{"id":35007,"date":"2022-06-24T11:37:39","date_gmt":"2022-06-24T07:37:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/?p=35007"},"modified":"2022-06-24T11:37:39","modified_gmt":"2022-06-24T07:37:39","slug":"western-countries-demand-russia-follows-international-law-so-why-dont-they","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/western-countries-demand-russia-follows-international-law-so-why-dont-they\/","title":{"rendered":"Western countries demand Russia follows international law \u2013 so why don\u2019t they?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/span><\/h4>\n

<\/h4>\n

The West isn\u2019t exactly diligent about following international rules of law. It conveniently ignores or sidesteps global rules-based order when it\u2019s convenient<\/span><\/h4>\n

\"\"U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks during the International Migration Review Forum on May 19, 2022, at United Nations headquarters in New York.\u00a0(AP Photo\/John Minchillo)<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

With a passion that recalls the aftermath of the Second World War, politicians and commentators are demanding a global order that takes seriously the rules of the United Nations Charter \u2014 notably on respect for sovereignty and fundamental human rights.<\/span><\/p>\n

While Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine is the immediate spur, China\u2019s conduct in the Indo-Pacific region has prompted similar calls.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s more than a fight between autocracies and democracies, Fareed Zakaria recently argued in the Washington Post.<\/em> This moment requires a rules-based international order that has inclusive global appeal beyond western interests.<\/span><\/p>\n

Zakaria is joined by Edward Luce in the Financial Times<\/em> in arguing these appeals for a global rules-based order clearly require the West to take those rules seriously too, pointing to both the war on terror and the International Criminal Court as evidence it\u2019s not truly serious.<\/span><\/p>\n

The United States, for example, has refrained from joining the court, even as it advocates for war crimes trials for Russian soldiers and politicians.<\/span><\/p>\n

Railing against China\u2019s encroachment on the marine sovereignty of its neighbours in the South and East China Sea \u2014 in violation of the Convention on the Law of the Sea \u2014 also isn\u2019t helped by the U.S. failure to ratify that treaty or participate in its tribunal (which ruled against China in a landmark 2016 case brought by the Philippines).<\/span><\/p>\n

According to international affairs experts Robin Niblett and Leslie Vinjamuri, there is a similar penchant for arbitrariness when it comes trade rules and the World Trade Organization, health rules and the World Health Organization and attitudes about development financing in sub-Saharan Africa. They argue that the Covid-19 pandemic\u2019s impact on the fortunes of populist and authoritarian politicians may further erode liberalism.<\/span><\/p>\n

This only scratches the surface. The essential issue is not merely inconsistency in following rules that have uncontested legitimacy. Rather, it\u2019s whether those rules have withstood the assaults on their legitimacy by their western architects.<\/span><\/p>\n

Global order hypocrisies<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s Ukraine invasion has resulted in a massive exodus of people, exceeding 6.4 million at this point. Their reception in neighbouring Poland and Hungary has contrasted starkly with the treatment of equally desperate refugees from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen, among others. The conduct of supposedly liberal nations \u2014 from Great Britain and France to Nordic states, Canada and the United States \u2014 in terms of how they\u2019ve received Ukrainian refugees compared to those from other nations isn\u2019t any better.<\/span><\/p>\n

The principle of nonrefoulement<\/em> \u2014 a guarantee that no one will be returned to a country where they face torture, degrading treatment or other irreparable harm \u2014 is hardwired in international law, as is the right to seek asylum. Neither enjoy much respect in the face of populist attitudes, which have gone increasingly mainstream among politicians and citizens alike.<\/span><\/p>\n

What has been called the \u201cethical spasm\u201d in welcoming Ukrainian refugees (support for resettling refugees has been as high as 76 per cent in Britain) stands out precisely because asylum has otherwise been discarded as a pillar of international humanitarian law, and is replaced by what philosopher Serena Parekh calls \u201cstructural injustice\u201d that\u2019s comparable to Jim Crow segregation laws.<\/span><\/p>\n

