Political Theory of Human Rights

Book recommendations, Rwanda, intervention

A periodic feature of this blog will be to recommend books as they relate to some aspect of the course. These recommendations are simply FYI, for those of you with a broader interest in the subject of human rights.

Yesterday we discussed three 19th century critics of HR (well, two, we'll get to Marx soon enough). These essays, along with very insightful introductions and a 60 page response defending the idea of human rights against these criticisms are collected in Nonsense Upon Stilts: Bentham, Burke and Marx on the Rights of Man, edited by Jeremy Waldron. (who is one of human rights more eloquent defenders). Sadly, this book is out of print; otherwise I would have assigned it. Waldron's essays are enormously helpful, and generally fair, to these critical perspectives. (I have UW library's copy, so please don't recall it!)

Books you can actually get: I mentioned, in the course of discussion yesterday, some of my own views on the Rwanda genocide of 1994. This is probably the worst thing that happened in the world in most of your lifetimes. I think that as horrible as it is to face, there is a great deal to be gained from trying to understand how things this terrible can happen. To that end, I recommend learning as much about it as possible. Here are a few recommendations:

We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda, by Phillip Goutrevich.

This is a largely journalistic account, very well written, about what happened, from a number of different perspectives.

When Victims Become Killers, Mahmood Mamdani

This is a much more academic account by a political anthropologist who studies Africa. It is more ambitious than Goutrevich's book, and more difficult, but accessible for an academic study. He seeks to explain how something like this could happen. Of course, he acknowledges that an adequate explanation is simply impossible, but it's worth trying anyway. He does a wonderful job of showing how the history of the ethnic categories "Hutu" and "Tutsi" came into being, how immigration and regional politics helped make this possible, etc. It's hard to overstate how impressed I am with the quality of this book.

Shake Hands With the Devil: The Failure of Humanity In Rwanda, Romeo Dallaire

I haven't read this yet (it just came out), but I'm eager to. It's a first hand account from the Canadian UN General who was in charge of a small peacekeeping force in Rwanda in 1993. He saw evidence that a genocide was on the horizon, and he requested 5,000 troops to stop it. When his request was denied, and he was forced to do what he could with a few hundred troops, almost a million people were killed. Dallaire went on to retire from the military while struggling with Post-tramautic Stress Disorder and immense guilt over not being able to do more to prevent this. This will be very difficult to read, but I hope to give it a shot soon.

There are lots of books about this, but this is a good start. If you prefer movies to books (and in many ways, I do), I can't recommend enough Terry George's Hotel Rwanda. It tells the story of Paul Rusesabagina, a luxury hotel manager who managed to successfully give refuge to over 1000 Tutsi's who otherwise would almost certainly have perished. Not only is the film accurate on the details of the story (Rusesabagina was a consultant on the film, which involved his first trip to Rwanda since 1994--I very much hope the DVD will include a mini-documentary about that), it's very well made. And Jamie Foxx is a fine actor, but he's got an Oscar that rightfully belongs to Don Cheadle.

That should keep you busy. To tie this into the theory of human rights, I encourage you to think about how to address the issue at the heart of the controversy here. Every country in the world has some human rights violations going on in it's borders. How should the interational community determine when to intervene to prevent these abuses. It was suggested in class, and I'm sympathetic to the argument, that utilitarianism must play a role in making this difficult decision. Do you agree? Any other ideas about how this difficult issue is best approached. (discuss!)

Things get more complicated when we consider the possibility of a right of national self-determination. More tomorrow.

posted by David Watkins @ 12:06 PM