Monday, April 4, 2011

Why the human rights justification for the invasion of Libya is faulty.


Human rights are generally defined as entitlements which accrue to human beings for merely being human. Human rights have since the foundation of the United Nations been classified into two major categories, socio-economic rights and civil-political rights.

Economic, social and cultural rights are socio-economic human rights, such as the right to education, the right to housing, and the right to health while Civil and political rights protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.

Throughout history, notably during the cold-war era, the west insisted on civil political rights as the only rights and as mutually inclusive of socio-economic rights while the east argued that socio-economic rights are the only rights worth the tag and are mutually inclusive of the civil and political rights. This divergence in opinion has outlived the cold war. To-date, in China, it is understood that a citizen’s right to housing, food, work, health, education among others is more important than the right to free speech, sexual orientation and others which the United States of America may consider the bedrock of the other rights.

Muammar Gaddafi’s thinking as espoused in the Green book naturally falls on the China-way of thinking. Thus Libya has in the forty two years Gaddafi has ruled the country attained one of the highest standard of living, not only in Africa and the Arab world but also arguably in the world. It is reasonably understood that whereas the United States of America is reputed as a developed nation, the poorest man in Libya is incomparable to the poorest in America; the latter will perceive the former as rich.

The noise that has of recent been made regarding Gaddafi’s seemingly endless rule over Libya is largely a matter that borders on ideological thinking and preference and detestation for and of socialism and capitalism on either side. That Gaddafi largely ensured that Libyans of population strength of 6,461,454 as at July 2010 attain education free of charge, free quality health services proven by a Life expectancy of 77.47 years generally, male 75.18 years and female 79.88 years is no mean feat.

The “mighty” United States of America knows the opposition the Health proposals by the Obama administration went through. Thus, some Americans do not have access to what an ordinary Libyan has access to. We must admit however that the ordinary Libyan would/cannot not express him/herself like the broke and poor ordinary American.

The dichotomy between socio-economic rights and civil and political rights is largely academic, all rights, socio-economic or civil-political are interdependent and mutually inclusive. The Libya-America comparison is thus a story of two brothers building their houses. Each house needs both civil-political and socio-economic rights to be complete. However, each brother prefers to emphasize one of the rights against the other as they build. America has built well so far by implementing civil and political rights but there is huge deficit regarding socio-economic rights, we must admit. Libya has also excelled in building its own but has only worked on socio-economic rights without considering the civil and political rights.

In the process of these brothers building, America (in this case representing the west) is however smitten by their brother Libya’s progress and has put a stop on his own house to first destroy Libya’s house and also force it to start on the civil-political rights path in the process destroying the progress made in the socio-economic rights realm. At the end of the day, the Libyan is the loser. The progress made in the socio-economic rights realm is lost for good. They have to start afresh to build the civil and political rights realm and following America’s instruction will concentrate on that and forget the progress they once made. As for America, destroying Libya’s progress is not only inhuman but also evil and immoral. To hide behind the human rights cloak is not only shameful but also hypocritical because they know that Libya’s progress was huge and admirable!

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