5th Global Conference
Session Nine (B): International Law: Regulating Conflict or Legitimising Means and Methods?
Chair: Avery Plaw
Morality, Global War on Terrorism and the Emergence of a New Biopolitical Order
Manuel Rodriguez
Department of History, University of Puerto Rico Rio Piedras Campus, Puerto Rico
The mass murder of civilians that occurred during the Vietnam war, exemplified by the My Lai Massacre and the bombing of Hanoi, constituted a watershed in which public American opinion galvanized against the practice of consider civilians as deliberate military targets. In the aftermath of the this war, the United States policymakers have been struggling to define a new policy that would fill the moral gap between the killing of civilians in war and the achievement of military objectives in order to politically legitimize its international policies abroad. In this context, the event of 9/11 set the conditions for the creation of a new biopolitical discourse and practices evidenced in recent conflicts such as the Global War on terrorism and their byproducts: the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Following Michel Foucault’s theoretical framework of biopower, I will explore how new technologies on weaponry made possible to distinguish with deadly precision who will live or who won’t. I will also analyze, The United States posture towards civilian bombing, media coverage of these events, and the U.S. military doctrine regarding civilian casualties, as seen in the strategic use of terms such as “surgical strike” bombing and “collateral damage”. My contention is that such discourse and practices established a new biopolitical order that filled the “moral gap” caused by the indiscriminate killing of civilians during WWII and the Cold War having the effect of minimize the negative impact of the civilian casualties on public opinion and legitimizing in the process the political actions of the United States in the international arena within the context of the Global War on Terrorism.
‘The Regulation of Armed Non-State Actors – Promoting the Application of the Laws of War among National Liberation Movements’
Noelle Higgins
School of Law and Government, Dublin City University, Ireland
The regulation of armed non-state actors is a challenge to the state-centric international law paradigm. The vast majority of international legal instruments which impact on the regulation of armed actors are open to ratification by States only. This leads to the unfortunate situation whereby armed non-state actors often fall outside the remit of international law and their use of force and indeed, the use of force against them, is left unregulated, which can only be to the detriment of combatants and civilians alike. However, there is an emerging trend to formally accommodate non-states actors under international humanitarian law by means of a Deed of Commitment to international humanitarian law instruments, whereby non-state actors agree to be bound by the laws of war and to a verification mechanism under the auspices of an independent organisation, Geneva Call.
This paper seeks to investigate the application of the laws of war by a certain type of armed non-state actor, i.e. national liberation movements. Many national liberation movements have acknowledged their intention to be bound by and apply the laws of war in their conflicts. They have generally done this by means of unilateral declarations and have notified the International Committee of the Red Cross of their intention. Some movements have attempted to accede to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and Additional Protocol I of 1977. More recently, a number of national liberation movements have also signed a deed of Commitment to be bound by the Ottawa Treaty on Land Mines. This paper seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of the legal framework currently in place regulating the use of force by national liberation movements and investigates how the application of the laws of war could be better promoted and encouraged among such group.
Human Rights and Conflict in Darfur
Aoife Duffy
Irish Centre for Human Rights, NUI Galway, Ireland
Civil and political rights violations often run in tandem with economic, social and cultural rights violations. This paper suggests that such violations are multi-layered occurrences that are mutually reinforcing. The essential interrelationship of human rights will be demonstrated through a socio-political analysis of the Darfur crisis. While much has been written on civil and political rights violations, as well as international criminal law and humanitarian law violations in Darfur post-2003, economic, structural and social rights violations and inequalities that have persisted in the provinces of Sudan since independence feature less in the analyses. This paper maps out how these violations have interacted with civil and political violence to lead to the current crisis. Through an examination of pre-conflict flashpoints, where civil and political factors clearly impinge on social, economic and cultural ways of life, it is suggested that the ideological division between first generation and second generation human rights is potentially hazardous. Sudan, as a signatory of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, is expected to refrain from acts of commission, whereby state parties deliberately take retrogressive measures against their citizens, and also has an obligation to protect its citizens from third party violations or acts of omission. This article focuses on the minimum core standards, such as the ability to access basic foodstuffs, basic housing and shelter, access to essential healthcare and the most basic forms of education. The failure of a State party to satisfy these basic minimum standards for a significant portion of the population is a violation of the Covenant.
