The Geneva Conventions And Utilitarianism

KSM is a mastermind terrorist who has been captured by the CIA. He refuses to reveal any information about his organization or the members thereof that could be fundamental to the welfare of hundreds of lives. Even under the presence of coercive methods such as sleep deprivation and water boarding, he has refused to talk. His nine and eleven year old children have been brought into custody and a suggestion has been made to torture the children. Is the option ethical or moral in any sense? Utilitarianism provides two answers for the question; one asserting the general rule of utility, the other expanding on

So, the best way to protect human rights internationally would be through coerscion, if the international system has the legitimacy and commands the authority to have their rulings respected by all states party

According to ICRC, International human rights law is the body of international law intended to advance human rights on social, provincial, and residential levels. As a type of worldwide law, global human rights law is fundamentally comprised of arrangements, understandings between sovereign states to have restricting lawful impact between the gatherings that have consented to them; and standard universal law, guidelines of law got from the predictable direct of states carrying on of the conviction that had the law obliged them to act that way. Other worldwide human rights instruments while not lawfully restricting add to the usage, comprehension and improvement of universal human rights law and have been perceived as a wellspring of political obligation.

Taking this into consideration, dealing with external activities of a state, international law has extensive latitude. In Article 38 (1) of the Statue of the International Court of Justice, the following sources of international law are acknowledged: (a) international conventions, whether general or particular, establishing rules expressly recognized by the contesting States; (b) international custom, as evidence of a general practice accepted as law; (c) the general principles of law recognized by civilized nations; (d) ... judicial decisions and the teachings of the most highly qualified publicists of the various nations, subsidiary means for the determination of rules of law (36). Sources having a technical meaning related to the law making process and must not be confused with information sources, research sources or bibliographies on international law (35). Rules expressed and recognized by consenting states are referred to as treaties and/or conventions. Treaties are codified agreements established by consenting states as means of resolving a dispute or to recognize mutual interests. Since treaties are codified, they are favored over customary law; therefore, becoming a vital part of building a more stable foundation for international law. States are required to meet their international obligations as well as formulate efforts to

Humanitarian interference positions a hard trial for an international society constructed on the doctrines of sovereignty, intervention, and the use of force. Directly after the holocaust, the society of states recognized the laws prohibiting genocide, forbidding the exploitation of civilians, and identifying plain human rights. These humanitarian values often clash with doctrines of sovereignty. Sovereign states are required to perform as protectors of their citizens’ security, but what happens if states act as villains towards their own people, treating power as a pass to kill? Should dictatorial states be recognized as valid members of international society and permitted the protection afforded by the intervention norm? Or else, most states loss their sovereign rights and be exposed to reasonable intervention if they aggressively abuse or fail to protect their citizens? Connected to this, what responsibilities do other states or organizations have to enforce human rights standards against governments that vastly violate them?

In the international arena, there is no hierarchical rule to keep states in line or behaved; meaning that the international system is constantly in anarchy, aka the state of nature. This lack of rule enforcement puts states in a constant state of war, in a constant state where they need to stay on guard and in a tactical advantage otherwise the safety and well being of their state will be in jeopardy. In this scenario, the state’s number one priority is to protect itself and act in its self interest when need be, despite if it would typically be deemed immoral. (Donnelly 20)

The Geneva conventions are a group of treaties on treatment on the public, (POWs) prisoners of war and soldiers who are differently concluded hors de combat, or incapable of fighting. The leading convention was admitted by the International committee for relief to the Wounded (that became the International committee for the Red Crescent and Red Cross). This convention made a treaty which was designed to protect sick and wounded soldiers during wartime. The Swiss government agreed to hold the conventions in Geneva, and couple of years later, an alike agreement to protect shipwrecked soldiers was produced. In 1949, subsequent to World War 2, 2 new conventions were added on from the original 2, and all four of them were confirmed by a lot of countries.

this essay I will attempt to examine and analyse the effectiveness of international courts and

Kenneth Abbott and Duncan Snidal reject that any of the above theories give any insight as to why States use formal international organizations to advance

Articles 1, 55, and 56 are the center pieces for promoting and protecting human rights. During the cold war humanitarian intervention went stagnant because the two superpowers who were facing off (US & Russia) were at odds about ideology and this caused world peace to be thrown into turmoil. The UN was very new and did not have the international legal clout to stop either superpower from promoting its system of governance through invasion or indirect military support. The Cold War caused social, economic, and political upheaval globally which allowed for the UN to revise its interpretation of humanitarian intervention. This allowed for a larger consensus among nations about which circumstances required intervention. From 1945 to 1976 five major human rights documents were adopted; The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Genocide Convention, Geneva Convention, Laws of War, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Cultural Economic Civil Rights. The end of the Cold War “liberated the UN which had established 20 new peace keeping missions from 1988-1993, more than it had taken in its entire 40 year history.” (Taha, 14) The major developments of the 1990‘s for international humanitarian

There is a close relationship between human rights and criminal law. The scope of my paper will surround human rights and the International Criminal Court (ICC) in addition to human rights and international crimes. International criminal justice in this context speaks to those interested in prosecuting against the background of international human rights and humanitarian norms. The use of criminal law has many positive effects and pursues many goals that are worth considering. For example, deterrence, accountability and punishment are important principles that will be discussed in the context of human rights. Is the International Criminal Court an effective method to promote and protect human rights internationally? If so, why and how?

The principles of humanitarian law are thought to apply in conflict, and to regulate the conduct of military forces. The rules of warfare aim to safeguard human life and some other fundamental human rights, and to ensure that war is limited in its scope and level of violence. Total war, where neither discrimination nor proportionality serves as mitigating

In the pursuit of positive peace for the global community, certain mechanisms are necessary in order to better protect human rights and resolve interstate conflicts. Prior to the events of World War II, a cogent set of laws defining those human rights, much less violations therein were never heard at an international scale. The International Criminal Court has the role as both appellate for justice and voice for peace in the international community but has not yet resolve the contradictory ends of both roles. That contradictory end is that many countries proclaim the necessity of the International Criminal Court as an advocate for conflict resolution and peace advocacy while being resist or outright antagonistic towards the court when their own state has committed those same crimes. To the ends of defending basic universal rights, the International Criminal Court (hereafter ICC) serves that capacity when state level systems cannot or will not act accordingly.

Norms are expectations of behaviour and a vital part of the international community (Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998, 887). In the anarchic system of international politics, norms can provide stability and unity due to certain expectations, as well as implement change when norm shifts restructure the international community (Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998, 894). Therefore, the process that enables a norm to be accepted internationally is an important one to analyze and understand. In order for a norm to become international, the most important factors are shared moral assessment and hegemonic acceptance of the norm.

The United Nations is widely regarded and respected as the most powerful institution that promotes international cooperation and human rights action. In theory, actions implemented by and within the United Nations are based on the mutual global goal of protecting international human rights and preventing human sufferings. These actions are constituted through three main mechanisms: the Treaty-based system, the Human Rights Council, and Security Council and Humanitarian Interventions, with the level of confrontation and seriousness in each mechanism increases respectively. While aimed to serve the mutual goal of protecting human rights over the world and have shown some successes, in a world of sovereignty, actions when implemented are in fact grounded by the national interests of each state, including embracing its national sovereignty, concreting its strategic relationships with other states, and enhancing its reputation in the international community. This paper will analyze the successes and failures of each of the three mechanisms of the United Nations regime, through which it aims to prove that when it comes to actions, states focus more on their national, and in some cases, regional interests than on the mutual goal of strengthening human rights throughout the world, thus diminishing the legitimacy of the whole United Nations system.