Human Rights vs. Sovereignty :: Human Rights Essays

The massive, protracted bombing of Serbia was "the first offensive action for NATO, and the first time that confederate armed potencys were unleashed against a sovereign nation with which the United States was not formally at war or without express authorization by the United Nations credential Council," observes Stephen Presser, professor of law at Northwestern University. "What we were doing in the Balkans is part of the post-Vietnam creation of a new set of doctrines of international law. These doctrines lack clearly defined limits," he warns. "We may be witnessing the opening moves in the forging of a New Global order that fundamentally impairs national sovereignty and allows possessors of superior military force to dictate the basic terms of domestic life to other nations without even the formalities of conquest." In the current issue of Orbis, a quarterly publication of the unknown Policy Research Institute (fpri.org), Presser argues that the real re ason for NATOs bombing of a sovereign nation "appears to start out been to compel Belgrade to cede autonomy, if not territory, to a minority ethnic group. What is there, then, in the United Nations charter or in international law that would authorize our action in the Balkans," he asks, "and what, if any, are the dig and the limits of our new doctrine of Humanitarian Intervention? The UN Charter seeks to secure both the nurtureion of fundamental human rights and the equal rights of nations large and small," Presser notes. "The Charter clearly undertakes to protect the territorial haleness and the sovereignty of individual nations, and seems to preclude interference in a nations domestic affairs unless the Security Council declares a situation a threat to international peace and security and expressly authorizes intervention. While the UN and its agencies expressed official concern about what went on in the Balkans," he affirms, "the Security Council d id not authorize intervention in Kosovo by UN or NATO forces." Presser points out that "a series of international law doctrines wholly outside the UN Charter authorize interference by one state in anothers affairs. These have included military actions to protect ones own citizens who are within anothers borders, and there have been several armed interventions by individual or groups of nations purportedly to protect the rights of minorities in particular or human rights in general, whether or not the individuals to be protected were citizens of the intervening nations.