The World Is Flat

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Is_Flat

The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century is a 2005 book by American political commentator Thomas L. Friedman. It analyzes globalization in the early 21st century, suggesting that the world has a level playing field where countries, companies, and individuals need to remain competitive in a global market. It won the inaugural Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award in 2005.

Summary

In The World Is Flat, Friedman recounts a journey to Bangalore, India, when he realized that globalization had changed core economic concepts. In his opinion, this flattening is a product of the convergence of the personal computer with fiber optic microcables and the rise of workflow software. Friedman termed the period Globalization 3.0, thereby differentiating it from the previous, Globalization 1.0, during which countries and governments were the main protagonists, and Globalization 2.0, during which multinational companies led the way in driving global integration.

Friedman recounts examples of companies based in India and China that "according to him," by providing labor ranging from that of typists and call center operators to accountants and computer programmers, have become integral parts of complex global supply chains; such companies include Dell, AOL, and Microsoft. Friedman's capitalist peace theory called Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention is discussed in the book's penultimate chapter.

Ten flatteners

Friedman defines ten "flatteners" which he sees as leveling the global playing field:

1. Collapse of the Berlin Wall – 11/9/89: Friedman called the flattener "When the walls came down, and the windows came up". The event not only symbolized the end of the Cold War but also allowed people from the other side of the wall to join the economic mainstream. "11/9/89" is a discussion about the Berlin Wall's coming down, the "fall" of communism, and the impact that Windows-powered PCs (personal computers) had on the ability of individuals to create their own content and connect to one another. At that point, the basic platform for the revolution to follow was created: the IBM PC, Windows, a graphical interface for word processing, dial-up modems, a standardized tool for communication, and a global phone network.
2. Netscape – 8/9/95: Netscape went public at the price of $28. Netscape and the Web broadened the audience for the Internet from its roots as a communications medium used primarily by "early adopters and geeks" to something that made the Internet accessible to everyone from five-year-olds to ninety-five-year-olds. The digitization that took place meant that everyday occurrences such as words, files, films, music, and pictures could be accessed and manipulated on a computer screen by all people across the world.
3. Workflow software: This is Friedman's catch-all for the standards and technologies that allowed work to flow. It is the ability of machines to talk to other machines with no humans involved. Friedman believes the first three forces have become a "crude foundation of a whole new global platform for collaboration". This is complemented by the emergence of software protocols (SMTP – simple mail transfer protocol, and HTML – the language that enabled anyone to design and publish documents that could be transmitted to and read on any computer anywhere). The emergence of such software is the "Genesis moment of the flat world" and means "that people can work with other people on more stuff than ever before". This created a global platform for multiple forms of collaboration, on which the next six flatteners depend.
4. Uploading: Uploading involves communities that upload and collaborate on online projects. Examples are open source software, blogs, and Wikipedia. Friedman considers the phenomenon "the most disruptive force of all" and also talks about how this gives individuals the possibility to replace news and the traditional music industry, because of individuals possibility of blogging and podcasting.
5. Outsourcing: Friedman argues that outsourcing has enabled companies to split service and manufacturing activities into components that can be subcontracted and performed in the most efficient, most cost-effective way. This process became easier with the mass distribution of fiber-optic cable during the introduction of the World Wide Web.
6. Offshoring: This is the internal relocation of a company's manufacturing or other processes to a foreign land to take advantage of less costly operations there. China's entrance into the World Trade Organization allowed for greater competition on the playing field. Now such countries as Malaysia, Mexico, and Brazil must compete against China and one another to have businesses offshore to them.
7. Supply-chaining: Friedman compares the modern retail supply chain to a river and describes Wal-Mart as the best example of a company that uses technology to streamline item sales, distribution, and shipping.
8. Insourcing: Friedman uses UPS as a prime example for insourcing, whereby the company's employees perform services – beyond shipping – for another company. For example, UPS repairs Toshiba computers on behalf of Toshiba. The work is done at the UPS hub by UPS employees.
9. Informing: Google and other search engines and Wikipedia are the prime examples. "Never before in the history of the planet have so many people – on their own – had the ability to find so much information about so many things and about so many other people", writes Friedman. He states that the growth of search engines is tremendous; for example, Friedman states, Google is "now processing roughly one billion searches per day, up from 150 million just three years ago".
10. "The Steroids": The steroids are wireless, Voice over IP (VoIP), and file sharing, and are used on personal digital devices like mobile phones, iPods, and personal digital assistants; on instant messaging; and on VoIP phones. Digital, mobile, personal, and virtual as well as all analog content and processes (from entertainment to photography, to word processing) can be digitized and therefore shaped, manipulated, and transmitted; and these processes can be done at high speed with total ease; mobile can be done anywhere and anytime by anyone, and can be done to anyone.

Proposed remedies

Friedman believes that to fight the quiet crisis of a flattening world, the US workforce should keep updating its work skills. Making the workforce more adaptable, Friedman argues, will keep it more employable. He also suggests that the government make it easier for people to switch jobs by making retirement benefits and health insurance less dependent on one's employer and by providing insurance that would partly cover a possible drop in income when changing jobs. Friedman also believes there should be more inspiration for youth to become scientists, engineers, and mathematicians because of a decrease in the percentage of those professionals who are American.

Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention

The Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention, also known as simply the Dell Theory, is a capitalist peace theory and an updated version of Friedman's previous "Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention". According to Friedman:

The Dell Theory stipulates: No two countries that are both part of a major global supply chain, like Dell's, will ever fight a war against each other as long as they are both part of the same global supply chain.

That is, as long as corporations have major supply chain operations in countries other than that corporation's home country, those countries will never engage in armed conflicts. This is because of the economic interdependence between nations that arises when a large corporation (such as Dell) has supply chain operations in multiple global locations and when developing nations (in which supply chain operations commonly take place) are reluctant to give up their newfound wealth.

