Global Justice and Legal Issues

The concept of global justice is premised on the belief that all people are entitled to certain fundamental human rights solely by virtue of being members of the human community. The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was a seminal step toward this vision; for the first time, states agreed to uphold the fundamental rights and liberties of their citizens.

Enforcement of these human rights guarantees, however, has been severely constrained by the nearly impregnable doctrine of state sovereignty. International law, traditionally limited to regulating behavior between states and not between individuals and a state, reinforced this state-centric [Page 701]view of human rights. The approach of “justice by geography,” by shielding from accountability criminal dictators perpetrating unimaginable atrocities against their own people, turned the concept of the universality of human rights on its head.

Global justice has come of age in the 21st century. Forces of globalization give new saliency to the communal values underlying human rights and new means to further those values. The 21st-century world, transformed by the technology revolution and shaped by an interdependent global economy, is vastly different from 1945, when 51 self-contained nations signed the Charter of the United Nations (UN Charter). The rise of a powerful transnational civil society, juxtaposed with nonabating atrocities arising out of destructive internal armed conflicts, has led to a paradigm shift in the enforcement of human rights. This shift is evidenced by the Security Council's increasing recognition that “ensuring respect” for international humanitarian law is central to its UN Charter mandate to maintain international peace and security.

The consensus that impunity for heinous crimes is a matter of global concern has led to doctrinal advances and new forums for ensuring accountability for international crimes, the most notable being the International Criminal Court (ICC). Equally significant are changes at the state level; currently, more than two thirds of all states have laws providing for domestic prosecutions of international crimes, namely, genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. Many of these laws include universal jurisdiction provisions, meaning that because certain crimes are of concern to the global community, they can be prosecuted regardless of where the crimes took place or the nationality of the victims or perpetrator. Yet, despite well-publicized prosecutions or attempted prosecutions of sitting heads of state or former top state officials, including Slobodan Milošević, Charles Taylor, Omar al-Bashir, Augusto Pinochet, Hisséne Habré, Saddam Hussein, and Adolf Eichmann, impunity for criminal dictators remains the norm, not the exception.

The daunting challenges for global justice in the 21st century go far beyond the need to pass new laws or to sign new treaties to end impunity. Laws alone have never made justice a living reality for people whose rights have been systematically and brutally violated by their own governments. The global community must amass the political will to enforce international humanitarian law rigorously and to ensure that the rule of law triumphs over the rule of might; no small task in a world marked by conflict and competition.

Most importantly, establishing a global justice regime requires more than providing mechanisms for redressing state atrocities after the fact. International law increasingly imposes on states and the global community a responsibility to take affirmative actions to prevent and protect people before atrocities happen, including measures to address root causes of injustice such as the entrenched inequality of women and marginalization of ethnic minorities.

...