Reconciling the Human Factor:

Reconciling the Human Factor:

Understanding the North Koren Human Rights/Humanitarian Divide

 

By Erich Weingartner

May 28, 2013

 

With political leaders and the media perpetually focused on the behavior of a young hereditary leader and his nuclear-armed military, does anybody really care what happens to ordinary people in North Korea? There are two major constituencies internationally that do care: the humanitarian community and the human rightscommunity.

 

When widespread starvation in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) became evident in the mid to late 1990s, humanitarian agencies launched a massive and largely successful rescue effort to stem the famine.

 

Human rights organizations have meanwhile played a pivotal role in exposing North Korea's dismal record of abuses, culminating in the recent appointment by the United Nations Human Rights Council of a Commission of Inquiry (CoI).

 

Since both claim that their objective is to ease the plight of suffering North Koreans, you might think these communities would be natural allies. But sadly, those working on North Korean human rights do not seem to get along very well with those providing humanitarian assistance to the DPRK.

 

Not only do their goals and methods often contradict each other, their practitioners sometimes engage in verbal battles and mutual recrimination. This conflict is likely to intensify now that the three-member CoI has begun its one-year assignment.

 

Why is this the case?

Part of the answer lies in the fact that the focus of the two is quite different.

Humanitarian agencies aim to ease human suffering.	Human rights organizations aim tooutlaw human suffering.
Humanitarians work within whatever is the prevailing system, in order to deliver commodities, tools and skills to those in need.	Human rights activists work tochange systems that they believe are the cause of assaults on human dignity.
Humanitarians aim to raise the living standards of those without power.	Human rights aim to enforce standards of behavior on those in power.

Some scientists posit that there is a genetic origin to altruistic behavior. Assisting others in one's family or tribal group at the cost of one's own resources adds survival value to the group as a whole. Yet there are clear differences in the historical origins of the humanitarian and human rights impulse...Read on.  

 

Source: 38north.org

 

oldmarine