The multilateral challenge to the American post-Cold War hegemony : the origins of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation

The article provides an analysis of Russia’s role and place in President Biden’s U.S. foreign policy aims. Particularly, this paper explores clashing world order visions, issues pertaining to national sovereignty, post-Soviet space development, sanction policies, climate change issues, and global security. The following research reveals that the rivalry between the United States and Russia influences the system of international relations, because both parties promote substantially different concepts of the future world order. The Biden administration was unwilling to make the necessary concessions to accommodate Russia because 1) there is a huge gulf between the two country’s world views that even makes negotiations between the two almost impossible, and 2) because it does not take Russia seriously and views it as a declining power. As a result, the two sides were unable to come to some kind of negotiated agreement that would have addressed Russia’s concerns including the Ukraine issue. Instead, deterring Russia has become a priority for U.S. foreign policy in critical areas such as national sovereignty, the democratic development of post-Soviet countries, Russian-related human rights issues, and U.S. sanction policies against Russia. Comparing Trump’s presidency to the Biden administration’s first year in office, Biden has championed a more pragmatic narrative towards Russia. Most evidently, this is manifested in problems concerning universal global challenges such as strategic stability, cyber-security, and even aspects of climate change. Nevertheless, the possibility of concluding any serious negotiations between the parties on new world order parameters seems less realistic today than ever before.

The previous chapters have focused upon the way that the idea of human rights was kept alive in the General Assembly, Councils, Commissions, Committees and Working Groups of the United Nations. However, for much of the period between 1945 and the early 1970s human rights remained a ‘minority’ interest.1 Beyond those engaged directly in the debate on the Bill of Rights, or those involved in special interest pressure group politics, there is little evidence that the idea of human rights achieved the status of a social institution such that it affected the day-to-day conduct of international politics.2 For most of the period the international political agenda was dominated by military security and economic interests. This was so even before the United States withdrew formally from the debate on human rights and left the regime without hegemonic leadership. In the early postwar period, these interests focused upon economic reconstruction and the political consequences of an emergent East—West ideological struggle. Later, the mutual apprehension and mistrust of the Cold War gave focus to security issues at the expense of all other considerations, including human rights. The United States adopted a policy of ‘containment’ and gave support to any government, totalitarian or authoritarian, provided it was avowedly anti-communist.3 During the late 1960s and early 1970s the energy crisis, nuclear disarmament and détente were the central concerns of international politics. However, the end of the Vietnam war, followed by the collapse of détente, provided the catalyst for questions about the paucity of moral content in United States’ foreign policy. By early 1975 even Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a man with little previous enthusiasm for human rights as a foreign policy aim, was showing some concern for the issue.4 KeywordsForeign PolicyTrade CreditInternational PoliticsState PartyHigh CommissionerThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

During the Cold War era, the traditional Westphalian understanding of sovereignty protected the right of governments to deal with human rights as they saw fit within the borders of their own state. Despite the existence of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Bill of Human Rights, the international community made no serious effort to force signatory states to respect the obligations associated with those documents. A lack of international consensus on what those obligations were and how to prioritize different sets of rights compounded the problem. (1) With the end of the Cold War, Western states--particularly the United States--aggressively promoted the spread of liberal economic values and practices and argued that these economic values would facilitate the spread of associated political and social ideals. European states also began linking human rights considerations to economic and trade agreements, at least rhetorically. Some governments pushed back against this Western pressure, giving rise to the Asian values which centred on the claim of some leaders that people preferred being governed by soft authoritarian, collectivist-oriented states rather than the individualist, liberal democratic structures advocated by the West. This governmental effort at staking out a distinctive position towards human rights faltered in the wake of the Economic Crisis of 1997-99. (2) The development of the Association of Southeast Nations (ASEAN) provides an interesting example of how the debate between state sovereignty versus human rights (and democracy) has evolved in the Asia-Pacific region. The principle of Westphalian state sovereignty is the cornerstone of ASEAN's institutional structure. While other regional organizations have provisions to intervene in the affairs of member states under extraordinary conditions, ASEAN still refuses to take this step. (3) Nonetheless, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, there are indications that ASEAN is shifting its approach towards state sovereignty. The ASEAN Charter speaks of the need for member states to respect human rights and protect and promote democracy. In October 2009, ASEAN launched the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) to monitor the human rights conduct of its member states. The AICHR is currently working on developing an ASEAN Declaration on Human Rights, in what human rights NGOs have criticized as a highly secretive process. (4) The AICHR developed an ASEAN Declaration on Human Rights, in what NGOs criticized as a highly secretive process. The AICHR presented the Declaration to ASEAN in November 2012. The Declaration has been criticized by human rights groups for being too deferential to state power. (5) In 2010, ASEAN created the ASEAN Commission on the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Women and Children (ACWC). These developments were accompanied by a number of other measures designed to enhance human rights in Southeast Asia. (6) This paper argues that ASEAN's recent shift towards creating a more robust regional human rights regime is less substantive than it appears. The central argument is that ASEAN's moves towards promoting human rights are an important part of a larger regional strategy to rejuvenate and re-legitimize ASEAN. The growth of democracy and the spread of international norms of human rights have had some effect in the region. However, these influences are relatively minor and outweighed by the domestic political and economic requirements of the member states. The paper is divided into three parts. Part one examines the history of the regional human rights debate leading to the emergence of the AICHR. The paper argues that ASEAN's fairly abrupt shift towards supporting the AICHR reflected the member states' political interest in revitalizing ASEAN. The second part of the paper considers the possibilities that ASEAN's shift was due to pressure from the West or a desire on the part of ASEAN states to emulate the presumed human rights orientation of the Western powers. …

