A few days after the celebration of the Centenary of the Hague Academy of International Law from 24 to 26 May 2023 on the theme of the Challenges of International Law, with an opening round table devoted to «The public interest and International Law », I find it interesting to focus on the general interest and the governance of human rights.

 

The field of human rights is one of the least consensual areas of global governance. However1, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights provides a solid foundation for cooperation in the field of human rights which provides, in its article 2, paragraph 1, that "[e]ach of the States parties to this Covenant undertakes to act, both by its own effort and by international assistance and cooperation […] with a view to ensuring progressively the full exercise of the recognized Rights”. In addition, the preamble to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child stresses "[t]he importance of international cooperation for the improvement of the living conditions of children in all countries, in particular in developing countries. development ".

 

On March 26, 2010, the Human Rights Council adopt without vote,at the initiative of Egypt, a resolution on strengthening cooperation of international human rights.

 

More recently, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights published, on April 18, 2023, his report on the implementation and strengthening of international cooperation in the field of human rights, with a view of his presentation at the 53rd Session of the Human Rights Council to be held from June 19 to July 14, 2023.

 

We will not open the discussion on the definition of Human Rights here, because it is obvious that if the Rights of Human are universal, the definition of this term is not. What is considered a human right in Africa and in part of Asia, I am thinking of polygamy, is rejected elsewhere; what is pantheonized as Human Rights in Europe or more widely in the West is just as vigorously rejected elsewhere. We therefore stick to the universally recognized Human Rights which constitute the jus commune in this matter. But even with these, the criteria for assessing compliance can vary substantially across contexts.

 

In this perspective, several authors approach the question of the Global Governance of Human Rights alongside other subjects as through distorting prisms resulting from specific biases. Often, these authors are content to give a scientific coloring to ideological postures, following the example of Errol P. Mendes (Global governance, human rights and international law: combating the tragic flaw, 2nd edition, London / New York, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2023, xv, 285 pages).

 

What is presented as the general interest is very often only the interest of a category of States or of an ideological camp. Exactly as in International Investment Law, the all-out liberalization option and the interest of the investor initially occupied a primordial and even exclusive place before the public interest of States began to be taken into account when the he public interest of States exporting investments has been affected by the excesses of liberalism. The change of course took place in particular through the insertion of specific clauses protecting concerns relating to the protection of the environment, the rights of workers as well as human rights in general and those of indigenous populations. particularly in model investment treaties as well as in investment treaties, whether bilateral, sub-regional or regional.

 

Hence the question: should we wait for those who advocated the all-out liberalization of investments, the contemporary equivalent of the priority given to Civil Rights, to feel the negative effects of a certain exaggeration of these Rights and take for example the option of privileging the right to development or economic, social and cultural rights in order to rebalance international cooperation in the field of human rights by implementing the terms of the Vienna Declaration and Plan of Action which affirm that all human rights are equal, committing States to apply international human rights instruments in a uniform and objective manner, in accordance with the principles of participation and inclusion? Can cooperation lead to better human rights governance? Under what conditions? For what results? How does cooperation pervert the governance of human rights? Does international human rights cooperation ultimately require global governance based on a directive public order? If so, which actors have the legitimacy required to play this role, if any?

 

Without claiming to answer all these questions in detail, we will find outlines of answers by examining successively the four major trends in the current governance of human rights, including within the United Nations organization: the prioritization of Rights and the correlative concealment of duties (I), the failure to take into account the Right to peace which should result in the active prevention of wars (II) and the biases which affect transnational cooperation in matters of human rights human rights, in this case the relations between non-State actors and States in this field (III).

 

 

The Cameroonian people, through the Preamble to the Constitution of January 18, 1996, affirms "its attachment to the fundamental freedoms enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Charter of the United Nations, the African Charter of Human Rights man and peoples and all the international conventions relating thereto and duly ratified”.

 

The Constitution of Cameroon, the internal texts taken within the framework of its implementation as well as the regional and international legal instruments ratified by the State of Cameroon thus guarantee to any person under its jurisdiction the free exercise of the Rights "with respect the rights of others and the higher interest of the State”.

 

We too often tend to forget this segment of the preamble to our Constitution, which nevertheless recalls Article 27 (2) of the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, which reads as follows: "[t]he rights and the freedoms of each person are exercised with respect for the rights of others, collective security, morality and the common interest. »

 

By ignoring these statements, we ignore the warning of Gustave le Bon, a French doctor, anthropologist, social psychologist and sociologist – a specialist, among other things, in behavioral disorder and the psychology of crowds – who observed that “[t] he surest means of destroying the principle of authority is to speak to each one of his Rights and never of his duties”.

