The Justice Deficit Systemic Disorder (JDSD) means the disorder created in all systems that constitute a society or a nation due to a deficit or near absence of the justice factor. The justice deficit transforms all public institutions. The justice deficit alters the very meaning of the law. When the law is divorced from justice, it transforms the very nature of the public institutions. These institutions cease to be public institutions capable of carrying out public duties.
Such institutions become privatised, and lose the links to public norms and standards. That way, it becomes impossible for these institutions to operate on the principles of the supremacy of the law or the rule of law. Thus, the disorder results from public institutions becoming disenabled to operate through a just system of laws. Such disenabling becomes systemic, thus creating systemic injustice. Systemic injustice in turn creates systemic irrationality. Systemic irrationality, once it enters into the operations of public institutions, creates disorder and chaos throughout all the systems of the State.
Above is a short summing up of my experience of the obstacles to the protection and the promotion of human rights under the prevailing circumstances, generally in the world, but mostly in developing countries. In that short paragraph, I have summed up my conclusion on the basis of work done under various circumstances, under various different countries, under different political regimes and circumstances, and perhaps most importantly, under very different cultural contexts, for nearly 40 years.
When after World War II, the UN was formed and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted in 1948, there were certain assumptions of a civilisation based on the respect for individual freedoms. The UDHR spelled out these basic freedoms in a succinct manner.
In the subsequent decades, the freedoms described in the UDHR were raised to a more legally binding status by the development of two International Covenants: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and also the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. Various aspects of these two covenants were later developed into different conventions, detailing the obligations of the states in ensuring the enforcement of these rights.
It was quite natural that much of the earlier decades of work in the new international agreements on human rights and also the work of the UN in the field of human rights were concentrated more on a detailed articulation of these rights and in the attempt to propagate these rights throughout the globe.
Perhaps, the achievement of these decades was the language of the UN conventions on human rights entering into the global and local discourses in almost all the countries. From the popularisation of the ideas about human rights, the achievement was remarkable.
However, there were certain considerations that did not seem to have entered into the discourses on the promotion of human rights, and as a result, with time, there emerged a very vast gap, particularly in the countries outside Europe and the US on the actual possibilities for people to assert these rights within the context of the actual institutional frameworks that existed in each particular nation as against the ever-growing popularity of the rhetoric of human rights.
Greater efforts in order to promote the human rights project came mainly from what is usually called the “Western countries” and the contributions for resources also came mostly from these countries.
It may have been quite natural that the experts from these countries had far more influence in the development of both the concepts as well as in dealing with various implementation measures relating to human rights work. It was perhaps as a result of these that some of the major problems that were faced by the developing countries, in particular, in terms of the actual institutions that were available in their countries for the implementation of these rights, did not receive the required attention at any stage of the development of the overall global approach of this project.
Perhaps, it would be an interesting study to undertake as to how the problems relating to institutions that were supposed to be the very necessary institutional foundation for the implementation of human rights did not become a constant preoccupation of those who were involved in promoting this project both within the UN system created particularly for this purpose or in various developed countries where certain governments took a greater interest in the promotion of human rights.
Administration of justice – policing
It was quite obvious that most nations would not openly admit the extreme backwardness of the basic institutions that were particularly dealing with the delivery of justice. Naturally, a nation would not admit that the kind of policing system that the country has been able to develop so far does not match up to the required standards that are capable of adequately protecting the individual rights as required under the UN conventions. However, a closer examination of the failures of the progress of human rights in many of the countries will clearly demonstrate that the nature of the policing systems that exist in these countries are in many ways inadequate to deal with the task of protecting the rights enshrined in the conventions.
Policing as an institution is an essential part of the protection of human rights, both of individuals and also of social groups. A nation may fail to develop a proper policing system that is capable of protecting individual rights as well as group rights for many reasons. Some of these reasons could be mentioned as follows.
A major reason for the inadequate development of a proper policing system is often claimed to be the lack of resource allocations. In almost all the countries such has been observed and in this regard, for the purpose of this article, quite clearly, inadequate resource allocations for the development of a proper institution of policing remains one of the major reasons for the inability not only of the policing institutions but of the entire state apparatus, in the protection of human rights. The inability or unwillingness to spend adequate resources for the development of a proper system may be due to many factors.
Often, the other development objectives receive a greater priority than the development of a policing system. For example, the development of agricultural schemes, industrial schemes, commercial schemes, road development schemes, hospitals, and schools are more direct recipients of relatively better resource allocations for various different reasons.
One such reason may be the factor of political considerations in terms of electoral politics within which certain very direct objectives relating to matters such as economic development, employment, health, and education, and the like naturally receive the attention of the electorate rather than the issue of properly developing protection for the people through a well-functioning policing system.
In other contexts, political developments may not favour a more liberally functioning policing institution. Certain types of political regimes may prefer a policing system that is more compliant with the requirements of dealing with the problems that the Executive is concerned with rather than in the promotion of freedoms and rights which may create conflicts for the existing political system.