This conspicuous lack of regard for the letter and substance of rules is tied to resistance against scrutiny of domestic compliance with international human rights law. When it comes to Indigenous Peoples, for example, settler states like Australia, Canada and the United States have dragged their feet on any binding agreement, especially one that honours collective human rights.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Free speech\u2019 folly<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Incitement to hatred of vulnerable minorities, in violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, is also now justified via a loose interpretation of \u201cfree speech\u201d \u2014 a phenomenon we see in white supremacist and Islamophobic activism, especially on social media.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Canada, the \u201ctrucker convoy\u201d protest that openly espoused white supremacy received support from the official Opposition within and outside Parliament. It\u2019s hard to imagine such accommodation of a non-white protest paralyzing cities and borders for weeks on end.<\/span><\/p>\n

Finally, there is an outcry about \u201coccupation,\u201d which Crimea has endured since 2014 and the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine appears fated for in the aftermath of Russia\u2019s invasion.<\/span><\/p>\n

Foreign occupation is at the heart of the narrative of Ukraine\u2019s plight as David confronting the Russian Goliath. The occupation has placed Taiwan on high alert, nervous China might be inspired by Russia.<\/span><\/p>\n

But what about Palestine, where over a half century\u2019s occupation by Israel is actively funded, militarily supported and legally shielded by western liberal democracies? Gershon Shafir, an American sociologist and human rights scholar, has explored why this is the case in the face of clear international legal and political norms to the contrary \u2014 from the UN Charter and the 1949 Geneva Conventions to explicit judicial rulings and UN resolutions, in addition to essential ethical and humanitarian principles.<\/span><\/p>\n

The International Court of Justice found in 2004 that Israel\u2019s \u201cseparation wall,\u201d built in the name of security against Palestinian attacks, was outright illegal in its intrusion on occupied territories. It amounted to extending colonial capture by conquest, a practice explicitly outlawed since the 1960 Declaration on Colonial Peoples and Territories, which not a single UN member opposed.<\/span><\/p>\n

The UN Security Council\u2019s unanimous Resolution 242 of 1967 on the Palestine question affirmed the \u201cinadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war.\u201d Israel nonetheless ignored the International Court\u2019s finding.<\/span><\/p>\n

Precedents set<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

A major precedent for dismissing judicial findings on a salient issue of global order was set by the U.S. in response to the 1986 International Court of Justice ruling on \u201cmilitary and paramilitary activities against Nicaragua.\u201d The U.S. simply rejected the decision of a court that it had helped establish.<\/span><\/p>\n

An Ipsos poll on public attitudes toward the Russia-Ukraine conflict reveals, unsurprisingly, a stark divide between the Global North and South. While 82 per cent of people agreed that the conflict poses great global risk, only 39 per cent (entirely in the north) disagreed with the proposition that Ukraine\u2019s problems \u201care none of our business, and we should not interfere.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This is not just about the north-south divide at the UN in condemning the invasion; it\u2019s about the alienation of civil society and ordinary folk from the global order. Which begs the question as to whether the very adoption of the rules of global order has been systematically snuffed out.<\/span><\/p>\n

Amyn Sajoo<\/span>
\n<\/strong>Scholar-in-Residence & Lecturer, Simon Fraser University<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 24 June 2022<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The West isn\u2019t exactly diligent about following international rules of law. It conveniently ignores or sidesteps global rules-based order when it\u2019s convenient<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":35008,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[28],"tags":[33498,24520,2834,1824,17521,31567,32461,1635],"class_list":["post-35007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-affairs","tag-international-laws","tag-israel-palestine","tag-russia","tag-south-china-sea","tag-the-conversation","tag-ukraine","tag-ukraine-invasion-2022","tag-united-nations"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/Russia.jpg?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8QzSF-96D","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}