international law, organization
| Globalizations |
You really haven't been a virgin for so long.
It's ludicrous to keep up the pretext...You've slept with all the big powers
In military uniforms,
And you've taken the sweet life
Of all the little brown fellows...Being one of the world's big vampires,
Why don't you come on out and say so
Like Japan, and England, and France,
And all the other nymphomaniacs of power.Langston Hughes (African American poet, 1902-1967)
From the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 until the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon ten years later, a smug, self-congratulatory hyperglobalism occupied the media center stage. For cheerleading journalists and academics, globalization epitomized Americanization — a metaphor for the universalization of capitalism.
Indeed, promoters of financial globalization have had difficulty explaining increased nationalism and pride in local identity. But even if profit-driven "globalization with a human face" diverts attention from global pillage by big banks and multinational corporations, is there more to it?
Globalization processes have compressed — reduced — distance, time and difference. Globalization includes transformative social and historical processes, but it is not just high-speed complex change from flows of people, ideas, capital and other products and relationships connecting large parts of the planet. During the past 500 years, there have been many globalizations.
Over half of the world's population lives in a transnational economy. This economy is increasingly organized through dense telecommunication systems. As an imprecise synonym for globalization, the ideology — or worldview — of globalism preaches fatalistic capitulation to unfettered transnational capitalist economic forces.
As an ideology, globalism typically asserts the primacy of economic globalization over other aspects of globalization and glosses over the unequal distribution of globalization's economic costs and benefits.
If national languages, identities and boundaries persist, how well will local, subnational and national institutions in your country avoid, resist or adapt to negative aspects of globalization? And how does one specify or challenge the impact of present and future waves of globalization?
One way is to distinguish among the following planet-level processes, interactions and results: 1) political, 2) military, 3) security, 4) economic, 5) corporate, 6) cultural, 7) biological, 8) gender, 9) medical and 10) meteorological transformations. Insisting on these distinctions reduces conceptual overstretch and sloppy generalization. Many globalization processes are a cluster of two or more of these kinds of influences and results.
The conclusion is inescapable: There is more than one globalization.
• Charles Hauss's Comparative Politics Online tracks domestic responses to a range of global problems in twelve important countries.
• The Press Interpreter translates newspaper articles appearing in Chinese, Arabic, Italian and many other languages.
• Global Environmental Change focuses on "soft disasters," global environmental governance and "producing greener." This is a program of the Economic and Social Research Council.
• A coalition of seven environmentalist organizations has produced Global Warming: Early Warning Signs with "fingerprints" and "harbingers" of ongoing and impending climate changes.
• The World Audit ranks most countries according to 1) the extent of political rights guaranteed in practice, 2) perceptions of corruption, 3) civil liberties and 4) press freedom.
• The Project on Government Oversight investigates, exposes and testifies about wasteful government spending, misfocused secrecy and suppression of "whistle blowers." In that organization's name, the word oversight means "looking over" — not "overlooking"!
• Visit the U.N. Crime & Justice Information Network and the U.N. Convention against Transnational Organized Crime to learn about globalized criminality.
• To what extent does the geopolitics of drugs reflect the geography of capitalist development? If you read French, the Geopium project is a valuable resource.
• Corruption is misusing public resources for private gain. This concerns the Internet Center on Corruption Research, Transparency International and, after a slow start, the World Bank.
• The Polaris Project combats freelance and government-supported "human trafficking and modern slavery."
• For crossnational and domestic disparities, download The Wealth Gap in Health. Topics include the following: adolescents/youth, HIV/AIDS - general, immunization, maternal health/survival, population growth/trends, reproductive health - general, and service delivery
• View videos of regional and international news from Euro News from the European Broadcasting Union.
• For a thorough list of resources, see Lyonette Louis-Jacques (The University of Chicago), "Fundamentals of Treaty Research: U.S. and Non-U.S. (Electronic Resources)." This is a revision of her paper at the 1998 Special Libraries Association Annual Conference — updated 27 June 2001.
• According to the U.S. Constitution, treaties are "the supreme law of the land" (Article VI, Paragraph 2). Search the full text of U.S. treaties by the following criteria — the Congress (Senate) to which it was referred, the type of treaty, and keywords. This website also permits access to the full text.
• The American Society of International Law sponsors the ASIL Guide to Electronic Resources for International Law.
• A library of links to international treaties, including the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 (ratified by the U.S. Senate that year) is maintained by New York University School of Law.
• See Leif Hoffman, "Data Collection Online: Techniques and Traps When Searching for (Treaty-Related) Data on the WWW," International Studies Perspectives, vol. 8, issue 2 (May 2007), in "Pieces on Our Craft" section [pagination unnumbered].
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• The League of Nations Photo Archive was created by the League of Nations Archives and the Indiana University Center for the Study of Global Change. According to the Scout Report (16 May 2003), "this online archive of League of Nations photographs is a fine resource for persons looking for visual documents related to the development and history of this former international organization dedicated to the promotion of international peace and security."
• Get the latest news on activities of the United Nations (UN). With a relatively weak center for military affairs (the Security Council), the UN is a confederation of governments.
• The UN provides human rights information, humanitarian affairs postings, peacekeeping data, and economic and social development reports on the narcotics trade, environmentalism and crime prevention.
• Complementing the above-cited intergovernmental sources is the Official Document System of the United Nations. This database includes all UN documents published since 1993.