In his previous book The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Friedman argued that no two nations with a McDonald's franchise had ever gone to war with one another; this was known as the Golden Arches theory. Later, Friedman upgraded that theory into the "Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention" by saying that people or nations do not just want to have a better standard of living as symbolized by a McDonald's franchise in their downtown but also want to have that lump of the labor sector that is created by globalization. That is, developing nations do not want to risk the trust of the multinational companies that venture into their markets and include them in the global supply chain.

Thomas Friedman also warns that the Dell theory should not be interpreted as a guarantee that nations that are deeply involved in global supply chains will not go to war with each other. It means, rather, that the governments of those nations and their citizens will have very heavy economic costs to consider as they contemplate the possibility of war. Such costs include long-term loss of the country's profitable participation in the global supply chain.

This theory relates with how conflict prevention occurred between India and Pakistan in their 2001–2002 nuclear standoff, wherein India was at risk of losing its global partners. The relationship between the People's Republic of China and Taiwan was also cited as an example of that theory: both countries have strong supply relations with each other.

Critical reception

The World Is Flat received generally favorable reviews.The Washington Post called the book an "engrossing tour" and an "enthralling read".

An opposing viewpoint was found in a 2007 Foreign Policy magazine article in which economist Pankaj Ghemawat argued that 90% of the world's phone calls, Web traffic, and investments are local, suggesting that Friedman has grossly exaggerated the significance of the trends he describes: "Despite talk of a new, wired world where information, ideas, money, and people can move around the planet faster than ever before, just a fraction of what we consider globalization actually exists."

Some critics have pointed out that the book is written from an American perspective. Friedman's work history has been mostly with The New York Times, and that may have influenced the way the book was written – some would have preferred a book written in a more "inclusive voice".

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has been critical of Friedman's book:

Friedman is right that there have been dramatic changes in the global economy, in the global landscape; in some directions, the world is much flatter than it has ever been, with those in various parts of the world being more connected than they have ever been, but the world is not flat ... Not only is the world not flat: in many ways, it has been getting less flat.

— Joseph E. Stiglitz (2007): Making Globalization Work. pp. 56–57

Richard Florida expresses similar views in his 2005 Atlantic article "The World Is Spiky".

John Gray, formerly a School Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics and Political Science, wrote another critical review of Friedman's book called "The World Is Round". In it, Gray confirms Friedman's assertion that globalization is making the world more interconnected and, in some parts, richer but disputes the notion that globalization makes the world more peaceful or freer. Gray also declares, "least of all does it make it flat".

Editions

The World is Flat (1st ed.). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2005. ISBN 0-374-29288-4.. The original jacket illustration, reproducing the painting I Told You So by Ed Miracle, depicting a sailing ship falling off the edge of the world, was changed during the print run due to copyright issues. These issues were settled in March 2006.

The World is Flat (Audiobook ed.). Audio Renaissance. 2005. ISBN 1-59397-668-2.

The World is Flat: Updated and Expanded (Release 2.0) (2nd ed.). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2006. ISBN 0-374-29279-5.

The World is Flat: Further Updated and Expanded (Release 3.0) (2nd revised and expanded ed.). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2007. ISBN 978-0-374-29278-2.

Global Rights

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Rights

Global Rights

Formation	1978
Type	NGO
Purpose	Promote and protect the rights of marginalized populations through capacity building
Headquarters	Washington, DC
Location	Afghanistan, Algeria, Brazil, Burundi, Colombia, Congo, Morocco, Nigeria, Peru, Sierra Leone, Uganda
Executive Director	Abiodun Baiyewu
Website	www.globalrights.org

Global Rights is an international human rights capacity-building non-governmental organization (NGO). Founded in Washington, D.C., in 1978 with the name International Human Rights Law Group, the organization changed its name to Global Rights: Partners for Justice in 2003 on the occasion of its 25th anniversary. In December 2014 it shut its Washington headquarters and devolved the center of its operations to its country office in Nigeria and Burundi from where the organization continues to work with local activists in Africa to promote and protect the rights of marginalized populations. It provided technical assistance and training to enable local partners to document and expose human rights abuses, conduct community outreach and mobilization, advocate for legal and policy reform, and provide legal and paralegal services.

Global Rights amplifies the voices of grassroots activists and organizations, and builds their capacity to address inequalities and human rights violations and bring their struggles to the attention of regional and international institutions such as the United Nations and African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights, which develop and enforce human rights standards.

The organization's model works and builds impact from the broad base of society upwards, teaching and training coalitions, organizations and individuals with a participatory approach that fosters long-term transparency and sustainable change. Global Rights is distinctive in its grass roots approach that strengthens activists to document and expose human rights abuses, conduct community outreach and mobilization, advocate for legal and policy reform, and provide legal and paralegal services. Their goals is to increase access to justice for poor and marginalized groups, promote women’s rights and gender equality, and advance ethnic and racial equality. They also work through special initiatives for The protection of the Rights of Civilians in Armed Conflicts and natural resources and human rights.

Global Rights’ programs address governance failures that exacerbate the disenfranchisement and the violations of the rights of the poor and marginalized, women and victims of discrimination. While the need for action is universal, no one model is uniformly applicable and all programs are customized to local needs and conditions.

Thematic Programs

Source:

Access to justice, as defined by the United Nations Development Program are understood and accepted within the international human rights community, this means that laws and remedies must be just, equitable, and sensitive to the needs of the poor and marginalized. At the same time, difficulties encountered by vulnerable populations in understanding and asserting their legal rights require the attention of legal institutions. Equal access to justice, whether through the courts or other legal mechanisms, therefore creates a crucial precondition for broad-based prosperity and security under the rule of law.

