Road Blocks In IHR Mechanisms: What Implications For Lanka?

By Kumar David -February 22, 2015

Prof. Kumar David

There is no arguing, international human rights mechanisms are frequently ineffective or topsy-turvy. If you are convinced Gotabaya, Mahinda and some members of the military should be scrutinised for war crimes, either nothing will happen or, like the mills of god the process will grind excruciatingly slowly. Foreign Minister Mangala, in an about turn for the UNP, is on a whirlwind world cruise attempting to defer tabling of the UNHRC Report. Till recently Friday Forum was hot on human rights and irate about atrocities. Now its premier custodian Jayantha Dhanapala treks to Geneva presumably to persuade the UNHCR not to embarrass the Sirirsena-Ranil Government. Other human rights advocates of yesteryear plead with the international community to go easy on alleged war criminals. Oh frailty thy name is liberalism! Or is this pragmatic realism? The efforts have succeeded; the UNHRC has granted a “one off” six month reprieve.

A new book discusses the infirmity of international human rights mechanisms. The summary of the existing structure in the first few chapters is informative and the subsequent discussion of reasons for failure is thought provoking. The proposed “solution” however is naive and wide off the mark; but let me not run too far ahead.

This essay is a review of: The Twilight of Human Rights Lawby Eric A Posner, Professor of Law, University of Chicago. Oxford University Press, 2014. Hardcover; 185 pages.

The concern with human rights in general, that is rights of all people, not just one’s own compatriots, is proclaimed in the French Revolution’s Declaration of the Rights of Man and the U.S. Declaration of Independence, but has its roots earlier, in the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment needed an alternative pedestal to religion and the injunctions of the Almighty and found it in the rights and freedoms of man. The institutionalisation of human rights in international treaties post-dates the Second World War and Nazism. The nine treaties which give substance to modern human rights were adopted by the United Nations between 1965 and 2006 and prosecution of violators, except German and Japanese war criminals, commenced in the mid-1990s.

Read More