Introduction Daffodil Day, usually held in spring, raises funds for cancer awareness and research using this symbol of hope. On that day, people who donate money to this good cause are usually given a yellow daffodil pin to wear. When I lived in Auckland, New Zealand, on the last Friday in August most people walking around the city centre proudly wore a cheerful yellow flower. So many people generously participated in this initiative that one almost felt obliged to join the cause in order to wear the ‘uniform’ – the daffodil pin – as everyone else did on that day. To donate and to wear a daffodil is the social expectation, and operating in social environment people often endeavour to meet the expectation by doing the ‘appropriate things’ defined by societies or communities. After all, who does not like to receive a beam of acceptance and appreciation from a fellow daffodil bearer in Auckland’s Queen Street? States in international society are no different. In some ways, states wear ‘uniforms’ while executing domestic and foreign affairs just as human beings do within their social groups. States develop the understandings of desirable behaviour from the international community with which they interact and identify. They are ‘socialised’ to act in line with the expectations of international community. These expectations are expressed in the form of international norms, a prescriptive set of ideas about the ‘appropriate behaviour for actors with a given identity’ (Finnemore and Sikkink 891). Motivated by this logic of appropriateness, states that comply with certain international norms in world politics justify and undertake actions that are considered appropriate for their identities. This essay starts with examining how international norms can be spread to different countries through the process of ‘state socialisation’ (how the countries are ‘talked into’ wearing the ‘uniform’). Second, the essay investigates the idea of ‘cultural match’: how domestic actors comply with an international norm by interpreting and manipulating it according to their local political and legal practices (how the countries wear the ‘uniform’ differently). Lastly, the essay probes the current international normative community and the liberal values embedded in major international norms (whether states would continue wearing the ‘uniform’). International Norms and State Socialisation: Why Do States Wear the ‘Uniforms’? Norm diffusion is related to the efforts of ‘norm entrepreneurs’ using various platforms to convince a critical mass of states to embrace new norms (Finnemore and Sikkink 895-896). Early studies of norm diffusion tend to emphasise nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) as norm entrepreneurs and advocates, such as Oxfam and its goal of reducing poverty and hunger worldwide (Capie 638). In other empirical research, intergovernmental organisations (IGOs) were shown to serve as ‘norm teachers,’ such as UNESCO educating developing countries the value of science policy organisations (Finnemore 581-586). Additionally, states and other international actors can also play important roles in norm diffusion. Powerful states with more communication resources sometimes enjoy advantages in creating and promoting new norms (Florini 375). For example, the United States and Western European countries have often been considered as the major proponents of free trade. Norm emergence and state socialisation in a normative community often occurs during critical historical periods, such as wars and major economic downturns, when international changes and domestic crises often coincide with each other (Ikenberry and Kupchan 292). For instance, the norm entrepreneurs of ‘responsible power/state’ can be traced back to the great powers (mainly the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union) and their management of international order at the end of WWII (see Bull). With their negotiations and series of international agreements at the Cairo, Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam Conference in the 1940s, these great powers established a post-World War international society based on the key liberal values of international peace and security, free trade, human rights, and democracy. Human beings are not born to know what appropriate behaviour is; we learn social norms from parents, schools, peers, and other community members. International norms are collective expectations and understanding of how state governments should approach their domestic and foreign affairs. States ‘learn’ international norms while socialising with a normative community. From a sociological perspective, socialisation summarises ‘how and to what extent diverse individuals are meshed with the requirement of collective life’ at the societal level (Long and Hadden 39). It mainly consists of the process of training and shaping newcomers by the group members and the social adjustment of novices to the normative framework and the logic of appropriateness (Long and Hadden 39). Similarly, social psychology defines socialisation as the process in which ‘social organisations influence the action and experience of individuals’ (Gold and Douvan 145). Inspired by sociology and psychology, political scientists consider socialisation to be the mechanism through which norm entrepreneurs persuade other actors (usually a norm novice) to adhere to a particular prescriptive standard (Johnston, “Social State” 16). Norm entrepreneurs can change novices’ behaviour by the methods of persuasion and social influence (Johnston, “Treating International Institutions” 496-506). Socialisation sometimes demands that individual actors should comply with organisational norms by changing their interests or preferences (persuasion). Norm entrepreneurs often attempt to construct an appealing cognitive frame in order to persuade the novices (either individuals or states) to change their normative preferences or adopt new norms. They tend to use language that can ‘name, interpret and dramatise’ the issues related to the emerging norm (Finnemore and Sikkink 987). As a main persuasive device, ‘framing’ can provide a singular interpretation and appropriate behavioural response for a particular situation (Payne 39). Cognitive consistency theory found in psychology has suggested the mechanism of ‘analogy’, which indicates that actors are more likely to accept new ideas that share some similarities to the extant belief or ideas that they have already accepted (see Hybel, ch. 2). Based on this understanding, norm entrepreneurs usually frame issues in a way that can associate and resonate with the shared value of the targeted novices (Payne 43). For example, Finnemore’s research shows that when it promoted the creation of state science bureaucracies in the 1960s, UNESCO associated professional science policy-making with the appropriate role of a modern state, which was well received by the post-war developing countries in Latin America, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia (Finnemore 565-597). Socialisation can also emanate actors’ pro-norm behaviour through a cost-benefit calculation made with social rewards and punishments (social influence). A normative community can use the mechanism of back-patting and opprobrium to distribute social reward and punishment. Back-patting – ‘recognition, praise and normative support’ – is offered for a novice’s or member’s cooperative and pro-norm behaviour (Johnston, “Treating International Institutions” 503). In contrast, opprobrium associated with status denial and identity rejection can create social and psychological costs (Johnston 504). Both the reward and punishment grow in intensity with the number of co-operators (Johnston 504). A larger community can often create more criticism towards rule-breakers, and thus greatly increase the cost of disobedience. For instance, the lack of full commitment from major powers, such as China, the United States, and some other OECD countries, has arguably made global collective action towards mitigating climate change more difficult, as the cost of non-compliance is relatively low. While being in a normative environment, novice or emerging states that have not yet been socialised into the international community can respond to persuasion and social influence through the processes of identification and mimicking. Social psychology indicates that when one actor accepts persuasion or social influence based on its desire to build or maintain a ‘satisfying self-defining relationship’ to another actor, the mechanism of identification starts to work (Kelman 53). Identification among a social group can generate ‘obligatory’ behaviour, where individual states make decisions by attempting to match their perceptions of ‘who they are’ (national identity) with the expectation of the normative community (Glodgeier and Tetlock 82). After identifying with the normative community, a novice state would then mimic peer states’ pro-norm behaviour in order to be considered as a qualified member of the social group. For example, when the Chinese government was deliberating over its ratification of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety in 2003, a Ministry of Environmental Protection brief noted that China should ratify the Protocol as soon as possible because China had always been a country ‘keeping its word’ in international society, and non-ratification would largely ‘undermine China’s international image and reputation’ (Ministry of Environmental Protection of PRC). Despite the domestic industry’s disagreement with entering into the Protocol, the Chinese government’s self-identification as a ‘responsible state’ that performs its international promises and duties played an important role in China’s adoption of the international norm of biosafety. Domestic Salience of International Norms: How Do States Wear the ‘Uniforms’ Differently? Individual states do not accept international norms passively; instead, state governments often negotiate and interact with domestic a