This overall concern of limiting the perspective of a policing system in order to limit the overall freedoms enjoyed by the people as a whole, particularly in the areas of the freedom of association, the freedom of assembly, and the freedom of expression, appears to be one of the major considerations in shaping the nature of a policing system that exists within a particular territory. If, for example, the overall concern of a political regime is to keep the wages low so that it may be able to attract foreign investors to invest in their country, it would not be in their interest to promote the free trade union movement or political movements which promote better wages and working conditions for the workers. Under those circumstances, the Executive would try to use policing in order to curb the rights rather than to promote rights.
There are other circumstances where the development of a civilian policing system has never been attempted. In a number of former colonies, both of the British as well as the French, the models of policing that were established during that period were militaristic in nature. The trainers that were brought from these countries had many complex problems to deal with in the early development of the policing systems in these new countries. The very idea of modern policing was completely absent in these countries. The kind of feudal controls that existed within these former colonies were not based on the ideas of the rule of law or on the basic recognition of the individual or individual freedoms.
Thus, the very establishment of policing systems was a completely new task to these societies. In some countries, historical research has been done into the development of their policing systems at these early stages. These studies demonstrate such problems as the unwillingness of people recruited from particular localities who did not want to engage in such tasks as arrest, detention, the interrogation of suspects, the recording of information in writing, and also being subordinate to a system of courts in terms of the performance of their duties.
The officers recruited from other countries, either England or associated countries like Ireland or France, played the main role in the setting up of these institutions. However, given the vastness of the territories and having to deal with various circumstances even within each country, this was rather beyond the capacity of the recruits from outside.
So it was a very gradual process of recruitment, training, and development of a policing system. Studies into some of this training have demonstrated that most of the training given to the Police was similar to the training given to the military. Early morning exercises and many other military-like practices occupied most of the time of the new recruits.
To be continued…
(The writer is the Asian Human Rights Commission’s Policy and Programmes Director)
……………………..…………….
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication.Justice Deficit Systemic Disorder and the Global Human Rights Project
30 Mar 2022
Justice Deficit Systemic Disorder and the Global Human Rights Project
30 Mar 2022
The Justice Deficit Systemic Disorder (JDSD) means the disorder created in all systems that constitute a society or a nation due to a deficit or near absence of the justice factor. The justice deficit transforms all public institutions. The justice deficit alters the very meaning of the law. When the law is divorced from justice, it transforms the very nature of the public institutions. These institutions cease to be public institutions capable of carrying out public duties.
Such institutions become privatised, and lose the links to public norms and standards. That way, it becomes impossible for these institutions to operate on the principles of the supremacy of the law or the rule of law. Thus, the disorder results from public institutions becoming disenabled to operate through a just system of laws. Such disenabling becomes systemic, thus creating systemic injustice. Systemic injustice in turn creates systemic irrationality. Systemic irrationality, once it enters into the operations of public institutions, creates disorder and chaos throughout all the systems of the State.
Above is a short summing up of my experience of the obstacles to the protection and the promotion of human rights under the prevailing circumstances, generally in the world, but mostly in developing countries. In that short paragraph, I have summed up my conclusion on the basis of work done under various circumstances, under various different countries, under different political regimes and circumstances, and perhaps most importantly, under very different cultural contexts, for nearly 40 years.
When after World War II, the UN was formed and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted in 1948, there were certain assumptions of a civilisation based on the respect for individual freedoms. The UDHR spelled out these basic freedoms in a succinct manner.
In the subsequent decades, the freedoms described in the UDHR were raised to a more legally binding status by the development of two International Covenants: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and also the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. Various aspects of these two covenants were later developed into different conventions, detailing the obligations of the states in ensuring the enforcement of these rights.
It was quite natural that much of the earlier decades of work in the new international agreements on human rights and also the work of the UN in the field of human rights were concentrated more on a detailed articulation of these rights and in the attempt to propagate these rights throughout the globe.
Perhaps, the achievement of these decades was the language of the UN conventions on human rights entering into the global and local discourses in almost all the countries. From the popularisation of the ideas about human rights, the achievement was remarkable.
However, there were certain considerations that did not seem to have entered into the discourses on the promotion of human rights, and as a result, with time, there emerged a very vast gap, particularly in the countries outside Europe and the US on the actual possibilities for people to assert these rights within the context of the actual institutional frameworks that existed in each particular nation as against the ever-growing popularity of the rhetoric of human rights.
Greater efforts in order to promote the human rights project came mainly from what is usually called the “Western countries” and the contributions for resources also came mostly from these countries.
It may have been quite natural that the experts from these countries had far more influence in the development of both the concepts as well as in dealing with various implementation measures relating to human rights work. It was perhaps as a result of these that some of the major problems that were faced by the developing countries, in particular, in terms of the actual institutions that were available in their countries for the implementation of these rights, did not receive the required attention at any stage of the development of the overall global approach of this project.
