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On The Relationship Between Sovereignty And Human Rights From The Perspective Of "the Responsibility To Protect" Theory

Posted on:2011-02-28Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:P HouFull Text:PDF
GTID:2166360305451077Subject:International law
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
How to handle the relationship between sovereignty and human rights is by no means one of the main issues with greatly opponent position between developing and developed countries in international politics and international law. After the ICISS submitted its report to the UN Secretary-General in 2001, the concept of "the responsibility to protect", interacting the two theories which seemingly originally belonged to different value systems, has been wide spread in international community. It's still controversial on whether the responsibility to protect of countries and international society has become a new rule. However, it's no doubt that the facet of liability about sovereignty will be stressed more and more widely——almost all countries have agreed to discuss the issue further under the UN framework. The author pointed out that this trend is good for all countries to achieve consensus on human rights, and take effective measures to frequent humanitarian disaster. It's a significant attempt. Although sovereignty and human rights stressed different values from historical perspective, they have the same thought origin. In different historical periods, they ever boosted each other, or one was strengthened but the other one weakened even alienated, or became rivalry. After this analysis, the author pointed that sovereignty and human rights are consistent in the sense of "ought to be", that is to protect and realize people's value and dignity. Only if they both contributed to the common goal, they were not alienated, or just used as a tool, or over politicized. The formation and development of the new concept of sovereignty and human rights is an inevitable tendency. For developing countries, it's especially important to get rid of extremely binary thinking, join actively in discussion about the issue and win more advantages on it.This paper is divided into three chapters. The first chapter reviews the formation of sovereignty and human rights theories before modern times, from the germination of sovereignty and the finding of man's value before seventeenth century to the formation of sovereignty and human rights theories in seventeenth and eighteenth century. Sovereignty and human rights have homologous origin and the key linkage is Renaissance. The second chapter analyses the sovereignty and human rights in modern and contemporary era. This chapter is divided into three stages: the development of sovereignty and aphasia of human rights before World War Two; the debate about sovereignty and situation of human rights from the end of World War Two to the end of the cold war; the arguments about the relationship between sovereignty and human rights after the cold war.The third chapter focuses on the emerging theory of responsibility to protect which has breakthrough significance on the cognition of the relationship between sovereignty and human rights, but also has risk to be vain appeal in practice. The whole international community needs to figure out how to implement the advantage of the theory and void the risk to become tool or slogan.
Keywords/Search Tags:Sovereignty and Human Rights, the Responsibility to Protect, Sovereignty as Responsibility, New Security Concept, Universal Human Rights Concept Compatible to all civilizations
PDF Full Text Request
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