 

In the context of one-upmanship where certain human rights are presented as absolute dogmas and where freedoms border on anarchism in and outside social networks, a context also where we tend to forget that freedom is the right to do all that is lawful, it is worth remembering an old Latin adage, largely misunderstood: ubi jus, ibi onus. And I translate: where there is a right, there too there is an obligation.

 

In order to illustrate this legal adage, allow me to offer for your meditation one of the indents of the preamble to the Constitution of January 18, 1996, as well as some articles of the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights signed on June 27, 1981 and entered into force on October 21, 1986.

 

The relevant indent of the Constitution of Cameroon reads as follows: “[l]edom and security are guaranteed to each individual with respect for the rights of others and the superior interest of the State”.

 

As for the articles of the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, these are articles 27 to 29.

 

Article 27

 

1. Every individual shall have duties towards his family and society, the State and other legally recognised communities and the international community.

 

2. The rights and freedoms of each individual shall be exercised with due regard to the rights of others, collective security, morality and the common interest.

 

Article 28

 

Every individual shall have the duty to respect and consider his fellow beings without discrimination, and to maintain relations aimed at promoting, safeguarding and reinforcing mutual respect and tolerance.

 

Article 29

 

The individual shall have the duty:

 

1. To preserve the harmonious development of the family and to work for the cohesion and respect of the family; to respect his parents at all times, to maintain them in case of need;

 

2. To serve his national community by placing his physical and intellectual abilities at its service;

 

3. Not to compromise the security of the State whose national or a resident he is;

 

4. To preserve and strengthen social and national solidarity, especially when the latter is threatened;

 

5. To preserve and strengthen the national independence and the territorial integrity of his counetry and to contribute to its defence of in accordance with the law;

 

6. To work to the best of his abilities and competence, and to pay taxes imposed by law in the interest of the society;

 

7. To preserve and strengthen positive African cultural values in his relations with other members of the society, in the spirit of tolerance, dialogue and consultation and, in general, to contribute to the promotion of moral health of the society ;

 

8. To contribute to the best of his abilities, at all times and at all levels, to the promotion and achievement of African unity.

 

As for the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, its article 31 entitled “Responsibilities of children” is quite eloquent.

 

Every child has responsibilities towards his family and society, the State and other legally recognized communities and the international community. The child, subject to his age and ability, and such limitations as may be contained in the present Charter, shall have the duty:

 

a) to work for the cohesion of the family, to respect his parents, superiors and elders at all times and to assist them in case of need;

 

b) to serve his national community by placing his physical and intellectual abilities at its service;

 

c) to preserve and strengthen social ande national solidarity;

 

d) to preserve and strengthen African cultural values in his relations with other members of society, in the spirit of tolerance, dialogue and consultation and to contribute to the moral well-being of society;

 

e) to preserve and strengthen the independence and integrity of his country;

 

f)to contribute to the best of his abilities, at all times and at all levels, to the promotion and achievement of African Unity.

 

This uncontroversial constitutional prescription and conventional statements call for no comment.

 

 

The human right to peace, which is the inalienable right to life, dignity and living together in peace of all persons, groups and peoples, is frontally flouted by the entrepreneurs of war and the terrorists who kill, decapitate, amputate, eviscerate, torture, dispossess throughout the world since time immemorial, undermining all rights.

 

Terrorist attacks are a massive violation of all human rights. We think in particular:

 

- the right to life which speaks for itself;

 

- the right to physical and moral integrity in relation to amputations and acts of torture,

 

- the right to dignity with reference to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment;

 

- the right to education in relation to the forced boycott of schools in the generic sense and attacks against training establishments as well as teachers and other educational personnel at all levels;

 

- the right to health, with reference to the repeated attacks against hospitals and against medical personnel or the sick;

 

- the right to food which certainly concerns the inhabitants who can no longer cultivate their fields or harvest or go about other types of occupation, but above all the tens of thousands of refugees and internally displaced persons deprived of their means of subsistence;

 

- the right to housing in relation to all those who are forced to abandon their homes and flee to protect themselves or in relation to those whose houses have been destroyed in the fury of combat or punitive expeditions;

 

- the freedom to come and go due to the multiple slogans of general strike or lockdown;

 

- freedom of trade and industry for the same reasons;

 

- the right of ownership in view of movable and immovable property – including companies providing employment – destroyed, burned, confiscated or uprooted;

 

- the right to a fair trial due to the lawyers' strike and the repeated threats against magistrates and court officers who do not follow the watchwords;

 

- the specific rights of women and young girls through sexual abuse and slavery, unwanted pregnancies and other forms of gender-based violence;

 

- the rights of vulnerable groups as well as all economic, social and cultural rights whose realization is compromised by insecurity or by the loss of State tax revenue.

