Forum for politisk teori  ved  Norsk senter  for menneskerettigheter

Tid: Fredag 28.10.05, 12.15-14

Sted: Norsk Senter for Menneskerettigheter, Universitetsgt. 22-24, resepsjon  3.etasje (inngang ved Norli bokhandel.)

Asbjørn Eide: Globalisation and human rights: Challenges and prospects.

The purpose of the lecture is to discuss the challenges to and the importance of economic, social and cultural rights in the age of economic globalisation.

‘Globalisation’ is an ambiguous term. In its widest sense of increasing interaction with expanding global reach, globalisation has been going on for centuries. One aspect is the expanding content and reach of international law. One of the most revolutionising steps was the introduction into international law and relations of what will here be called the project to make human rights universal, initiated in 1945/1948, at a time when the support for the nation-state and its role was still strong, in retrospect called ‘the Golden Age of the State’. It coincided with a process to make the state system universal through the elimination of colonial and other imperial control to allow for the emergence of numerous new states. The membership of the United Nations expanded from some 51 states at its inception to 193 states today.

From around 1980s, a countervailing process (which had been fulminating before but less noticeable) dramatically expanded: The process of economic globalisation, i.e. the reduction of national control of economies, reduction of trade and investment barriers and an enormous increase in the number and power of multinational corporations, aided and abetted by international financial institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank, with the transformation of GATT into WTO and the relegation of UNCTAD into insignificance. While the number of democratically governed states have significantly increased in the process, the space of action for the exercise of democratic governance has been significantly reduced through restraints imposed on state action. This process has seriously affected the conditions for implementing human rights, in particular economic, social and cultural rights.

A relates set of questions, which will not be explored in depth, is what links there might be between economic globalisation, the terror/ counterterror dynamics, and the notion increasingly gaining hold in the West of the ‘duty to protect’.

A paper on the topic of the lecture will be distributed during the session.

Asbjørn Eide, b. 1933, is former Director and presently senior fellow of the Norwegian Center for Human Rights. He was previously a Director of the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo, a former Secretary-General of the International Peace Research Association, and is the author of numerous books and articles on peace and conflict issues and human rights. He was a member from 1981 to 2003 of the United Nations Sub-Commission on Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and from 1995 to 2004 the Chairman of the United Nations Working Group on the Rights of Minorities. He is presently the President of the Advisory Committee on the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities.