What instruments and mechanisms are available to harness the ‘political will’ to pursue justice for the allegations of ‘atrocity crime’ in Rakhine, Myanmar? Analysing country’s ratification trend, declarations upon ratification on relevant global instruments, and interactions with the un on human rights issues, this paper reveals the ‘mind’ of Myanmar and its obligations. Exploring the mechanism of four International Crime Tribunals (icts), it outlines the pathways to pursue justice. Revealing the inadequacies of current actions by key state actors resulting in invidious outcomes that privilege impunity for atrocity crimes, the paper suggests ways to harness the political will to pursue justice. This paper contends that the establishment of an ict for the trial of atrocity crimes in Rakhine (ictm-R) would be best facilitated by: a consensus mandate to prosecute individuals and not the state; precisely defined jurisdiction; and provisions to integrate the host nation’s apparatus, buttressed by the advocacy of the right groups and media.
This article explores Bangladesh’s voting coincidences at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) with China, India, Russia, and the United States for the period 2001–2017 to draw inferences about country’s political proximity and policy preferences on global issues. Although Bangladesh’s voting coincidence shifted from China toward India since 2013, country’s “opposite” votes with India remained 3 times higher compared with that of China, suggesting that the post-2013 change in voting coincidence is more about the types and content of the resolutions and not fundamental. Bangladesh maintained a principled position on disarmament, conventional arms control, nuclear nonproliferation, and prohibition of chemical weapons resolutions, which are greatly at odds with India and China. Such voting coherency suggests that the small developing countries can maintain a higher level of voting consistency on issues that are of great interest to them. However, Bangladesh’s voting inconstancy in the country-specific human rights resolutions reflects a selective adherence to the policy of non-interference, particularly with respect to neighbors. Bangladesh’s voting records on the human rights situation in Myanmar, reveals that it joined the majority member states condemning Myanmar only when the resolutions started mentioning Bangladesh as an affected country. Although the voting coincidence alone may not capture the whole dynamics of a state’s leanings, this article has revealed that systematic research of UNGA voting records has the capacity to add to the knowledge of political proximity and policy preferences of states in terms of the way they weigh their choices and chart their path through idealism and opportunism.
Any global structure comprises of ideational and material elements. To put the idea into practice, members of the global community formulate rules and regulations and marshal resources to build capacities and institutions that can affect states and societies. Although the effects of the global structures on the state fragility are increasingly being recognized, the pathways through which they can affect the states contributing to its fragility or strengthening its resilience have been rarely examined. This paper aims at filling the void in the literature by offering a structural explanation of state fragility. The post 9/11 structure of the Global War on Terrorism (GWoT) has been taken as a proxy to theorize the pathways. It argues that the ideational and material factors of the GWoT operate through: (i) the cognitive pathway shaping the states’ thinking, interpreting and reasoning process (ii) the regulatory pathway creating demand for policy coordination, cooperation and compatible legal and procedural instruments for counter terrorism (CT) and their compliance (iii) the capability pathway shaping the states’ coercive capability, institutions and CT alliance building. The theorized pathways are illustrated through schematic diagrams showing how they can impact the states’ legitimacy and capacity dimensions contributing to the increase or decrease of the state fragility to facilitate their tracing in individual case studies. Finally, the paper makes comparative analysis of the cognitive, regulatory and capability pathways highlighting their relationship and relative significance.
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