On January 24, 2011 the executive director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, criticized the Secretary-General of the UN, Ban Ki-moon and other world leaders for not being harsher on human rights offenders. Another advocate for the Human Rights Watch explained that, if Ki-moon wanted to be elected for a second term, he would have to be more of a consistent activist for global human rights. According to www.npr.org, “Roth cited in particular Ban's failure to publicly raise China's rights records or its imprisoned Nobel peace laureate, literary critic Liu Xiaobo, in a meeting with President Hu Jintao late last year.” In defense, Ban mentioned that he did discuss this issue with Chinese leaders in private meetings. The UN Deputy Spokesman Farhan Haq went on to also defend Ki-moon’s use of “quiet diplomacy” has lead to great success in the fight for human rights in more reserved governments. In a news conference later that day, Ban pointed out the abuse of human rights in Tajikistan and also called for all UN member states to discontinue all laws that view homosexuality as a crime.
Ban Ki-moon’s inability to remain constant on punishing those who commit crimes against humans rights directly effects countries all around the world. Without correct enforcement, millions of people could continue to suffer from being denied their human rights. For example, homosexuals in the United States could continue to be fired from their jobs, citizens of Darfur could continue to live in fear of genocide that runs rampant throughout their country, and Liu Xiaobo could remain locked away in a Chinese prison. After the news conference, new hope for Ban Ki-moon improving his enforcement of global human rights has been created.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=133189010
1 comment:
Human rights abuses are a serious issues and there should be some global means of addressing them. That being said, the UN really has no way to punish human rights violators. UN security forces have proof ineffective in places like Somalia and Rwanda and the UN has no way to implement economic sanctions other than to say that this or that country is bad and other countries should maybe think about boycotting them. There is the International Criminal Court, but adherence to its standards are volunteer, and, by the way, the US has declared that it is not bound by the court's decisions. We really do need a global system of conflict resolution and justice where all people could seek redress, but it does not seem like that will happen anytime soon.
Post a Comment