Where there is a real or perceived breakdown of rule of law, and where political, legal, economic, and institutional biases and barriers marginalize segments of the population, equal access to justice is not a given.

Global Rights therefore focuses on vulnerable populations and their legal challenges. They help the poor and marginalized access legal systems, thereby increasing governmental accountability and public faith in the rule of law. Natural Resources and Human Rights For extractive host communities, expectations of a better life are too often replaced by an overwhelming sense of injustice. They lose their lands and livelihoods, grapple with pollution affecting their environment and health, see women disproportionately affected, and have little or no say in the processes that determine if and how their resource rich lands will be exploited. Their compounding frustrations are often expressed through violence, contributing to increased insecurity.

Global Rights therefore partners with civil society organizations and extractive host communities to strengthen their ability to prevent, monitor and document human rights violations and abuses, and to design and implement engagement and advocacy strategies with the government, companies, and other identified stakeholders.

Women’s Rights and Gender Equality Women's rights and gender equality is at the core of Global Rights' work. Our particular emphasis on the rights of women is woven through all of our initiatives and also as standalone program. We have been working in Northern Nigeria for over a decade by building the capacity of local activists to provide community based paralegal services (legal first aid) to indigent women who are particularly vulnerable given the paucity of access to justice in the region. Our paralegal services partners work alongside indigent women to ensure that they can understand and assert their rights in cases involving issues such as forced marriage, child custody, domestic and sexual violence.

Top priorities on our women’s rights and gender equality program are sexual and gender based violence, women’s participation in democratic life and their access to socio-economic opportunities, ensuring gender mainstreaming in every facet of national life.

Security and Human Rights In recent years, both the nature and extent of human rights violations have significantly worsened concurrent with rising insecurity and violence. Most of these violations play out in the theatre of the ongoing insurgency and the counter-terrorism operations of security forces, with limited opportunities for redress for victims. In this militarized situation, there is little state accountability and vulnerable populations have become victims of indiscriminate attacks by both the military and insurgents, who act without adherence to the norms of the standards care for civilians. Global Rights therefore works with vulnerable groups and communities to demand accountability of security forces and ensure the rights of citizens are promoted and protected. We do this by promoting adherence to the rule of law even in asymmetrical warfare, amplifying the voices of indigent communities caught between government security forces and insurgents, and are particularly at risk of having their basic human rights violated, given the often long histories of weak governance, inadequate resources and lack of basic understanding of their rights; and how to hold government accountable for their protection.

Global Rights believes local knowledge and expertise are essential to successful administration. Their local partners know the communities in which they work, are familiar with their cultures and traditions, and were already active in promoting the legal rights of the poor and marginalized. Global Rights recognized that long-term, systemic change could occur only if stakeholders themselves were involved. By transferring knowledge and skills to local partners, Global Rights ensures that they can maintain a culture of participatory governance and human rights, long after their projects are over.

Executive Director

Gay McDougall was Executive Director of Global Rights from 1994 to 2014. She was one of 16 commissioners on the Independent Electoral Commission helping to ensure fair elections after the fall of apartheid in South Africa in 1994. In her time Global Rights has done work in Cambodia helping to address the lack of legal services since the Khmer Rouge killed the bulk of the country's attorneys.

Abiodun Baiyewu has served as the organization's Executive Director from October 2018 till date<https://www.globalrights.org/ng/member/abiodun-baiyewu/>. She has led the organization's initiatives in Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, leading initiatives such as Nigeria Mourns<https://www.nigeriamourns.org/>, Rape is A Crime<https://rapeisacrime.org/>, the West African Mining Host Communities Indaba, and served as the Co-Chair of the African Coalition for Corporate Accountability - an initiative of the organization.

Political system

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_system

In political science, a political system means the form of political organization that can be observed, recognised or otherwise declared by a society or state.

It defines the process for making official government decisions. It usually comprizes the governmental legal and economic system, social and cultural system, and other state and government specific systems. However, this is a very simplified view of a much more complex system of categories involving the questions of who should have authority and what the government influence on its people and economy should be.

Along with a basic sociological and socio-anthropological classification, political systems can be classified on a social-cultural axis relative to the liberal values prevalent in the Western world, where the spectrum is represented as a continuum between political systems recognized as democracies, totalitarian regimes and, sitting between these two, authoritarian regimes, with a variety of hybrid regimes; and monarchies may be also included as a standalone entity or as a hybrid system of the main three.

Definition

According to David Easton, "A political system can be designated as the interactions through which values are authoritatively allocated for a society". Political system refers broadly to the process by which laws are made and public resources allocated in a society, and to the relationships among those involved in making these decisions.

Basic classification

Social anthropologists generally recognize several kinds of political systems, often differentiating between ones that they consider uncentralized and ones they consider centralized.

• Uncentralized systems
  • Band society
    • Small family group, no larger than an extended family or clan; it has been defined as consisting of no more than 30 to 50 individuals.
    • A band can cease to exist if only a small group walks out.
  • Tribe
    • Generally larger, consisting of many families. Tribes have more social institutions, such as a chief or elders.
    • More permanent than bands. Many tribes are sub-divided into bands.
• Centralized governments
  • Chiefdom
    • More complex than a tribe or a band society, and less complex than a state or a civilization
    • Characterized by pervasive inequality and centralization of authority.
    • A single lineage/family of the elite class becomes the ruling elite of the chiefdom
    • Complex chiefdoms have two or even three tiers of political hierarchy.
    • "An autonomous political unit comprising a number of villages or communities under the permanent control of a paramount chief"
  • Sovereign state
    • A sovereign state is a state with a permanent population, a defined territory, a government and the capacity to enter into relations with other sovereign states.
• Supranational political systems
  • Supranational political systems are created by independent nations to reach a common goal or gain strength from forming an alliance.
• Empires
  • Empires are widespread states consisting of people of different ethnicities under a single rule. Empires - such as the Romans, or British - often made considerable progress in ways of political structures, creating and building city infrastructures, and maintaining civility within the diverse communities. Because of the intricate organization of the empires, they were often able to hold a large majority of power on a universal level.
• Leagues
  • Leagues are international organizations composed of states coming together for a single common purpose. In this way, leagues are different from empires, as they only seek to fulfill a single goal. Often leagues are formed on the brink of a military or economic downfall. Meetings and hearings are conducted in a neutral location with representatives of all involved nations present.

