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The Fate of Human Rights in the Third World
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 July 2011
Abstract
The new Asian and African states have laid much stress on human rights, but have often not lived up to them. The basic right of self-determination has been limited to colonies only. Democratic institutions have generally given way to authoritarian regimes, often run by the military, with popular participation denied rather than encouraged. The right to life, liberty, and security of person has been grossly violated in the cases of millions of refugees, temporary and permanent, in Africa and the Asian subcontinent. Many hundreds of thousands have been killed in domestic conflicts, as in Indonesia, Nigeria, and Burundi. One of the results is the emergence of a double standard: an all-out African and Asian attack upon the denial of human rights involved in colonialism and racial discrimination, but a refusal to face up to massive violations of human rights in the Third World itself.
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References
1 Barbados, Iraq, Kenya, Lebanon, Libya, Madagascar, Syria, and Tunisia were the Third-World ratifiers as of that date. Thirty-five ratifications are required to bring each of the Covenants into effect, but only twenty-three had been received. The United States had neither signed nor ratified. The Soviet Union and four members of the Soviet bloc, plus Yugoslavia, were among the most recent ratifiers. See E/CN.4/ 907/Rev. 10 (December 13, 1973).
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5 David H. Bayley has rightly pointed out that completeness in empirical researching into human rights in the new states cannot be expected because of the number of these states and their unwillingness to confess to restrictions of human rights. “A survey of the fortunes of liberty in all of these nations would be a task for many men and would require the expenditure of years of effort.” Public Liberties in the New States (Chicago (1964), 5Google Scholar.
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21 John Hatch, “Historical Background of the Refugee Problem,” ibid., 16.
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23 Michael Bowen, Gary Freeman, Kay Miller, Passing By: The United States and Genocide in Burundi (New York, n.d.), 1.
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30 In a Western-oriented “Comparative Study of Freedom” in Freedom at Issue (Freedom House, New York, January-February (1974), 151Google Scholar countries are rated in terms of their political and civil rights and the status of freedom. Of the Asian and African countries dealt with in the present article, only nine are rated as Free, including Israel and Mauritius; only two, Gambia and Botswana, are in Africa. A rating of Partly Free is given to 26, some of which must have crossed the line from Not Free by the slimmest of margins.
31 Sékou Touré, The International Policy of the Democratic Party of Guinea (Re-public of Guinea, n.d. ), VII, 121.
32 See, for example, General Assembly Resolution 2131 (XX), 1965.
33 “The Nigeria-Biafra Crisis,” mimeo (no date or place given; September 1969?).
34 New York Times, July 18, 1973.
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