Short Note: Open Global Rights in Agreement with Sofia Monsalve Suárez
Open Global Rights posted an article on conflict, the United Nations, and working to live up to the promised the their proposed missions that fits well with a previously cited article, Sofia Monsalve Suárez’s paper, “Re-grounding Human Rights as Cornerstone of Emancipatory Democratic Governance,” (Society for International Development 2021).
In Monica Iyer’s post for Open Global Rights, she states,
While millions live in the reality of this devastation, UN member states and other global actors are simultaneously trying to build a framework to secure a peaceful and sustainable future for children and future generations. Yet there is a sharp disconnect between the hope embodied by documents like the UN “Pact for the Future” and the despair that many may be experiencing as a peaceful global order seems to be under ever greater threat. To address this disconnect, it is essential that states take meaningful action to end ongoing conflicts and counter their impacts on children and future generations.
[…]
From fundamental human rights and environmental treaties to these new laws and policy commitments, states and those committed to promoting human rights have a significant body of legal and rhetorical tools at our disposal to secure a better future for our children and for theirs. But all of the written commitments in the world mean nothing when children are being bombed today, and their homes are being destroyed for tomorrow.
Likewise, Sofia Monsalve Suárez wrote,
[M]odern (western) thinking and actions, including law and policymaking, treat humans and the rest of nature as two separate, distinct and independent spheres. This separation is central to the deep ecological crises that the world is facing, and which are manifest most strongly in human-made global warming as well as in the dramatic loss of many living species. Both climate change and the current mass extinction will deeply affect human societies because we cannot escape from these massive disturbances. (14)
The looming collapse of the earth system as well as the rapid degradation of local ecosystems is closely linked to the sharp increase of inequalities and the concentration of resources in the hands of a few powerful actors, the destruction of the social fabric from the community to the national level and resulting migration, as well as wars and famine. The consequence is increasing violence against communities and people, which is further exacerbated by the rise of authoritarianism in all parts of the world. (14)
As I wrote here,
The extreme nature of self-interested corporate guidance of our communities and our well-being is something that we have historically sacrificed against our best interest again and again. Nationalism, authoritarianism, post-totalitarianism, all strive for a consumer capitalist edict and thrive within our mutual approval to abide by such laws. As Suárez states in her thorough article,
Nationalist governments conveniently instrumentalize the colonial and imperial history of international law in order to disregard human rights. Indeed, geopolitics rather than legal or ethical considerations, often determine where human rights criticisms and sanctions emerge and against whom they are directed. (Suárez 16)