Western socio-cultural paradigmatic-centric analysis

Further information: List of forms of government

The sociological interest in political systems is figuring out who holds power within the relationship between the government and its people and how the government’s power is used. According to Yale professor Juan José Linz there a three main types of political systems today: democracies, totalitarian regimes and, sitting between these two, authoritarian regimes (with hybrid regimes). Another modern classification system includes monarchies as a standalone entity or as a hybrid system of the main three. Scholars generally refer to a dictatorship as either a form of authoritarianism or totalitarianism.

Democracy

Further information: Types of democracy

Democracy (from Ancient Greek: δημοκρατία, romanized: dēmokratía, dēmos 'people' and kratos 'rule') is a system of government in which state power is vested in the people or the general population of a state. Under a minimalist definition of democracy, rulers are elected through competitive elections while more expansive definitions link democracy to guarantees of civil liberties and human rights in addition to competitive elections.

Authoritarianism

Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in democracy, separation of powers, civil liberties, and the rule of law. Political scientists have created many typologies describing variations of authoritarian forms of government. Authoritarian regimes may be either autocratic or oligarchic and may be based upon the rule of a party or the military. States that have a blurred boundary between democracy and authoritarianism have some times been characterized as "hybrid democracies", "hybrid regimes" or "competitive authoritarian" states.

Totalitarian

Totalitarianism is a political system and a form of government that prohibits opposition political parties, disregards and outlaws the political claims of individual and group opposition to the state, and controls the public sphere and the private sphere of society. In the field of political science, totalitarianism is the extreme form of authoritarianism, wherein all socio-political power is held by a dictator, who also controls the national politics and the peoples of the nation with continual propaganda campaigns that are broadcast by state-controlled and by friendly private mass communications media.

Monarchy

A monarchy is a form of government in which a person, the monarch, reigns as head of state for life or until abdication, usually a hereditary position acquired by some form of nominal divine right or blessing, or religious sanction. The political legitimacy and authority of the monarch may vary from restricted and largely symbolic (constitutional monarchy), to fully autocratic (absolute monarchy), and can span across executive, legislative, and judicial domains.

The succession of monarchs has mostly been hereditary, often building dynasties. However, elective and self-proclaimed monarchies (in the sense of monarchical states) have also often occurred throughout history. Aristocrats, though not inherent to monarchies, often function as the pool of persons from which the monarch is chosen, and to fill the constituting institutions (e.g. diet and court), giving many monarchies oligarchic elements.

Hybrid

Further information: Democratization and Democratic backsliding

A hybrid regime^[a] is a type of political system often created as a result of an incomplete democratic transition from an authoritarian regime to a democratic one (or vice versa). Hybrid regimes are categorized as having a combination of autocratic features with democratic ones and can simultaneously hold political repressions and regular elections. Hybrid regimes are commonly found in developing countries with abundant natural resources such as petro-states. Although these regimes experience civil unrest, they may be relatively stable and tenacious for decades at a time. There has been a rise in hybrid regimes since the end of the Cold War.

The term hybrid regime arises from a polymorphic view of political regimes that opposes the dichotomy of autocracy or democracy. Modern scholarly analysis of hybrid regimes focuses attention on the decorative nature of democratic institutions (elections do not lead to a change of power, different media broadcast the government point of view and the opposition in parliament votes the same way as the ruling party, among others), from which it is concluded that democratic backsliding, a transition to authoritarianism is the most prevalent basis of hybrid regimes. Some scholars also contend that hybrid regimes may imitate a full dictatorship.

Marxist/Dialectical materialistic analysis

See also: Dialectical materialism

19th-century German-born philosopher Karl Marx analysed that the political systems of "all" state-societies are the dictatorship of one social class, vying for its interests against that of another one; with which class oppressing which other class being, in essence, determined by the developmental level of that society, and its repercussions implicated thereof, as the society progresses through the passage of time. In capitalist societies, this characterises as the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or capitalist class, in which the economic and political system is designed to work in their interests collectively as a class, over those of the proletariat or working class.

Marx devised this theory by adapting his forerunner-contemporary Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's notion of dialectics into the framework of materialism.

International human rights law

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_human_rights_law

International human rights law (IHRL) is the body of international law designed to promote human rights on social, regional, and domestic levels. As a form of international law, international human rights law is primarily made up of treaties, agreements between sovereign states intended to have binding legal effect between the parties that have agreed to them; and customary international law. Other international human rights instruments, while not legally binding, contribute to the implementation, understanding and development of international human rights law and have been recognized as a source of political obligation.

International human rights law, which governs the conduct of a state towards its people in peacetime is traditionally seen as distinct from international humanitarian law which governs the conduct of states and non-state armed groups during conflict, although the two branches of law are complementary and in some ways overlap.

A more systemic perspective explains that international humanitarian law represents a function of international human rights law; it includes general norms that apply to everyone at all time as well as specialized norms which apply to certain situations such as armed conflict between both state and military occupation (i.e. IHL) or to certain groups of people including refugees (e.g. the 1951 Refugee Convention), children (the Convention on the Rights of the Child), and prisoners of war (the 1949 Third Geneva Convention).

United Nations system

The General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action in 1993, in terms of which the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights was established.

