In
Crimes Against
Humanity lawyer and human
rights
campaigner Geoffrey Robertson combines a passion for justice, an honest
acceptance of unpleasant realities, and skill in explaining complex
legal issues. He provides an introduction to the history and philosophy of human
rights: to the various treaties and covenants, their enforcement or lack
thereof, and the slow progress towards their incorporation into
international law. This involves a fair bit of legal detail, but he makes this both
accessible and interesting to the lay reader.
Robertson begins with a brief history of human rights in two chapters. The
first starts with the idea of natural rights, progresses through the American
and French Revolutions and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the nineteenth
century aversion to natural rights, and H.G. Wells, and ends with the 1948
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The second traces the inglorious
history of human rights in the post-war period, looking at the ineffectual
Human Rights Commission (responsible for enforcing the UDHR) and Human Rights
Committee (set up with the later Civil Rights Covenant). Regionally the
European Convention and the European
Court of Human Rights have been more
successful, while the African Charter is a sad joke. Realpolitik —
such diverse factors as China''s
seat on the UN Security Council and CNN television broadcasts — is unavoidable
and successes have been marred by failure in Rwanda and Srebrenica.
Going into more detail, Robertson then explains the gradual progress of some
of the rights in the various treaties and covenants towards at least notionally
enforceable international law. He explains the bases for such law:
international agreements, the custom and practice of states, principles of law recognized
by civilized nations, and judicial decisions and texts. Legal complexities and
an assortment of Latin tags (such as opinio juris and erga omnes)
are made clear in plain English. Among the best recognized rights in the UDHR
are such individual freedoms as safety of the person, fairness and due process
in trials, and property. Controversial areas not or poorly covered include
freedom from execution, minority rights, and economic and social rights.
Robertson describes the ongoing debates over capital punishment (and the
methods used to make it as difficult as possible where actual abolition has
proved impossible) and the progress in extending indigenous and minority rights
beyond a bare right to exist.
Turning to war law, Robertson covers old ideas of just war, the Hague
conventions, the 1949 Geneva conventions, and
the 1997 Geneva
protocols (the latter badly drafted exercises in cynical diplomacy). And he
chronicles the limited success of attempts to restrict chemical and nuclear
weapons and conventional weapons such as landmines. The Nuremberg trials were a turning point in war
law, a procedural as well as a legal precedent. Robertson covers them in some
detail, as well as the broader move to universal jurisdiction over the crimes
of genocide, torture, and apartheid (in addition to earlier staples of
international law such as piracy and slavery).
Some governments with appalling human rights records have been toppled in
the last few decades. But bringing offenders to justice has been hindered by
broad (and sometimes self-granted) impunities, immunities, and amnesties.
Robertson looks at the workings of truth commissions and amnesties in
transitional regimes in South and Central America,
Cambodia, South Africa,
and elsewhere.
In 1993 the UN created the Hague Tribunal to try crimes against humanity
(serious violations of international humanitarian law) in the former Yugoslavia. Analyzing
the Tribunal''s strengths and weaknesses, Robertson describes the legal basis,
procedures, and actual operation in the case of Dusko Tadic, the first to be
convicted by it. In a similar vein he then looks at the InternatioCriminal
Court, describing the political struggles behind the 1998 Rome Statute that created
it, its jurisdiction and powers, and the procedural machinery (trial process,
appeals, and punishments) established. Though the Court was weakened to appease
the United States, neither
they, China, or India voted for
it. Despite this and other problems Robertson is guardedly optimistic about the
Court''s future, suggesting that its seven-year review conference may be the
occasion for making universal jurisdiction over crimes against humanity truly
universal.
The final chapter looks at the case of General Pinochet, still before the
courts when Crimes Against Humanity went to press.
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