The relationship between human rights and violent conflict is something like the chicken-and-egg riddle (the chicken or the egg, which came first). Are human rights violations caused by violent conflict, or are they the drivers of violent conflict? According to Parlevliet (2002:8) "violent and destructive conflict can lead to gross human rights violations, but can also result from a sustained denial of rights over a period of time". There is a general consensus that human rights violations are both symptoms and causes of violent conflict. Human rights violation can be viewed as both symptoms and causes of violent conflict because a sustained denial of human rights over a period of time can lead to violent conflict while a destructive conflict …show more content…
The 1994 genocide in Rwanda, in which some 800 000 people died in just 100 days, stands as one of the most chilling illustrations of the scope of atrocities that conflict can generate. The protracted conflicts in Angola and Sudan demonstrate that this kind of abuse does not only flare up in the short-term: in both countries, the population experienced decades of human rights violations resulting from the wars taking place (Lamb 2000:35). At times, specific human rights abuses have deliberately been used as a strategy of war to fight and intimidate opponents and terrorize civilians. The mutilation and amputation of people’s hands and other body parts by the rebels of Foday Sankoh’s Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone is a case in point, as was the systematic use of rape in “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia. Human rights may also be affected in more indirect ways, through for example, the destruction of people’s livelihoods or the refusal of belligerent parties to allow humanitarian relief activities in areas under their …show more content…
The problems to be addressed are different and so are the desired outcomes. If human rights violations as a symptom of conflict are the issue, the primary objective is to protect people from further abuses. International humanitarian law is an important instrument in this regard, as it seeks to limit the excesses of war and to protect civilians and other vulnerable groups. Activities of intermediaries are then aimed at mitigating, alleviating, and containing the destructive manifestation of conflict. They include peacekeeping, peacemaking, peace-enforcement, humanitarian intervention, humanitarian relief assistance, human rights monitoring, negotiating cease-fires, and the settlement of displaced