International Human Rights Day 2018 (45346105045)

In 2006, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights was replaced with the United Nations Human Rights Council for the enforcement of international human rights law. The changes prophesied a more structured organization along with a requirement to review human rights cases every four years. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 10 also targets the promotion of legislation and policies towards reducing inequality.

International Bill of Human Rights

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Main article: Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Eleanor Roosevelt UDHR

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a UN General Assembly declaration that does not in form create binding international human rights law. Many legal scholars cite the UDHR as evidence of customary international law.

More broadly, the UDHR has become an authoritative human rights reference. It has provided the basis for subsequent international human rights instruments that form non-binding, but ultimately authoritative international human rights law.

International human rights treaties

Main article: International human rights instruments

Besides the adoption in 1966 of the two wide-ranging Covenants that form part of the International Bill of Human Rights (namely the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights), other treaties have been adopted at the international level. These are generally known as human rights instruments. Some of the most significant include the following:

• 

  Processes for becoming a state party to a treaty

  the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPCG) (adopted 1948 and entered into force in 1951);
• the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (CSR) (adopted in 1951 and entered into force in 1954);
• the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) (adopted in 1965 and entered into force in 1969);
• the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) (entered into force in 1981);
• the United Nations Convention Against Torture (CAT) (adopted in 1984 and entered into force in 1987);
• the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) (adopted in 1989 and entered into force in 1990);^[12]
• the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families (ICRMW) (adopted in 1990 and entered into force in 2003);
• the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) (entered into force on 3 May 2008); and
• the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (ICPPED) (adopted in 2006 and entered into force in 2010).

Regional protection and institutions

Regional systems of international human rights law supplement and complement national and international human rights law by protecting and promoting human rights in specific areas of the world. There are three key regional human rights instruments which have established human rights law on a regional basis:

• the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights for Africa of 1981, in force since 1986;
• the American Convention on Human Rights for the Americas of 1969, in force since 1978; and
• the European Convention on Human Rights for Europe of 1950, in force since 1953.

Americas and Europe

Main article: Human rights in the United States

The Organisation of American States and the Council of Europe, like the UN, have adopted treaties (albeit with weaker implementation mechanisms) containing catalogues of economic, social and cultural rights, in addition to the aforementioned conventions dealing mostly with civil and political rights:

• the European Social Charter for Europe of 1961, in force since 1965 (whose complaints mechanism, created in 1995 under an Additional Protocol, has been in force since 1998); and
• the Protocol of San Salvador to the ACHR for the Americas of 1988, in force since 1999.

Africa

Main article: Human rights in Africa

The African Union (AU) is a supranational union consisting of 55 African countries. Established in 2001, the AU's purpose is to help secure Africa's democracy, human rights, and a sustainable economy, in particular by bringing an end to intra-African conflict and creating an effective and productive common market.

The Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights is the region's principal human rights instrument, which emerged under the aegis of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) (since replaced by the African Union). The intention to draw up the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights was announced in 1979. The Charter was unanimously approved at the OAU's 1981 Assembly.

Pursuant to Article 63 (whereby it was to "come into force three months after the reception by the Secretary General of the instruments of ratification or adherence of a simple majority" of the OAU's member states), the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights came into effect on 21 October 1986, in honour of which 21 October was declared African Human Rights Day.

The African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR) is a quasi-judicial organ of the African Union, tasked with promoting and protecting human rights and collective (peoples') rights throughout the African continent, as well as with interpreting the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, and considering individual complaints of violations of the Charter. The commission has three broad areas of responsibility:

1. promoting human and peoples' rights;
2. protecting human and peoples' rights; and
3. interpreting the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights.

In pursuit of these goals, the commission is mandated to "collect documents, undertake studies and researches on African problems in the field of human and peoples' rights, organise seminars, symposia and conferences, disseminate information, encourage national and local institutions concerned with human and peoples' rights and, should the case arise, give its views or make recommendations to governments."

With the creation of the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights (under a protocol to the Charter which was adopted in 1998 and entered into force in January 2004), the commission will have the additional task of preparing cases for submission to the Court's jurisdiction. In a July 2004 decision, the AU Assembly resolved that the future Court on Human and Peoples' Rights would be integrated with the African Court of Justice.

The Court of Justice of the African Union is intended to be the "principal judicial organ of the Union". Although it has not yet been established, it is intended to take over the duties of the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, as well as to act as the supreme court of the African Union, interpreting all necessary laws and treaties. The Protocol establishing the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights entered into force in January 2004, but its merging with the Court of Justice has delayed its establishment. The Protocol establishing the Court of Justice will come into force when ratified by fifteen countries.

There are many countries in Africa accused of human rights violations by the international community and NGOs.

Inter-American system

See also: Category:Human rights in North America and Category:Human rights in South America

The Organization of American States (OAS) is an international organization headquartered in Washington, DC. Its members are the thirty-five independent nation-states of the Americas.

Over the course of the 1990s, with the end of the Cold War, the return to democracy in Latin America, and the thrust toward globalisation, the OAS made major efforts to reinvent itself to fit the new context. Its stated priorities now include the following:

• strengthening democracy;
• working for peace;
• protecting human rights;
• combating corruption;
• the rights of indigenous peoples; and
• promoting sustainable development.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) is an autonomous organ of the Organization of American States, also based in Washington, D.C. Along with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, based in San José, Costa Rica, it is one of the bodies that comprise the inter-American system for the promotion and protection of human rights. The IACHR is a permanent body which meets in regular and special sessions several times a year to examine allegations of human rights violations in the hemisphere. Its human rights duties stem from three documents:

1. the OAS Charter;
2. the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man; and
3. the American Convention on Human Rights.

