Self-Defense As A Human Right

Check out The Human Right of Self-Defense (PDF) by David B. Kopel, Paul Gallant and Joanne D. Eisenin in the current issue of the Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law:

Is there a human right to defend oneself against a violent attacker? Is there an individual right to arms under international law? Conversely, are governments guilty of human rights violations if they do not enact strict gun control laws?

Of course, if you are talking about the limitations on the right to self defense--you just know that the UN is going to enter the discussion:

In December 2005, the United Nations abolished the Human Rights Commission. The Commission had been widely criticized for inattention to human rights. The Human Rights Commission had encouraged terrorist bombings of Israeli civilians³⁶, refused to pass resolutions criticizing human rights violations perpetrated by the genocidal regime in Zimbabwe, and refused to condemn the Libyan and Sudanese slave trade. Mary Robinson, the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, helped allow the Durban Conference Against Racism to become a forum for aggressive and vicious anti-Semitism, and to fail to mention the existence of—let alone condemn—the current slave trade in Africa. In 2005, the Commission was chaired by a representative of the Libyan dictatorship of Moammer Qaddafi, a regime which, ever since Qaddafi’s coup in 1969, has had one of the worst human rights records in the world.

Given the Human Rights Commission’s complicity with genocidaires, terrorists, and slave-traders, and given that some Commission member governments are state sponsors of genocide, terrorism, and slave-trading, those governments’ interest in appointing a Special Rapporteur dedicated to gun prohibition was consistent with those governments’ pragmatic interest in preventing resistance by the victims of genocide, slave-capturing, and state terrorism.

Footnote 36 clarifies where the UN stands on the use of terrorism:

A few days after thirty Israelis celebrating the Passover Seder were murdered by a terrorist bomber, the Human Rights Commission adopted a resolution endorsing “all available means including armed struggle” against Israelis [see here]. See Anne Bayefsky, How the U.N.’s Human Rights Investigations Do Yasser Arafat’s Dirty Work, N.Y. SUN, Apr. 29, 2002. The resolution was understood as endorsing suicide bombing of civilians; hence, Britain and Germany, which often abstain on anti-Israel resolutions, voted against the resolution. The resolution passed by 40 to 5. See DORE GOLD, TOWER OF BABBLE: HOW THE UNITED NATIONS HAS FUELED GLOBAL CHAOS 41–42 (2005).

There is also an interesting section comparing different legal systems on the issue of self-defense, including Greek, Roman, Islam--and Jewish law.

Read the whole thing.

[Hat tip: Instapundit]

Technorati Tag: UN and United Nations.