More than 120 world leaders gather at the United Nations in New York this week to discuss a list of humanitarian issues, and this year looks to be as distracted and complicated a mess as usual. On Monday, ministers, heads of state, presidents and other leaders from almost 80 nations gathered for the first ever General Assembly meeting on the Rule of Law, with hopes that by encouraging the leaders of the world to actually follow basic rules, peace would be the natural result.
When various governments of African nations sanction genocide, the raping of women and the kidnapping of children as child soldiers, when the Syrian government attacks unarmed civilians, or when George Armstrong Custer broke a treaty and led the U.S. Seventh Calvary against the Sioux, the result is longtime devastation and destruction. Generations are scarred. In the Battle of Little Big Horn, the Sioux and Cheyenne won and Custer was killed, but the tribes were later routed and memory of Custer's betrayal lives on in Native American history. How much more so the dramatic injustices in Rwanda and Sudan and Syria, in Burma and North Korea?
The countries of the world started off the week discussing the "rule of law" - that old idea of Lex Rex. If Law is King, then the leaders of the people may not do whatever they please; they too are ruled by the law of the land. The legal system of the United States was built on the Constitution; all governmental officials and laws can be held up to make sure they fall in line with that foundational law.
The U.N. leaders hope that by encouraging the rule of law, they can promote peace. For instance, South Africa's President Jacob Zuma's prepared speech for the assembly recognized the need for transparency and accountability, for supremacy of the law and the constitution of a nation. Human rights and human dignity are paramount.
The question, of course, is who gets to make the laws by which everybody is expected to abide?
Summit Storm 2012 - eNews for September 25, 2012
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