|
|
|
|
The World Today
January 1999
On 25 November 1998 the highest court in the United Kingdom, the Appeals Committee of the House of Lords, held that General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte had no immunity from the jurisdiction of English courts for his alleged crimes under international law. The judgement was handed down on Pinochet’s eighty-third birthday. But it was really a birthday gift for international human rights nearly fifty years after the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on 10 December 1948.
The universal declaration detailed the obligations states and state officials owe individuals under international law. These include the obligation not to torture people — one of the very crimes of which Pinochet was accused. However, the declaration, and subsequent human rights treaties, failed to provide generally available, effective enforcement mechanisms.
Dr Michael Byers is a Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford and author of Custom, Power and the Power of Rules: International Relations and Customary International Law (Cambridge University Press, January 1999).
The past weeks have witnessed yet another chapter in the ongoing crisis over Iraq. Military action was averted in November, but only narrowly. American and British forces were just minutes away from air strikes against Iraq when Baghdad signaled its willingness to yield to UN Security Council demands and allow the unconditional resumption of weapons inspections. However, Iraqi acquiescence proved short lived. On 15 December a critical report by the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) said that its work continued to be blocked by Baghdad. In response, Washington and London launched military strikes against Iraqi targets.
Raad Alkadiri is Country Analyst for The Petroleum Finance Company in Washington. This is an edited version of his address to a Chatham House conference at the beginning of December in which he expressed his personal views.
This year sees South Africa’s second round of nation-wide democratic elections and the formal departure from government office of President Nelson Mandela. After a long lifetime in politics — he will be 81 in July — and five hectic years presiding over both the domestic transition and the new South Africa’s re-positioning in international affairs, it is perhaps time to take stock of his singular contribution and to ask what kind of advice he might offer his successors. This is especially so in foreign affairs, an area in which his government’s performance has attracted much criticism at home and abroad.
Taking George Washington’s famous valedictory to the American people in 1796 as a kind of template, what are the foreign policy principles and guidelines that Mr Mandela might wish to proffer Mr Thabo Mbeki and succeeding administrations? In 1993, in what could be regarded as his inaugural address to the nation, Mandela was quite clear about the guiding philosophy within which South Africa’s foreign policy would be located.
Graham Evans of the University of Wales, Swansea is a member of the Southern Africa Study Group at Chatham House. His Dictionary of International Relations was published by Penguin in August 1998.
Now that the guns in Kosovo have been silenced, negotiations to achieve a political settlement of the conflict are occupying centre stage. At their heart is a proposal for Kosovo autonomy which Christopher Hill, the US ambassador to Macedonia, has been drafting in several months of intensive shuttle diplomacy.
The Hill plan — the only serious diplomatic game in town — is little known in its specifics outside the region, where various drafts have been leaked periodically to the local press. Still a work-in-progress, the current draft — presented in early December — is important for what it reveals about the political vision which the six-nation Contact Group has for the region.
Richard Caplan is a Research Fellow at Jesus College, University of Oxford.
The war in Kosovo has given neighbouring Macedonia, with its twenty-five percent Albanian minority, a key role in the southern Balkan crisis. Parliamentary elections last October/November have resulted in the overthrow of the Social Democrat led coalition of Branko Crvenkovski, which contained many pro-Serb and pro-Yugoslav politicians. There was a major victory for the nationalist Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation (VMRO DPHME) — which has close links to Bulgaria — and its coalition allies. They won sixty-two of the one hundred and twenty parliamentary seats. The coalition of Albanian parties won twenty-four seats, and has been invited to fill five government ministries.
James Pettifer is Visiting Professor at the Institute of Balkan Studies, University of Thessalonika, and writes for The Times, London.
Japan was a poor, devastated country immediately after the war, with a population of seventy-two million. Nobody then expected it to become the world’s second largest economic power as it is today. Now Japan’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is 507 trillion yen and its population more than 126 million. Japan has grown rapidly, but can it produce the ingenuity to continue?
Yoshihide Ishiyama is Chief Economist at IBM Japan. He was previously an official at the Finance Ministry and a professor at Aoyama Gakuin University. The views in this article are purely personal.
In Britain in the last eighteen months, a number of women have moved into professional posts in the public eye that have previously, traditionally — and often exclusively — been male-dominated. So, where has the woman’s revolution got to? Is the spate of prestigious, groundbreaking female appointments in Britain a lasting trend or a passing phenomenon; or just coincidental?
Dr Chris Gamble became Director of Chatham House last November, having been Director of the British Council in France.
While Turkey is sometimes held up as a model of how a Muslim country can successfully operate a pluralist democratic political system, there can be no denying that Turkish politics have been in deep trouble for three years. For overseas observers, Turkey’s poor human rights record, the unresolved Kurdish conflict and the fate of the Kurdistan Workers Party’s (PKK) terrorist leader, Abdullah ÷calan, plus the challenge of political Islamism and the role of the armed forces, have dominated the debate. Behind this, however, lies the serious instability and lack of direction of Turkish government during the 1990s.
William Hale is Reader in Politics, specialising in Turkey, at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
Both Turkey and Israel face considerable domestic political uncertainty. Turkey has just seen the collapse of its fourth coalition cabinet in three years. It is also embroiled in the extradition dispute with Italy over the Kurdish leader Abdullah ÷calan. Israel’s shaky coalition has further complicated relations with Palestinians over the Oslo process. Now the two countries are to stage joint military exercises — much to the consternation of the Arab world.
Dr Nadia E El-Shazly is the author of The Gulf Tanker War, Published by Macmillan, 1998.