| This paper is aimed to explore the impact on the human rights in the western countries made by the 2008 international global financial crisis.The International financial crisis originates from the Sub-prime lending crisis in U.S.,which evolved into serious financial crisis and sovereign debt crisis sweeping through the whole western world,and eventually evolved into a political crisis and social crisis in the western world.Firstly,this paper recalled the occurrence and development of the international financial crisis.To deal with the crisis,the U.S.government uphold a “too-big-to-fall” policy and provided large amount of money to the big financial institutions,the European countries has to carry out severe austerity measures under the guidance and request from European Stability Mechanism(ESM).This paper also focus on the development of human rights movement,the evolution of human rights thoughts in the western countries,and also the challenge encountered in human rights field since the outbreak of international financial crisis.It also enumerated the specific human rights impacted during the crisis.In dealing with the crisis,the western countries provided great assistance to the financial institutions at the expense of cutting the public expenditures,while they ignored the basic life necessities of the civilians.Especially with the carrying out of the austerity measures,the western countries cut the normal public expenditure in a large amount.As a result,the unemployment rate climbed to a higher point,the income of the lower and middle class civilians reduced largely,the common people cannot obtain the social security in time,their life fell into difficulty.At the meantime,the austerity measures caused the limitation of subsidy towards food,which affected many difficult families' minimum need about food,which also caused chronic hungry and malnutrition.Because the production line is stretched while the supervision cannot keep the pace,the problems of food security frequently happen,the civilian's rights towards decent and health food is infringed heavily.For the reasons of cannot pay the mortgage,or lost the mortgage redemption,more and more civilians' homes are reclaimed by banks,so the homeless increased in a large number.Because the input towards education is slashed largely,and many schools' shut-down affected children's rights to education in a direct way.On the other hand,because many teachers experienced salary reduction or even being fired,the children's right to education are affected indirectly.Austerity measures caused large slash of input in health field,which led to two results,one is the government funded hospitals reduce their staff's salary,slow down the personnel turnover and infrastructure renewal,the other is acceleration of the privatization process in the medical and health field in western countries.The health problem evolved gradually from a government guaranteed human rights into a paid goods for which only those of certain economic strength can afford.In this way,there appeared tension between the civilian's interest and the private capitalism.Along with the deepening of the crisis,the tension also escalated.The outburst and development of the crisis severely affected the civilian's common life and their kinds of basic rights.Because the civilians find it difficult to improve their life condition through normal democratic political channel,they began to assemble and parade in the street,to protest the government “kidnapped by financial institutions”,and also protest governments transfer the result of crisis to themselves through austerity measures.Because the protest and parade became bigger and bigger,the conflict between the police and the civilians intensified by and by,the civilians' rights to participate the public affairs,the rights to express and the rights to supervise et.c,are all assaulted.In many occasions,just because of the government's strong suppression,peaceful demonstration always became unrest or violent conflict,the economic crisis evolved into social crisis and political crisis.Because the national human rights institutions' budget are cut down,their function and room in human rights relief are compressed largely,which further intensified the human rights problems suffered by the civilians.Because the judicial system and judicial reparation are weakened by the crisis,when the civilian encountered unjust treatment,as the last and key guarantee,the judicial reparation can't play their role effectively.This undoubtedly intensified the assault towards the western civilians' human rights.Because of the impact on human rights of the civilians,the populism pursuing the policy of anti-elite,anti-institutionalism,anti-representative system,anti-globalization spread widely in the western world.In some western countries,the populist political leaders even come to power.The lack of governance capability,emergence of political deadlocks,the increase of social tension and xenophobia,all attacked the human rights of civilians in the western countries,and the refugees and immigrants swarm from middle-east and north Africa.The in-depth development of the international financial crisis,touched the deepseated issues such as capitalist system and its ideology.It also made serious impact on the western human rights thoughts and human rights development model.The traditional democratic politics cannot deal with the crisis in a better manner,so the civilians' welfare and the kinds of human rights cannot be protected effectively.Neoliberalism,which once be regarded as “Bible” of capitalism by the western world,encountered serious setbacks.As the basic value of neo-liberalism and be regarded as so-called universal value,the natural human rights thoughts encountered profound criticism,question and rethinking from the west.Under the populist trend,the identity politics is widely adopted in the western countries,kinds of identity groups claimed their own right and protect their interest under the banner of democracy and human rights.Different identity groups,always have different or even conflicting interest demands.This unavoidably intensify the opposition and differentiation in the western society,which resulted many problems in the social governance of western countries.The new trends of series human rights problems,the new problems about their social governance and the new change in the comparison about the international pattern and international power,inevitably reflects into the diplomatic field and international governance field about human rights.In a word,the international financial crisis intensified the western countries' crisis awareness toward their own system and ideology,and urged them to rely more heavily on their ideology in their diplomatic relations.They emphasize more the commonness of their ideology within the western world,and emphasize more antagonism on human rights field towards non-western countries.In this way,the western countries experienced rightization for their social and daily political affairs,while making human rights issues in the international field politicized,which lead to a substantial increase of uncertainty in international human rights governance. |
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