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights was established in 1979 with the purpose of enforcing and interpreting the provisions of the American Convention on Human Rights. Its two main functions are therefore adjudicatory and advisory:

• Under the former, it hears and rules on the specific cases of human rights violations referred to it.
• Under the latter, it issues opinions on matters of legal interpretation brought to its attention by other OAS bodies or member states.

Many countries in the Americas, including Colombia, Cuba, Mexico and Venezuela, have been accused of human rights violations.

European system

Main article: Human rights in Europe

The Council of Europe, founded in 1949, is the oldest organisation working for European integration. It is an international organisation with legal personality recognised under public international law, and has observer status at the United Nations. The seat of the council is in Strasbourg in France.

The Council of Europe is responsible for both the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights. These institutions bind the council's members to a code of human rights which, although strict, is more lenient than that of the UN Charter on human rights.

The council also promotes the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages and the European Social Charter. Membership is open to all European states which seek European integration, accept the principle of the rule of law, and are able and willing to guarantee democracy, fundamental human rights and freedoms.

The Council of Europe is separate from the European Union, but the latter is expected to accede to the European Convention on Human Rights. The Council includes all the member states of European Union. The EU also has a separate human rights document, the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.

The European Convention on Human Rights has since 1950 defined and guaranteed human rights and fundamental freedoms in Europe. All 47 member states of the Council of Europe have signed this convention, and are therefore under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. In order to prevent torture and inhuman or degrading treatment, the Committee for the Prevention of Torture was established.

The Council of Europe also adopted the Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings in May 2005, for protection against human trafficking and sexual exploitation, the Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse in October 2007, and the Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence in May 2011.

The European Court of Human Rights is the only international court with jurisdiction to deal with cases brought by individuals rather than states. In early 2010, the court had a backlog of over 120,000 cases and a multi-year waiting list. About one out of every twenty cases submitted to the court is considered admissible. In 2007, the court issued 1,503 verdicts. At the current rate of proceedings, it would take 46 years for the backlog to clear.

Monitoring, implementation and enforcement

There is currently no international court to administer international human rights law, but quasi-judicial bodies exist under some UN treaties (like the Human Rights Committee under the ICCPR). The International Criminal Court (ICC) has jurisdiction over the crime of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The European Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights enforce regional human rights law.

Although these same international bodies also hold jurisdiction over cases regarding international humanitarian law, it is crucial to recognise, as discussed above, that the two frameworks constitute different legal regimes.

The United Nations human rights bodies do have some quasi-legal enforcement mechanisms. These include the treaty bodies attached to the seven currently active treaties, and the United Nations Human Rights Council complaints procedures, with Universal Periodic Review and United Nations Special Rapporteur (known as the 1235 and 1503 mechanisms respectively).

The enforcement of international human rights law is the responsibility of the nation state; it is the primary responsibility of the State to make the human rights of its citizens a reality.

In practice, many human rights are difficult to enforce legally, due to the absence of consensus on the application of certain rights, the lack of relevant national legislation or of bodies empowered to take legal action to enforce them.

In over 110 countries, national human rights institutions (NHRIs) have been set up to protect, promote or monitor human rights with jurisdiction in a given country. Although not all NHRIs are compliant with the Paris Principles, the number and effect of these institutions is increasing.

The Paris Principles were defined at the first International Workshop on National Institutions for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights in Paris from 7 to 9 October 1991, and adopted by UN Human Rights Commission Resolution 1992/54 of 1992 and General Assembly Resolution 48/134 of 1993. The Paris Principles list a number of responsibilities for NHRIs.

Universal jurisdiction

Main article: universal jurisdiction

Universal jurisdiction is a controversial principle in international law, whereby states claim criminal jurisdiction over people whose alleged crimes were committed outside the boundaries of the prosecuting state, regardless of nationality, country of residence or any other relationship to the prosecuting country. The state backs its claim on the grounds that the crime committed is considered a crime against all, which any state is authorized to punish. The concept of universal jurisdiction is therefore closely linked to the idea that certain international norms are erga omnes, or owed to the entire world community, as well as the concept of jus cogens.

In 1993, Belgium passed a "law of universal jurisdiction" to give its courts jurisdiction over crimes against humanity in other countries. In 1998, Augusto Pinochet was arrested in London following an indictment by Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón under the universal-jurisdiction principle. Adolf Eichmann who was the former Nazi SS lieutenant colonel accused of overseeing the transfer of Jews to Holocaust death camps also persecuted in Israel in 1961. Adolf was living in Argentina after the war. The principle is supported by Amnesty International and other human rights organisations, which believe that certain crimes pose a threat to the international community as a whole, and that the community has a moral duty to act.

Others, like Henry Kissinger, argue that "widespread agreement that human rights violations and crimes against humanity must be prosecuted has hindered active consideration of the proper role of international courts. Universal jurisdiction risks creating universal tyranny—that of judges".

Iron law of oligarchy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy 

Robert Michels, the sociologist who devised the iron law of oligarchy

The iron law of oligarchy is a political theory first developed by the German-born Italian sociologist Robert Michels in his 1911 book Political Parties. It asserts that rule by an elite, or oligarchy, is inevitable as an "iron law" within any democratic organization as part of the "tactical and technical necessities" of the organization.

Michels' theory states that all complex organizations, regardless of how democratic they are when started, eventually develop into oligarchies. Michels observed that since no sufficiently large and complex organization can function purely as a direct democracy, power within an organization will always get delegated to individuals within that group, elected or otherwise. As he put it in Political Parties, "It is organization which gives dominion of the elected over the electors. [...] Who says organization, says oligarchy."

In 1911 using anecdotes from the histories of political parties and trade unions struggling to operate democratically, Michels considered his argument applicable to representative democracy at large. He believed that "[h]istorical evolution mocks all the prophylactic measures that have been adopted for the prevention of oligarchy."

