. The second problem is that some types of pressure, like economic sanctions or military intervention, can cause more human rights violations within a rogue or weak state than were already occurring. (Luban: 1980)
Not all human rights violations are of equal severity, nor are all violations systematic and sustained. Responsible states must assess the stringency of violations and how likely they are to continue, in choosing the appropriate level of pressure to exert on rogue and weak states. Luban argues that the most aggressive types of pressure should only be exerted on the worst of human rights violating states. These are states that violate the most basic of their citizens’ rights, in a systematic and prolonged way. The most basic rights are rights that must be satisfied for any other rights to be enjoyed, like security and minimal subsistence. (Luban: 1980)
Luban's idea provides counterargument to both problems of state pressure on weak and rogue states. Those states that do not protect and uphold the most basic rights of their citizens are actually illegitimate; they are not fulfilling their reason for being. States exist as organizing bodies to meet their citizens’ interests and they have primary responsibility for the human rights of their citizens; the worst weak and rogue states are not upholding these duties. This failure means the states have forfeited sovereign rights to non intervention, so there other states may justly intervene. And when the most basic of human rights are being violated in a systematic and prolonged way, a foreseeable short term increase in violations because of external intervention is justified by the likely long term benefits for the citizens. (Luban:1980)
When states fulfil their secondary responsibility to pressure rogue and weak states on human rights issues, those rogue and weak states have good incentives to comply. If they are assured that sustained and prolonged violations of their citizens’ most basic rights will result in aggressive pressure from other states, they have very strong incentive to avoid these most egregious of human rights violations.
In this essay I have argued that states have primary responsibility to uphold, protect and respect human rights. I have illustrated that they are the most likely body to succeed in doing so, and that doing so involves both a primary responsibility to their own citizens and a secondary responsibility to global human rights. I have considered Luban’s (Luban:1980) idea that the worst human rights violating states are illegitimate and used this to provide counterarguments to problems raised by states pressuring rogue and weak states to fulfil their human rights responsibilities. Furthermore, I have shown that this method is likely to result in rogue and weak states being compelled to minimize the most harmful of human rights violations.
References
Hobbes, T. 1651. 'Leviathan', Excerpt reproduced in Life Death Morality Study Guide. Monash University, 2010.
Luban, D., (1980) 'Just War and Human Rights', Philosophy and Public Affairs, v9, n2, p. 160-181.
Oneill, O. (2001) 'Agents of Justice', Metaphilosophy, v32, n1/2, p. 180-195
thanks for this informative essay
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