Perhaps, it would be an interesting study to undertake as to how the problems relating to institutions that were supposed to be the very necessary institutional foundation for the implementation of human rights did not become a constant preoccupation of those who were involved in promoting this project both within the UN system created particularly for this purpose or in various developed countries where certain governments took a greater interest in the promotion of human rights.
Administration of justice – policing
It was quite obvious that most nations would not openly admit the extreme backwardness of the basic institutions that were particularly dealing with the delivery of justice. Naturally, a nation would not admit that the kind of policing system that the country has been able to develop so far does not match up to the required standards that are capable of adequately protecting the individual rights as required under the UN conventions. However, a closer examination of the failures of the progress of human rights in many of the countries will clearly demonstrate that the nature of the policing systems that exist in these countries are in many ways inadequate to deal with the task of protecting the rights enshrined in the conventions.
Policing as an institution is an essential part of the protection of human rights, both of individuals and also of social groups. A nation may fail to develop a proper policing system that is capable of protecting individual rights as well as group rights for many reasons. Some of these reasons could be mentioned as follows.
A major reason for the inadequate development of a proper policing system is often claimed to be the lack of resource allocations. In almost all the countries such has been observed and in this regard, for the purpose of this article, quite clearly, inadequate resource allocations for the development of a proper institution of policing remains one of the major reasons for the inability not only of the policing institutions but of the entire state apparatus, in the protection of human rights. The inability or unwillingness to spend adequate resources for the development of a proper system may be due to many factors.
Often, the other development objectives receive a greater priority than the development of a policing system. For example, the development of agricultural schemes, industrial schemes, commercial schemes, road development schemes, hospitals, and schools are more direct recipients of relatively better resource allocations for various different reasons.
One such reason may be the factor of political considerations in terms of electoral politics within which certain very direct objectives relating to matters such as economic development, employment, health, and education, and the like naturally receive the attention of the electorate rather than the issue of properly developing protection for the people through a well-functioning policing system.
In other contexts, political developments may not favour a more liberally functioning policing institution. Certain types of political regimes may prefer a policing system that is more compliant with the requirements of dealing with the problems that the Executive is concerned with rather than in the promotion of freedoms and rights which may create conflicts for the existing political system.
This overall concern of limiting the perspective of a policing system in order to limit the overall freedoms enjoyed by the people as a whole, particularly in the areas of the freedom of association, the freedom of assembly, and the freedom of expression, appears to be one of the major considerations in shaping the nature of a policing system that exists within a particular territory. If, for example, the overall concern of a political regime is to keep the wages low so that it may be able to attract foreign investors to invest in their country, it would not be in their interest to promote the free trade union movement or political movements which promote better wages and working conditions for the workers. Under those circumstances, the Executive would try to use policing in order to curb the rights rather than to promote rights.
There are other circumstances where the development of a civilian policing system has never been attempted. In a number of former colonies, both of the British as well as the French, the models of policing that were established during that period were militaristic in nature. The trainers that were brought from these countries had many complex problems to deal with in the early development of the policing systems in these new countries. The very idea of modern policing was completely absent in these countries. The kind of feudal controls that existed within these former colonies were not based on the ideas of the rule of law or on the basic recognition of the individual or individual freedoms.
Thus, the very establishment of policing systems was a completely new task to these societies. In some countries, historical research has been done into the development of their policing systems at these early stages. These studies demonstrate such problems as the unwillingness of people recruited from particular localities who did not want to engage in such tasks as arrest, detention, the interrogation of suspects, the recording of information in writing, and also being subordinate to a system of courts in terms of the performance of their duties.
The officers recruited from other countries, either England or associated countries like Ireland or France, played the main role in the setting up of these institutions. However, given the vastness of the territories and having to deal with various circumstances even within each country, this was rather beyond the capacity of the recruits from outside.
So it was a very gradual process of recruitment, training, and development of a policing system. Studies into some of this training have demonstrated that most of the training given to the Police was similar to the training given to the military. Early morning exercises and many other military-like practices occupied most of the time of the new recruits.
To be continued…
(The writer is the Asian Human Rights Commission’s Policy and Programmes Director)
……………………..…………….
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication.Kapruka
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Discover Kapruka, the leading online shopping platform in Sri Lanka, where you can conveniently send Gifts and Flowers to your loved ones for any event. Explore a wide range of popular Shopping Categories on Kapruka, including Toys, Groceries, Electronics, Birthday Cakes, Fruits, Chocolates, Automobile, Mother and Baby Products, Clothing, and Fashion. Additionally, Kapruka offers unique online services like Money Remittance, Astrology, Medicine Delivery, and access to over 700 Top Brands. Also If you’re interested in selling with Kapruka, Partner Central by Kapruka is the best solution to start with. Moreover, through Kapruka Global Shop, you can also enjoy the convenience of purchasing products from renowned platforms like Amazon and eBay and have them delivered to Sri Lanka.Send love straight to their heart this Valentine's with our thoughtful gifts!