 

If no one can underestimate the extent of the danger posed by terrorism, it is therefore imperative to adopt the approach based on human rights in the fight against terrorism, in order to oppose these heinous acts respect for human dignity and respect for democratic values. One cannot wage a credible fight against torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of terrorists by practicing it oneself.

 

Even if the temptation is great for Governments facing terrorist barbarism to react by putting the rule of law on hold, we must not give in to it, because the best way to fight against terrorism consists in opposing barbarism, the Law, to excess, proportionality. It is the mark of professionalism.

 

By parroting the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peoples to Peace, approved by the General Assembly in a resolution of November 12, 1984, one can affirm, without risk of being contradicted, that "the The absence of war is, at the [national as well as at the regional and] international levels, a primordial condition for the well-being, material prosperity and progress of States, as well as for the full realization of the rights and fundamental freedoms of the human race. 'man', proclaimed by all international and regional human rights instruments.

 

It should also be recalled once again that, since its resolution 1566 (2004) of 8 October 2004 calling for enhanced cooperation in the fight against terrorism, the Security Council of the United Nations (UN) "[C]ondems in the strongest terms all acts of terrorism […] whatever the motives, wherever they are committed and whoever the perpetrators". However, in the global governance of human rights, condemnations of terrorist acts are selective, the terrorist of one being the freedom fighter of others.

 

The Commission that I have the honor to chair continues to invite all souls of peace, national, sub-regional, regional and international actors and actors, both in the bilateral and multilateral framework, to redouble their ardor to seek out, help arrest and bring to justice the perpetrators, sponsors of these terrorist acts and all those who instigate, support or advocate them, in accordance with international counter-terrorism law.

 

At the African regional level, the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights (ChADHP) adopted in 1981 and entered into force on October 28, 1986, refers to the right to peace in a collective perspective. Thus, article 23, paragraph 1 of the ChADHP states that “peoples have the right to peace and security both nationally and internationally”. This consecration of the Right to Peace calls for the adoption of measures both nationally and internationally, on the one hand, to prevent conflicts and, on the other hand, to preserve, maintain and consolidate peace.

 

Peace is indeed one of the expressions of the African soul and culture. The luxuriance of our landscapes, the musicality of our rivers and forests, our aesthetic emotions as well as our own dispute resolution mechanisms constantly invite conviviality and elevation towards our traditional values.

 

As the Gabonese scholar Bonaventure Mvé-Ondo has well recalled, in Africa, "before belonging to himself, the individual belongs to the family, to the lineage, to the village community and to the ethnic group" (Le Point, “References” collection, The Soul of Africa / Epics, tales and legends, November-December 2012, p. 72). May families, lineages, village communities and ethnic groups therefore ask our brothers who have taken up arms against the State in a hopeless battle to lay them down. May they invite them to respect the Grand Design of the founding fathers of this country. May they invite them to drink in the African cultural sap through The Charter of Mandé, Mandinka Declaration of Human Rights which enjoins everyone: “that everyone watch over the country of their fathers”.

 

On a universal scale, the Charter of the United Nations of 1945 and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 were adopted in a context marked by the appalling and massive violations of human rights to which the Second World War gave place. Subsequent developments relating to the subject of peace and human rights culminated in the aforementioned Declaration on the Rights of Peoples to Peace, approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations on November 12, 1984. In the same vein, in 2001, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, now the Human Rights Council, adopted a specific resolution on the “right of peoples to peace”.

 

It is in this perspective that the former Secretary General of the United Nations, the Egyptian Boutros Boutros-Ghali, proposed in 1992 his famous Agenda for Peace which was based on international solidarity in three areas, namely:

 

- conflict-preventive or peace-building diplomacy in peaceful areas;

 

- maintaining peace in areas at risk of conflict;

 

- the restoration (or the imposition) of peace in regions at war.

 

Unfortunately, this Agenda will not have received a favorable response from certain major powers, members of the United Nations Security Council, and the African continent continues to pay the heavy price of wars from elsewhere against a backdrop of exacerbation of cultural differences (ethnic, linguistic, religious, etc.) yet inherent in any human society.

 

 

We will begin by looking at the case of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) before focusing on that of civil society organizations (CSOs).

