Human rights and the principle of sovereignty: a dangerous conflict at the heart of the nation state?

Abstract

The coercive power of the state in liberal democracies is justified largely by the claim that the state is the best mechanism for the protection of individual rights. Individual rights are, in turn, founded on assumptions about universal freedom and equality. But if this is the case, how can liberal states disavow the freedom and equality of people outside their borders? Most try not to, for example, by ratifying international instruments such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yet their pursuit of policies guided solely by concern for the so called ‘national interest’ can lead in effect to behaviour that undermines basic freedoms. Where this happens, a poisonous hypocrisy enters the bloodstream of the nation state, and infects the institutions established to protect the freedom and equality of its own citizens.In this paper I argue Australia's detention of asylum seekers, and a range of recent amendments to the Migration Act 1958 (Cth), are invidious steps along the path to a government which openly and aggressively denies the freedom and moral equality of individuals both here and elsewhere.