Do Human Rights Violations Cause Internal Conflict?

Abstract

This article outlines a human rights framework for analyzing violent internal conflict, "translating" social-scientific findings on conflict risk factors into human rights language. It is argued that discrimination and violations of social and economic rights function as underlying causes of conflict, creating the deep grievances and group identities that may, under some circumstances, motivate collective violence. Violations of civil and political rights, by contrast, are more clearly identifiable as direct conflict triggers. Abuse of personal integrity rights is associated with escalation, and intermediately repressive regimes appear to be most at risk. Denial of political participation rights is associated with internal conflict because full democracies experience less conflict. Yet democratization itself is dangerous, since regime transition is also a major conflict risk factor.

Can states buy peace? Social welfare spending and civil conflicts

“…This, in turn, will diminish people's motivation and ability to engage in violent internal dissent. 5 Despite the strong theoretical reasoning behind the inequality and civil conflict relationship (Gurr, 1970;Regan & Norton, 2005), the existing evidence on this topic is neither consistent nor conclusive (Thoms & Ron, 2007). Most of the influential large-N studies conclude that there is no obvious regularity in the interaction between inequality and civil conflict (Collier & Hoeffler, 1998Fearon & Laitin, 2003;Hauge & Ellingsen, 1998;Moore, Lindstrom & O'Regan, 1996;Weede, 1987).…”

Anticipating the Past

“…(2006: 8) This argument is problematic on two grounds. For one thing, the extent to which poverty, inequality, and ESC wrongs drive armed conflict is highly debated among social scientists (see Berdal and Malone, 2000;Stewart, 2008;Thoms and Ron, 2007). For another thing, Arbour assumes what she needs to demonstrate: that transitional justice actually has the aim and ability to '[bring] about social transformation'.…”

Human Rights Violations, Weak States, and Civil War

“…In addition to this effect on rationally acting people, both Thoms and Ron (2007) and Jakobsen and de Soysa (2009) argue that indiscriminate repression can cause grievances, which may drive formerly neutral civilians to support or join a rebel group. When the army burns down one's village or a death squad kills one's family members although they had not supported the rebels, people may join the rebel group to seek revenge or because of their hatred of the government.…”

“…Mason and Krane (1989) present a case study of the civil war in El Salvador but no large-N tests. Two recent studies use global samples to examine the link between repression and civil war: Thoms and Ron (2007), examining bivariate relationships, find that violations of civil and political rights are "conflict triggers", that violations of personal integrity rights are associated with conflict escalation, but that violations of social and economic rights contribute to underlying causes. Jakobsen and de Soysa (2009), focusing on ethnic conflict, do not find a lack of empowerment (an indicator including freedom of movement, speech, and religion, workers and political rights) to increase the risk of civil war.…”

“…Thoms and Ron (2007) examine only bivariate relationships, and Jakobsen and de Soysa (2009) look at empowerment rather than personal integrity rights. Many other studies have used an extended definition of repression that includes repression of political rights.…”