The promotion of human rights has faced challenges in recent years in the United States and elsewhere. In this study, human rights discourses are examined in the context of strategic foreign policy rhetoric by the United States. The routine of foreign policy statements is meant to create audiences receptive to U.S. foreign policy aims, but also reveals underlying ideologies and assumptions. The analysis examines U.S. State Department Human Rights Country Reports between 2000 and 2019. The results show that the assumed ideal model of human rights is heavily based on U.S. political tradition. The performance of other countries is evaluated against the ‘exceptionalist’ U.S. model without consideration of different cultural or societal contexts. Linguistic choices are made to highlight the agency of authorities and events, which can be seen as a strategy of diplomatic face-saving. In some cases, countries are evaluated on an unequal basis based on political expediency.

The role of regional international human rights instruments in the protection and promotion of human rights is remarkable in the sense that the treaties have significantly and immensely contributed to important changes in the laws of many countries. This chapter looks into three regional human rights instruments, namely the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, 1950; the Inter American Convention on Human Rights, 1969 and the African Charter on Human and People's Rights, 1981 and examines (a) the circumstances leading to the establishment of the regional human rights enforcement mechanisms; (b) the nature and scope of rights & guarantees and (c) safeguarding procedures under these instruments. It examines whether the enforcement mechanisms are, consistent with State sovereignty, and whether they are gradually enhancing the promotion of fundamental human rights and freedoms. Keywords: African Charter on Human and People's Rights; enforcement mechanisms; European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms; Inter American Convention on Human Rights; promotion of human rights; protection of human rights; regional human rights instruments; state sovereignty

Economic Sanctions Against Human Rights Violations

Background: Every millennium, decade, and century, as well as every passing day, humanity wakes up with a dream of a ‘new world’, a world without wars and bloodshed. Despite this thousand-year-old dream, wars and their devastating consequences hang menacingly over humanity’s head like the sword of Damocles. For this reason, wars have been and will remain a key focus of researchers and philosophers. By studying the numerous causes and consequences of war, the necessary measures to guarantee security and peace worldwide can be determined. Although human society strides towards prosperity, the likelihood of war has not diminished but continues to threaten, with unparalleled ferocity, the existence of human life, peace, and security. The numerous agreements and treaties, both bilateral and multilateral, between different states have only temporarily avoided the outbreak of conflicts and wars. Therefore, the concepts of peace, defence, and the prevention of war remain at the centre of research today. Research works in these fields are geared towards a universal idea: ‘the protection of basic human rights’. Methodology: This paper’s research methodology involves analysing data on the role of the UN as a defender of freedom and human rights. To achieve this, an extensive literature review was conducted. The review covers literature sources in both Albanian and foreign languages, written by well-known authors and provides a large amount of information and thoughts on the topic under consideration. The authors of some of the used works include Thomas Hobbes, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, John Locke, Brian Tamanaha, Alexis Tocqueville, and Servet Pëllumbi. The research was conducted step-by-step and argument-by-argument using the logic of reasoning and the analysis of ideas. The relevant research works relate to the UN’s role as a provider and guarantor of human rights and freedom. Results and Conclusions: In the opinion of the UN, the concept of democracy is closely related to the concept of protecting peace, freedom, and human rights. This is also the reason why the UN cannot remain indifferent in the face of cases of violation of freedoms and human rights under the pretext of respecting ‘state sovereignty’. The UN is today’s most important and powerful organisation for protecting human freedoms and rights, world peace, and international security. Based on the above discussion, a democratic society is nothing but the result of new relations between the power and freedom of an individual. ‘Human rights and freedoms’ do not constitute a mere bureaucratic formula but a request of the people for the development of the society in which they live. They resemble a ‘spiral’ that has only ascended since various theorists first presented their ideas on ‘human rights’. Infringement on human rights would simultaneously mark the infringement and the end of democracy itself.