According to Michels, all organizations eventually come to be run by a leadership class who often function as paid administrators, executives, spokespersons or political strategists for the organization. Far from being servants of the masses, Michels argues this leadership class, rather than the organization's membership, will inevitably grow to dominate the organization's power structures. By controlling who has access to information, those in power can centralize their power successfully, often with little accountability, due to the apathy, indifference and non-participation most rank-and-file members have in relation to their organization's decision-making processes.

Michels argues that democratic attempts to hold leadership positions accountable are prone to fail, since with power comes the ability to reward loyalty, the ability to control information about the organization, and the ability to control what procedures the organization follows when making decisions. All of these mechanisms can be used to strongly influence the outcome of any decisions made 'democratically' by members.

Michels stated that the official goal of representative democracy, of eliminating elite rule, was impossible; that representative democracy is a façade legitimizing the rule of a particular elite; and that elite rule, which he referred to as oligarchy, is inevitable.

Michels later migrated to Italy and joined Benito Mussolini's Fascist Party, as he believed that this was the next legitimate step of modern societies.

Michels' thesis became popular once more in the postwar United States with the publication of Union Democracy: The Internal Politics of the International Typographical Union (1956) by Lipset, Trow, and Coleman.

History

In 1911, Robert Michels argued that, paradoxically, the socialist parties of Europe, despite their democratic ideology and provisions for mass participation, seemed to be dominated by their leaders just like traditional conservative parties. Michels' conclusion was that the problem lay in the very nature of organizations. The more liberal and democratic modern era allowed the formation of organizations with innovative and revolutionary goals, but as such organizations become more complex, they became less and less democratic and revolutionary. Michels formulated the "iron law of oligarchy": "Who says organization, says oligarchy."

He later became an important ideologue of Benito Mussolini's fascist regime in Italy, teaching economics at the University of Perugia.

Reasons

Michels stressed several factors that underlie the iron law of oligarchy. Darcy K. Leach summarized them briefly as: "Bureaucracy happens. If bureaucracy happens, power rises. Power corrupts." Any large organization, Michels pointed out, has to create a bureaucracy in order to maintain its efficiency as it becomes larger—many decisions have to be made daily that cannot be made by large numbers of disorganized people. For the organization to function effectively, centralization has to occur and power will end up in the hands of a few. Those few—the oligarchy—will use all means necessary to preserve and further increase their power.

According to Michels, this process is further compounded as delegation is necessary in any large organization, as thousands—sometimes hundreds of thousands—of members cannot make decisions via participatory democracy. This has to date been dictated by the lack of technological means for large numbers of people to meet and debate, and also by matters related to crowd psychology, as Michels argued that people feel a need to be led. Delegation, however, leads to specialization—to the development of knowledge bases, skills and resources among a leadership—which further alienates the leadership from the rank and file and entrenches the leadership in office. Michels also argued that for leaders in organizations, "The desire to dominate [...] is universal. These are elementary psychological facts." Thus, they were prone to seek power and dominance.

Bureaucratization and specialization are the driving processes behind the iron law. They result in the rise of a group of professional administrators in a hierarchical organization, which in turn leads to the rationalization and routinization of authority and decision-making, a process described first and perhaps best by Max Weber, later by John Kenneth Galbraith, and to a lesser and more cynical extent by the Peter principle.

Bureaucracy by design leads to centralization of power by the leaders. Leaders also have control over sanctions and rewards. They tend to promote those who share their opinions, which inevitably leads to self-perpetuating oligarchy. People achieve leadership positions because they have above-average political skill (see Charismatic authority). As they advance in their careers, their power and prestige increases. Leaders control the information that flows down the channels of communication, censoring what they do not want the rank-and-file to know. Leaders will also dedicate significant resources to persuade the rank-and-file of the rightness of their views. This is compatible with most societies: people are taught to obey those in positions of authority. Therefore, the rank and file show little initiative, and wait for the leaders to exercise their judgment and issue directives to follow.

Implications

The "iron law of oligarchy" states that all forms of organization, regardless of how democratic they may be at the start, will eventually and inevitably develop oligarchic tendencies, thus making true democracy practically and theoretically impossible, especially in large groups and complex organizations. The relative structural fluidity in a small-scale democracy succumbs to "social viscosity" in a large-scale organization. According to the "iron law", democracy and large-scale organization are incompatible.

Examples and exceptions

An example that Michels used in his book was Germany's Social Democratic Party.

Labour unions and Lipset's Union Democracy

One of the best known exceptions to the iron law of oligarchy is the now defunct International Typographical Union, described by Seymour Martin Lipset in his 1956 book, Union Democracy. Lipset suggests a number of factors that existed in the ITU that are supposedly responsible for countering this tendency toward bureaucratic oligarchy. The first and perhaps most important has to do with the way the union was founded. Unlike many other unions (e.g., the CIO's United Steel Workers of America (USWA), and numerous other craft unions) which were organized from the top down, the ITU had a number of large, strong, local unions who valued their autonomy, which existed long before the international was formed. This local autonomy was strengthened by the economy of the printing industry which operated in largely local and regional markets, with little competition from other geographical areas. Large locals continued to jealously guard this autonomy against encroachments by international officers. Second, the existence of factions helped place a check on the oligarchic tendencies that existed at the national headquarters. Leaders that are unchecked tend to develop larger salaries and more sumptuous lifestyles, making them unwilling to go back to their previous jobs. But with a powerful out faction ready to expose profligacy, no leaders dared take overly generous personal remuneration. These two factors were compelling in the ITU case.