 

 

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs), which are in fact national associations operating in several countries or whose members come from several countries, are not very different from national civil society organisations. Hubert Védrine, the former French Minister for Foreign Affairs, who certainly should not be asked too much, classifies the some thirty thousand NGOs that exist throughout the world into several categories, in his book entitled Les cartes de la France à l'heure de la globalization: “one encounters everything there, he writes, the best and the rest: generosity, dedication, networks, militancy, interests, lobbies, beliefs and many real disguised powers” (p. 20) ; so that, without discernment in this landscape, we will very often take bladders for lanterns, especially since the "hierarchies of powers" and the "global balance of power" are found there: "[t]his are therefore , he explains, civil societies and NGOs from rich countries, ultra-mediatized, with the means to communicate, and therefore the power to impose their reading of an event, which will exert the maximum influence in the world: the American, not that of Niger, Bolivia or Bangladesh! It is not Nigerian NGOs that will intervene in Northern Ireland or demonstrate in Seattle!

 

Otherwise, how is it that we hear more noise in Paris about the 20 deaths of Ngarbuh in the North-West Region in Cameroon than about the 43,000 deaths of the United States war against Afghanistan since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001? How is it that Brussels was more concerned about the 10 terrorists executed in Chad in 2015 than the 17,274 people murdered in the United States in 2017 or the 10,129 people killed in the United States in 2018 by firearms, media and doctrinal sources even mentioning 40,000 deaths by firearms in this country in 2017, including 60% suicide cases and 40% homicides, i.e. an average of 3,334 deaths per month and 112 dead a day...

 

Be that as it may, NGOs are often the vectors of specific biases that distort understanding and sometimes sabotage the noble cause of human rights everywhere in the world.

 

1- The absurd idea that the State would be the sole holder of human rights obligations, since it is the only one who signs the treaties; which means that the designated culprit and the sole responsible for the non-respect of human rights in a country is the State; the horizontal dimension of human rights is thus forgotten. If so, why do Security Council resolutions denounce the atrocities and attacks of Al Qaeda, the Islamic State or Boko Haram? Why do these same NGOs devote reports to human rights violations committed by such and such a terrorist group, to violence against women or to violations by parents of children's rights? Why does the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child expressly designate the parents or any other person having custody of the child as the “primarily responsible for his upbringing”? Why is the theme of "business and human rights" supported by the Francophone Organization of National Human Rights Commissions and by all NHRIs around the world?

 

2- The erroneous idea that the pronouncements of regional and universal non-judicial human rights mechanisms are nevertheless obligatory, since these mechanisms have been created by obligatory treaties or certain stipulations of the treaties oblige States to apply the treaties in force.

 

3- The erroneous idea that the norms relating to Human Rights are absolute dogmas which apply uniformly in all countries and admit of no derogation or exception or that the State must apply them under penalty of being treated as a rogue state, in defiance of the "national margin of appreciation of national authorities", enshrined in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights and in total disregard of the fact that even the Western conception of human rights human rights is not uniform and that thus, in matters of respect for private life, in the United States freedom takes precedence over dignity, while in Europe it is the reverse.

 

4- Failure to respect proportionality: non-state actors are responsible for 85 to 95% of human rights violations in the Far North and North-West / South-West (Cameroon) where they violate massively the right of millions of children to education by advocating the boycott of school and by attacking training establishments, students and teachers who are often harassed, chased, kidnapped, killed or beheaded; the right of millions of people to health by burning down hospitals; the right to property by burning public and private property or stealing livestock and other food; freedom of trade and industry by attacking businesses and burning down businesses, etc. How to explain that in this context, 95 to 98% of an Amnesty International report on these Regions is devoted to allegations of non-respect of Human Rights attributed to States and only 2 to 5% to violations perpetrated by Boko? Haram? Normally the principle of proportionality requires that the largest part of the report be devoted to denouncing the most massive attacks and their perpetrators. 

 

 

Civil society organizations (CSOs) campaign for human rights with their own methods; but their action is often trapped in five ways.

 

1- The bias of the search for funding which leads them either to exaggerate the reality to hope for the desired funding, or to maintain the language and work on the priority themes of the donors and not on their own or on those of the country where they carry out their activities; this is how certain CSOs, far from acting out of conviction or in the interest of the populations they claim to protect, act as relays or turn into parrots who are content to repeat the speeches dictated by donors , sometimes lurking in the shadows.

 

2- The bias of the search for visas for their members or for their relatives or for third parties against remuneration, by presenting them as people persecuted by the regime.

 

3- The bias of incompetence which sometimes leads them to lead absurd battles like this CSO which recently denounced "atrocities and acts of torture" following the landslide in Bafoussam, in the West Region -Cameroon, while no allegation of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment was recorded on the occasion of this natural disaster.

 

4- The political bias that leads some CSOs to betray the integrity of the human rights defender by adhering to political party platforms or by making political demands such as support for insurrectionary marches and calls for overthrow the regime to set up a transitional government.