The Future Gas Requirements and Supply Committee has been formed and staffed by the petroleum industry to provide a continuing long-range study of the future of the gas industry. Many factors bringing pressures to bear on the gas industry make possible a realistic self-appraisal of its future. After witnessing a period of unprecedented growth, investors, producers, consumers and regulators are seeking a clarification of the future of the industry to aid them in their planning. Equally important is the growing awareness that the industry itself is best equipped and qualified to forecast its own future. The Future Gas Committee, staffed from within the industry by marketing experts, geologists and engineers, can do much to meet this need. This paper deals with the development and philosophy of the Future Gas Requirements and Supply Committee and presents the results of its first studies. Why Are We Making This Study? The industry is presently confronted with a confused picture of the future gas situation. During the past few years, there have been heard some highly conflicting and diametrically opposed predictions about the future of the business. Some have warned that this nation is going to run completely out of gas the day after tomorrow-while others have assured us that there are uncountable trillions of cubic feet of gas just waiting to be tapped. During the past 15 years at least 45 studies of the nation's gas supplies have been made. Conclusions of these studies of future gas supply, adjusted for production to Jan. 1, 1965, range from 0 to 3,000 trillion cu ft of gas. It is a certainty that both extremes of these opinions cannot be correct. It is not known which of these many studies is correct. What really matters is just what will factual study reveal. All of us believe that the gas business has a lot of growth left in it. But a more accurate measure of just how much and how fast it will grow in the next 5, 10, even 20 years, is needed. Unbiased estimates based on the combined knowledge of many of the most informed people throughout the entire industry is necessary. Help is needed from men who have a storehouse of data at their fingertips and the experience and know-how to do the job. Certainly this process will provide results that should become more widely accepted than the individual opinion. With a view to obtaining this information through a more unified, industry-sponsored effort, many of the leaders of the natural gas industry expressed a strong desire for a continuing long-range study of the requirements and supply of natural gas in the United States. As a result, in 1960 plans to form such a committee were made and in 1962 the Future Gas Requirements and Supply Committee was organized under the auspices of the American Gas Association. It later became an independent committee to permit expansion of its activities outside the U.S. Since that time both the Requirements Div, and the Supply Div. have published their first reports covering the U.S. Future reports of the two divisions will be consolidated to show the relationship between requirements and supply. In mid- 1965, the Colorado School of Mines agreed to sponsor the committee. This sponsorship has accelerated original plans to include Canada, Mexico and Alaska in the studies. Gas Supply Committee Organization The Gas Supply Committee consists of nearly 100 committee and subcommittee members. There are 12 committee members, each of whom is chairman of a subcommittee responsible for estimating the future gas supply available under existing economic and technological conditions in his assigned subdivision of the U. S. Subcommittee members intimately familiar with specific portions of the working area are selected by the subcommittee chairman and each subcommittee consists of as many members as deemed necessary by the chairman to adequately determine the future gas supply of his assigned area. General Procedures The committee and its subcommittees work continuously with private information obtained on a confidential basis from many sources. Continuation of the committee's important task and the value of its estimates depend on the availability of such data. Each member is fully aware of and respects the confidential nature of both the data and the estimates made available to him. Subcommittees met and discussed assignments prior to the commencement of studies, and as often thereafter as necessary. Each subcommittee member bas made detailed studies of his assigned area using data and manpower available to him. Upon completion of various phases of studies by members, the subcommittees met and analyzed the individual estimates and each committee then prepared a report for its area. JPT P. 43ˆ

The forces of supply and demand in a free market economy will result in increased supplies and lower consumer prices for energy resources in the United States. This thesis is examined in light of post-World War II trends in oil and gas resources. A review of these trends shows the relationships between market price and supply of oil and gas, and verifies the importance of profits in the economic cycle of energy development. One of the main points considered in this analysis is the effect of government regulation. Government price ceilings and incentive prices have encouraged both excess consumption and inefficient production of oil and gas resources. In the short-term, we are vulnerable to world energy disruptions. However, domestic reserves of oil and gas remaining to be discovered in the United States are ample to carry our nation into the next century without excessive dependence on unstable foreign sources of supply. Free-market forces will not only allow the efficient development of those reserves, but will also bring forth supplies of substitutes for oil and gas, such as coal and nuclear fuels, as prices and costs warrant.

