This week, we are focusing on human rights and how humanitarian law and genocides interact with each other. When people were asked to define human rights, their responses in America or other developed countries are a little hesitant, or they will question why are we asking that questions. It shows that people like us are used to living with human rights and never had to think about it directly in their life. However, there are many countries with not enough human rights, which often times hurting the citizens in various ways.
Humanitarian law is often called “the law of the war” since it is critical, especially in war times. It is likely to fail because of the different ethical cultures and views between countries as well as its system. International Humanitarian Law (IHL) has exceptions that self-defense authorized by the United Nations security council. The security council has four permanent members: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In the security council, each country has a right to refuse the decision, which makes it very hard to pass international laws including human rights laws.
In south Kyrgyzstan, there was violence between the majority Kyrgyz to the minority Uzbeks mainly due to political and economic upheaval in 2010. In Kyrgyzstan, extreme nationalism and hates towards minority ethical group have been around as I wrote in the last post. Some Uzbeks claimed that there were genocides around that time targeting Uzbek. Genocide can be defined as ” the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group to destroy that nation or group”. In response to that, the International Committee of the Red Cross, ICRC, supports people affected by the violence. ICRC promotes international humanitarian law(IHL) and others as well as helps to build the capacity of the Kyrgyz Red Crescent Society.
Genocides and other human rights crises are complicated topics since every country has its own perspective and situation toward human rights. Understanding its history and culture is important in this topic.
Citations
Kyrgyzstan – United States Department of State
Kyrgyzstan killings are attempted genocide, say ethnic Uzbeks | Kyrgyzstan | The Guardian
Current Members | United Nations Security Council
by Seira Kitagawa