• Along with other UN agencies critized for lack of initiative, the Office of the UN High Commission for Refugees has been criticized for lethargy in the face of the plight of North Korean political refugees forcibly returned by China. On 20 February 2005, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees resigned amid allegations of sexual harassment.
• Many governments have signed and ratified international human rights treaties. Amnesty International's search engine shows how well each government is performing. And Amnesty International USA's Action Center facilitates your involvement in letter writing campaigns to your representative or senators in Congress.
• The ten members of ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations), along with Japan, both Koreas, United States, China, India, Russia, and five other governments, belong to the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). In 2002, leaders of Timor Lorosa'e (East Timor) expressed a desire to join ARF.
• According to a Federation of American Scientists summary of an article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, "the United States stores its nearly 10,000 nuclear warheads at 18 locations in 12 states and six European countries." And whose neighborhood is at risk? See maps indicating probably locations of nuclear weapons in the United States.
• Learn about landmines, nonproliferation, conventional arms restraints, and chemical and biological weapons agreements at the Institute for Defense & Disarmament Studies.
• As a consortium of 5 organizations, the World Bank Group includes the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), International Development Association (IDA), International Finance Corporation (IFC), Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) and International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).
• According to the Jubilee USA Network, the World Bank and other international financial institutions should cancel debts owed them by the poorest countries.
• The World Trade Organization (WTO) is part of the United Nations. The WTO focuses on removing obstacles to "free" trade and thereby contributes to — and exacerbates — globalizing neoliberal capitalism. Established on 1 January 1995, WTO grew out of the Uruguay Round trade negotiations. The WTO succeeds the earlier General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). In July 2006, one hundred and forty-nine countries were members of the WTO.
• The WTO is criticized by the Sweatshop Watch, CorpWatch and Global Exchange for insensitivity to workers rights, environmental devastation and destruction of indigenous cultures.
• Legislation in some countries has done a better job than in others of defending animals against violence (confinement, torture, killing) by humans. In a countertrend, economic globalization (global capitalism) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) have weakened local animal protection laws.
• Among experts on the World Trade Organization is Professor Yoichiro Sato.
• The Electronic Embassy provides information on each embassy in Washington, D.C., as well as on proxy embassies in that city. Proxy embassies include the "Taiwan Economic and Cultural Office" and the "Cuba Interest Section." Proxy embassies let governments save face while carrying out many functions of fully recognized embassies.
• Supplement these resources with websites, snail mail addresses, and phone and fax numbers for thirty-nine Asian and Pacific embassies and consulates in the U.S. and their missions at the United Nations in New York City.
• Pakistan provides a selective list of links to ministries of foreign affairs of 33 governments important to Muslim countries.
• Also called the "World Court," a Permanent Court of International Justice was established in 1920.
• In 1945, the World Court was succeeded by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) as part of the new United Nations.
• However, the ICJ does not have criminal jurisdiction. Instead, ad hoc courts and tribunals have responded to human rights violations by filling gaps in jurisdiction selectively.
• Passage of the Rome Treaty on 17 July 1998 marked a major step towards establishing an International Criminal Court (ICC). The Court's proposed jurisdiction included war crimes and genocide, including acts committed by military personnel.
• Directed by the Clinton Administration, the U.S. delegate voted against the Rome treaty. Six countries with questionable human rights records joined an otherwise isolated U.S. opposition — China, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Libya and Sudan. For the next two and a half years, President Bill Clinton refused to endorse the ICC.
• In the twilight of his second term, lame-duck President Bill Clinton feigned support for the Rome Treaty, signing it on 31 December 2000 while choosing not to submit the treaty to the Senate. Instead, with President-elect George W. Bush about to take office, Clinton recommended that Bush also refrain from doing so "until [the United States'] fundamental concerns are satisfied."
• Bush took Clinton's invitation one step further. On 6 May 2002, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Marc Grossman announced the Bush Administration's removal of Clinton's signature from the Rome Treaty.
• Opposition by Presidents Clinton and Bush failed to prevent the
required minimum number of governments from ratifying the Rome Treaty and the
ICC by 11 April 2002.
• The American Non-Governmental Organizations Coalition for the
International Criminal Court disagrees
with the position taken by the Clinton and Bush Administrations on the
ICC.
• For details of current cases at the International Criminal
Court, visit the ICC's
official website.
• According to the Global Policy Forum, threats by
the U.S. to cease economic and military assistance to other countries
have limited the scope of the Court's jurisdiction.
• For citations to 500 articles and reports on the ICC prepared
for The University of Chicago Library, see Lyonette Louis-Jacques' International Criminal
Court: Resources in Print and Electronic Format (June 1998; last
updated, 12 August 2003).
• See also the Peace Palace Library
Bibliography on International Criminal Law. It's updated regularly.
• Check out the bilingual Centre for Research on
Globalisation/Centre de recherche sur la mondialisation
(Montréal, Québec). This organization is "committed to
curbing the tide of 'globalisation' and 'disarming' the New World Order."
• Visit the Globalization
Research Center (GRC) at the Social Science Research Institute,
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. Congressional appropriations
initiated the GRC's funding.
• For a centrist social democratic alternative to neoconservative
domestic and international perspectives, ZNet is one choice.
• Or visit the Global Issues
Gateway.
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