Introduction TODAY'S WORLD IS CHARACTERIZED BY DRAMATIC INSTANCES OF PEOPLE BEING poisoned by radiation (Chernobyl in the Ukraine), deadly industrial gases (Bhopal in India), industrial pollution of water (Minamata Bay in Japan), and toxic land-dumps (Love Canal in the United States). Less dramatic but more pervasive are the persistent forms of poisoning by industrial pollution (industrial cities in Eastern Europe, the cotton fields of Central Asia, the petrochemical corridor along the Mississippi in Louisiana in the United States) and disease caused by untreated sewage. More than one million people are displaced every year from their environment by development projects that put these environments to new uses, such as valleys flooded by dams and forests exclusively reserved for commercial logging (Cernea and Guggenheim, 1993: 2). Slower, but at least as extensive in impact, are environmental processes that are undermining the livelihood of people and displacing them: desertification (as in the Sahel), appropriation of land for commercial uses, forcing subsistence farmers on fragile soil to reduce the fallow periods and thus impair the soil's fertility, and flooding caused by upstream erosion (as in the Brahmaputra Delta due to Himalayan deforestation). In the future, there is the prospect of upstream states diverting water for irrigation and depriving downstream users (e.g., on the Tigris and Euphrates), of some countries (e.g., Libya) overusing regional aquifers and creating shortages for neighboring populations, and, most serious of all, of regional declines in agricultural productivity and coastal and delta inundation due to global warming. All these processes, which represent a pandemic pattern, involve environmental victims. (For one survey, although now a little dated, see Jacobson, 1989.) Protecting people against becoming environmental victims is clearly a task of the first order of importance in the world today. Is this compatible with the centrality of the principle of state sovereignty in international relations? This is the question that this article addresses. First, the case for state sovereignty will be considered from an environmental angle, with particular concern for environmental victims. This is followed by a critique of state sovereignty. It is an immanent critique in that it begins within a perspective that emphasizes the strengths of state sovereignty. In the end, however, it is rejected in favor of a federal system of divided authority, extended down to the local level, and up to the global level. Some might argue that a normative critique of state sovereignty has little real-world significance, since capitalist globalization (as well as the politics of environmental and universal human rights) is in any case eroding state sovereignty. In defense of this analysis, first note that increasing economic may be as much a matter of state choices as is the erosion of state power and, second, that erosion does not mean disappearance. Keohane and his collaborators have argued that neither sovereignty nor interdependence is about to disappear (Levy, Keohane, and Haas, 1993: 417). The tension between the processes of erosion and the determination of power holders to assert sovereignty suggests that it may be timely to review state sovereignty as a contribution to the question of whether, for example, environmental and international justice activists should work to shore it up or, alternatively, to transform it into something new. The acceptance or rejection of state sovereignty, also with reference specifically to the environment, has been the subject of controversy. On the one hand, there are those who argue for working with state sovereignty to develop environmental protection regimes and even for strengthening state sovereignty (e.g., Piddington, 1989; Keohane, Haas, and Levy, 1993: 4; Commission on Global Governance, 1995: 68-72). Others have argued that ecological processes do not respect state borders and that state sovereignty hinders the effective environmental protection that the scope of the ecological processes requires (e. …

This paper reviews oil and gas worldwide supply and demand and their effect on oil prices and consequently on related industries such as refining, drilling technology, enhanced oil recovery, natural gas liquefaction,..etc. The proved oil reserves in the world is about 7×1011 bbl with about 56% located in the Middle East. The worldwide natural gas reserves is estimated as 3.484×1015 ft3 with 43% located in U.S.S.R and 25% in the Middle-East. The heavy oil reserves is estimated as 5.8 – 5.9×1012 barrels with 72% located in Venezuela. The bitumen reserves is estimated as 200 billion barrels with 82% located in Canada. In 1979, oil production reached it's peak of about 66×106 bbl/day out of which 21.91×106 bbl/day was produced from the Middle East. Then the demand for oil declined till 1985. An increase in the demand was reported in early 1986. About 25% of oil produced was consumed by U.S.A., 21% by Western Europe, 15% by U.S.S.R. and 7.5% by Japan. Oil tankers, especially supertanker, and refining industries were suffering in the last several years as they were operated at rates less than their capacities. Oil prices declined since 1982 and collapsed in 1986. Such reduction in oil price, if sustained, is expected to hurt drilling activities, enhanced oil recovery projects which may result in less supply and declining reserve and consequently a big hike in oil prices in the future. Among different sources of energy, oil has proved to be the main source of energy for worldwide consumption. The demand for gas is increasing. The production in early 1986 reached a rate of 190×109ft3/day with about 35% produced from U.S.S.R and about 25% from U.S.A. The main consumers of natural gas are U.S.S.R., U.S.A., Japan and Western Europe. U.S.S.R. supplies Western and Eastern Europe with most of their needs of natural gases.