 

5- The bias of conscious manipulation which often consists in passing off acts of legitimate penal repression for acts of persecution of a category of citizens (case of the columnist of Radio France International in the Hausa language taken in possession of the telephone of the governor's son of a state in Nigeria assassinated by Boko Haram or that, dating back two decades, of a journalist who, wishing to join his wife in a Western country, insulted the President of the Republic of Cameroon; once arrested, he played the martyrs of freedom of expression and was thus able to obtain the coveted visa).

 

 

Since it is nevertheless indisputable that human rights are one of the founding principles of modern societies, the following four recommendations can be formulated.

 

 

The human rights-based approach that underpins the activities of the CDHC is a well-tested strategy for promoting the culture of human rights in all human activities, both individual than collective. It aims to guarantee the well-being of populations and to ensure sustainable development for all, through full respect for human rights and the progressive and optimal realization of all human rights, which are universal, indivisible and interdependent.

 

The human rights-based approach implies that the State must not only respect the human rights enshrined in its internal legal framework as well as in the regional and international conventions that it has ratified, but also make accounts with regard to their implementation. From this perspective, human rights are no longer situated on the periphery of public action, but must be inscribed at the heart of the latter.

 

Originally, the human rights-based approach emerged as a “response to the development failures of the 1980s, focusing more on technical poverty reduction than on improving the rights […] of marginalized populations”. It has led to a paradigm shift in development cooperation. Thus, the development approach initially based on the needs of the populations of the least developed countries has given way to an approach based on human rights. From this point of view, people are no longer just the object of aid programmed upstream by decision-making bodies, but are considered as full-fledged actors in development. As a result, public action is no longer conceived in terms of compensation, or “assistance”, but from the point of view of the implementation of fundamental rights.

 

The application of the human rights-based approach beyond its original framework has resulted in partially redefining its contours. Initially formulated within the framework of development cooperation, this approach was then notably mobilized, in the 2000s, by the United Nations bodies for the implementation of the right to education or the right to food. It therefore coincided with a reflection on the characteristics of these Human Rights, in particular that their full effectiveness depends on the availability, acceptability, accessibility and adaptability of the right in question. The human rights-based approach has also been applied for several years to issues related to state sovereignty, such as the management of migratory flows, security or criminal policies.

 

 

As Fréderico MAYOR, former Director-General of UNESCO, clearly saw, "it is in the minds of people that war is born and it is in the minds of people that we must cultivate the values of peace ". Let's be the craftsmen!

 

To this end, the educational community needs tools that kill the venom of radicalism buried in the minds of toddlers and children. The tools that you are going to chisel will have to embed the Human Rights reflex in the minds of pupils and schoolchildren, instill in them the feeling of belonging to a nation dedicated to a great destiny, worthy of being loved, by making they are exemplary citizens and patriots in terms of respect for the rights – and duties – of man.

 

Cameroon has been committed for several years to the promotion and protection of human rights, through its Constitution and the treaties it has ratified in good faith, active participation in regional and universal mechanisms Human Rights, as well as through the public policies adopted and methodically implemented in this area. It is in this spirit that an action that the Government regards as a priority within the framework of strengthening the protection of human rights, namely: the generalization of human rights in school curricula has been included in the National Development Strategy 2020-2030 (SND 30).

 

  It is in this context that between 2008 and 2012, the National Human Rights Institution of Cameroon developed, with the support of its partners, the National Human Rights Education Program whose he objective remains, in the long term, to contribute in a decisive way to the blossoming of a culture of human rights within the public, through the teaching of human rights in the educational systems of primary and secondary, without forgetting the traditional faculties of universities and the major vocational training schools. This initiative has enabled the development of Pedagogical Notebooks and Guides for the use of teachers for primary and secondary schools. Dozens of establishments have also been selected in these two levels of education for the pilot phase of this program.

 

  As reaffirmed in several documents resulting from human rights mechanisms, in particular Resolution 1997/7 of 28 August 1997 of the United Nations Sub-Commission for the Prevention of Discrimination and for the Protection of Minorities, there can be no have real respect for the Right to education without human rights education.

 

 Indeed, while violence and other deviant practices make their bed in our educational establishments, while we observe that a fringe of the youth gets bogged down in hate speech, lets itself be contaminated by ethnic suprematism, is infected by violent extremism, that the entire educational community and other stakeholders must mobilize to create the conditions for their eradication, the National Human Rights Institution of Cameroon is of the opinion that human rights education man is one of the tools on which the State must rely to strengthen its fight against these phenomena.

 

 

 

(James Mouangue Kobila is Chairperson, Cameroon Human Rights Commission)