Lipset and his collaborators also cite a number of other factors which are specific to craft unions in general and the printing crafts in particular, including the homogeneity of the membership, with respect to their work and lifestyles, their identification with their craft, their more middle class lifestyle and pay. For this latter point he draws upon Aristotle who argued that a democratic polity was most likely where there was a large, stable middle class, and the extremes of wealth and poverty were not great. Finally, the authors note the irregular work hours which led shopmates to spend more of their leisure time together. These latter factors are less persuasive, since they do not apply to many industrial forms of organization, where the greatest amount of trade union democracy has developed in recent times.

University student unions

Titus Gregory uses Michels "iron law" to describe how the democratic centralist structure of the Canadian Federation of Students, consisting of individual student unions, encourages oligarchy.

Titus Gregory argues that university students' unions today "exhibit both oligarchical and democratic tendencies". Unlike trade unions they have an ideologically diverse membership, and frequently have competitive democratic elections covered by independent campus media who guard their independence. These factors are strongly democratizing influences, creating conditions similar to those described by Lipset about the ITU. However, Gregory argues student unions can also be highly undemocratic and oligarchical as a result of the transient membership of the students involved. Every year between one quarter and one half of the membership turns over, and Gregory argues this creates a situation where elected student leaders become dependent on student union staff for institutional memory and guidance. Since many students' unions extract compulsory fees from their transient membership, and many smaller colleges and/or commuter campus can extract this money with little accountability, oligarchical behaviour becomes encouraged. For example, Gregory points out how often student union election rules "operate under tyrannical rules and regulations" that are used frequently by those in power to disqualify or exclude would-be election challengers. Gregory concludes that students' unions can "resist the iron law of oligarchy" if they have "an engaged student community", an "independent student media", a "strong tradition of freedom of information", and an "unbiased elections authority" capable of administrating elections fairly.

Participatory subgroups and countervailing power

Jonathan Fox's 1992 study focuses on how participatory subgroups within a membership organization can generate a degree of countervailing power that can at least temporarily mitigate the "iron law of oligarchy."

Wikipedia

Cumulative growth in Wikipedia policy (red/solid line) and non-policy (green/dashed line) pages, overlaid on active population (blue/dotted line). Policy creation precedes the arrival of the majority of users, while the creation of non-policy pages, usually in the form of essay and commentary, lags the growth in population.

Research by Bradi Heaberlin and Simon DeDeo has found that the evolution of Wikipedia's network of norms over time is consistent with the iron law of oligarchy. Their quantitative analysis is based on data-mining over a decade of article and user information.

It shows the emergence of an oligarchy derived from competencies in five significant "clusters": administration, article quality, collaboration, formatting, and content policy. Heaberlin and DeDeo note: "The encyclopedia's core norms address universal principles, such as neutrality, verifiability, civility, and consensus. The ambiguity and interpretability of these abstract concepts may drive them to decouple from each other over time."

Adolf Gasser's proposed solution

In his book Gemeindefreiheit als Rettung Europas, published in 1943 (first edition in German) with a second edition in 1947 (in German), Adolf Gasser stated the following requirements for a representative democracy in order to remain stable, unaffected by Michels' iron law of oligarchy:

• Society has to be built up from bottom to top. As a consequence, society is built up by people, who are free and have the power to defend themselves with weapons.
• These free people join or form local communities. These local communities are independent, which includes financial independence, and they are free to determine their own rules.
• Local communities join together into a higher unit e.g. a canton.
• There is no hierarchical bureaucracy.
• There is competition between these local communities e.g. on services delivered or on taxes.

Reception

In 1954, Maurice Duverger expressed general agreement with Michels's thesis. In a 1953 study, C. W. Cassinelli argued that Michels's main thesis has "a high degree of general credibility", but argued that the statement of the theory was "inadequate" and that Michels's evidence for the theory was "inconclusive". In a 1966 article, political scientist Dankwart Rustow described Michels's thesis as "a brilliantly fallacious argument a fortiori". Rustow stated that the experience of the social democratic parties of Europe could not be generalized for other political parties. Josiah Ober argues in Democracy and Knowledge that the experience of ancient Athens shows Michels's argument does not hold true; Athens was a large participatory democracy, yet it outperformed its hierarchical rivals.

According to a 2000 article, "To the extent that contemporary scholars ask at all about social movement organizations, they tend to reinforce Michels’s claim that bureaucratized, established organizations are more conservative in goals and tactics, though usually without explicitly engaging the iron law debate." The study however found that the iron law was malleable, and that established labor unions could under certain circumstances revitalize and experience radical change in line with its members' desires.

According to a 2005 study, "Despite almost a century of scholarly debate on this question ... there is still no consensus about whether and under what conditions Michels’s claim holds true." One criticism is that power does not necessarily corrupt the leadership of organizations, and that the structure of organizations can check leaders. Another criticism is that Michels does not outline the conditions under which his thesis could be falsified nor a clear definition of what constitutes oligarchy.

The method that Michels uses has sometimes been characterized as a "crucial" or "least likely" case study, because he chose a case (the German Social Democratic Party) that is least likely to support his theory (because the German Social Democratic Party was an institution that had a democratic process and ideology).

Other

The iron law of oligarchy is similar to the concept in The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, a fictional book in the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) by George Orwell, who had written a review of James Burnham's book The Managerial Revolution several years earlier. That fictional book begins:

Throughout recorded time, and probably since the end of the Neolithic Age, there have been three kinds of people in the world, the High, the Middle, and the Low. They have been subdivided in many ways, they have borne countless different names, and their relative numbers, as well as their attitude towards one another, have varied from age to age: but the essential structure of society has never altered. Even after enormous upheavals and seemingly irrevocable changes, the same pattern has always reasserted itself, just as a gyroscope will always return to equilibrium, however far it is pushed one way or the other.

Some authors consider a special mechanism, wherein the high and the low stratum of society are taken to conspire as to dominate the middle one, to be a comparable notion by political theorist Bertrand de Jouvenel.