During the 1970s and into the next decade, petroleum and natural gas derived in conventional ways will continue to constitute the major share of the fuel consumed in the United States and the world. After 1985 other forms of energy will increase in importance. Since the demand for oil and gas will increase in the near term, it is likely that prices will also rise. Thus, during the next ten to twenty years, the supply and price of oil and gas will be critical elements in the energy policy of both consuming, and exporting, nations. An ideal solution to the supply-price matter would be a rise in the supply of oil and gas which would meet the demand until alternative energy sources are available. Concurrently, the price of oil and gas should rise, but should not substantially exceed the cost of the alternative sources being developed. In order to pursue such an ideal solution, it must be understood that there is a real problem: the current energy difficulties are not created by an oil conspiracy; the price of oil and gas will not fall; and easy solutions cannot be expected. As a necessary part of the ideal solution, the major consuming areas should jointly approach the energy situation; another cooperative effort should be joint development of new energy sources. All should avoid narrow self-serving, near term actions. The cooperative approach to the world's energy problems fits well into the larger framework of cooperation on international matters pursued by the Nixon administration.

This chapter examines how the vision of the natural family articulated by several prominent conservative religious organizations in the United States shapes their opposition to certain human rights instruments. The United Nations' 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child seems to reflect an advance in international human rights formulations and to have generated a high degree of formal commitment by governments, as evidenced by its quick and virtually universal ratification. However, the United States stands nearly alone in not having ratified the Convention, and the religious groups examined in this chapter strenuously urge that it should not do so, lest it undermine the natural family, motherhood, and parental and national sovereignty. On similar grounds, they support the United States's continuing failure to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. Strikingly, these groups invoke the UN Declaration of Human Right's provision that the family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State to critique the Convention and CEDAW as anti-family and a threat to the natural family. This opposition is troubling if, as some have argued, one way to resolve the paradox that impressive declarations on paper of human rights coexist with gross violation in actual societies of human rights is to enlist the unique resources of religion to support a human rights culture. This chapter examines opposition expressed by Concerned Women for America, Family Research Council, the Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society, and the affiliated World Congress of Families. It also analyzes the recent document, The Natural Family: A Manifesto, co-authored by Dr. Allan Carlson of the Howard Center and the World Congress of Families, and Paul T. Mero, of the Sutherland Institute. The Manifesto is intended to provide a philosophical foundation for pro family efforts. The chapter concludes with some reflections on this defense of the natural family. It critically evaluates how such groups' opposition to these human rights instruments entails a conception of the proper place of men and women within families and society and a conviction that gender equality undermines families.

The Role of Human Rights NGO's: Human Rights Defenders or State Sovereignty Destroyers? Globalization has given opportunities to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to emerge on the world stage as one of the central players in the processes of promotion and protection of human rights around the world. The emergence of new actors in the human rights field raises questions not only about their impact on the protection of human rights, but also their impact on the state, which for a long time has had a monopoly on deciding how to treat its citizens. The article aims to analyze the role of human rights NGOs from the perspective of state sovereignty versus/and human rights, and provide answers to the following questions: what is the input of NGOs in protecting human rights? Do their activities lead to real improvements in human rights practices within a state? What is their impact on state sovereignty? How do the activities of NGOs influence the state's authority and legitimacy? Analysis has shown that the impact of human rights NGOs on state sovereignty and human rights protection depends on many factors, such as the country's level of development, political regime, the size of human rights NGOs, etc. This leads to the tentative conclusion that human rights NGOs may be both human rights defenders and state sovereignty destroyers.