The International Commission of Jurists: Global Advocates for Human Rights

2. Organizing a Global Network

Chapter 2 Organizing a Global Network The COMMISSION WILL ... by mobilizing the jurists of the world in support of the Rule of Law ... advance and fortify the independence of the judiciary and the legal profession and promote fair trial for all persons accused of crime. The COMMISSION will foster understanding of and respect for the Rule of Law and give aid and encouragement to those peoples to whom the Rule of Law is denied. -Ie] Statute, Article 4, "Aims and Objectives" Part II Overview, 1956-1963 After 1955 the LC] deliberately turned away from strident anticommunism directed exclusively at Eastern Europe. As the British and French empires crumbled, the Cold War sparked intense competition for control of newly independent governments in Africa and Asia. Legal idealists confronted third world political rivalry over who would govern and under what rules.' Under new leadership, the IC] campaigned worldwide for the rule of law. Colonialism, nationalism, communism, totalitarianism, and the Cold War all threatened democratic ideals. Colonized Africans and Asians fighting for independence denounced European common law and constitutional democracy as alien impositions. Totalitarian regimes in Spain, Portugal, and South Africa systematically violated fundamental rights. France's colonial wars in Vietnam and Algeria, the AngloFrench attack on Suez, and racial segregation in the United States further alienated new third world leaders; they launched a nonaligned movement at Bandung. Communists charged that Western 50 Chapter 2 capitalism unjustly subordinated vital economic rights to ersatz political and civil liberties. Chinese leaders touted an economic development model that sacrificed representative institutions and individual liberties. Fidel Castro exported revolutionary nationalism from Cuba; the Berlin Wall imprisoned East Germans. The CIA countered KGB subversion with covert actions in Tibet, Cuba, and the Congo, as well as with plots to assassinate Castro, Trujillo, and Lumumba. State representatives to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights refused to address even the most flagrant government disregard for the Universal Declaration. Instead, that Commission drafted two international covenants on economic and political rights that languished for twelve years in the General Assembly. At the insistence of the United States, the U.N. Commission contented itself with nonthreatening studies, international seminars, and advisory services to promote rather than protect human rights. Delegates to the General Assembly passionately disputed major power invasions of Hungary, Egypt, Tibet, and Cuba; they demonstrated no principled commitment to human rights standard setting or enforcement. Three chapters in Part II trace IC] initiatives to define, promote, and enforce the rule of law. This chapter examines the IC]'s rapid growth into a global jurists' network of thirty-one affiliates on five continents with a professional Secretariat in Geneva. The group adopted a statute and was legally incorporated. A new SecretaryGeneral , unaware of CIA funding, recruited an independent, professional Secretariat staff. Distinguished jurists from Asia and Africa were elected as Commissioners and national sections were organized. The Secretary-General made world tours to meet post-colonial rulers and to recruit local jurists for national sections. The Secretariat organized conferences to popularize democratic principles, conducted multinational surveys on the rule of law, and published a scholarly journal (Journal of the International Commission ofJurists). Literature in three languages was mailed free of cost to more than forty thousand recipients, a number surpassing the audience for U.N. promotional materials. Since the IC] was promoting pro-Western, anticommunist movements, the CIA increased its indirect, covert support. Chapter 3 examines how the jurists defined a universal rule of law based on common principles from different Western legal systems. Three IC] congresses formulated standards for both substantive rights and procedural means. Rather than lobbying for international treaties at the United Nations, IC] experts recommended principles for governments to adopt as municipal law. CIA strategists combatting Marxism welcomed the alternative due process synthesis. Chapter 4 shows how principled IC] human rights advocates de- Organizing a Global Network 51 nounced-with neither political bias nor the U.N.'s timidity-violations by China and Spain, the USSR and South Africa. Several governments allowed IC] observers to attend politically sensitive criminal trials. Brief reports in the IC] Bulletin exposed misconduct by governments on both sides of the Iron Curtain. For selected miscreants , the IC] carried out in-depth investigations and published detailed special reports. The United States selectively used IC] inquiries on Hungary and Tibet to embarrass rivals at the United Nations, but ignored IC] accounts of fascism and apartheid by anticommunist allies. The International Commission...