Forever and Ever @jennylema - Tumblr Blog

Has globalization done more harm or good for the promotion of human rights?

Globalization is the sharing of ideas and concepts between nations and the globe. This means the people all around the world are in contact with each other. Some might argue that globalization has increased the human rights violations, however I think it has rather done more good for human rights.

The most convincing argument for the other side stating globalization has done more harm to human rights is that big, wealthy companies exploit poor countries. As an example Nike could be used. A case study was made with Nike where two people went to Indonesia to live a typical Nike worker’s life. They soon had to experience the challenges and didn’t feel like they could do this for a life time. The experiment showed that companies use other countries’ cheap labor for their own benefit because that means they don’t have to pay much for the workers. This will cause a disagreement with the human rights. The people that have to work with minimum wages can’t afford a proper home and enough food to feed their family, and they don’t have proper sanitation. In that case, globalization has done more harm for the promotion of human rights.

However, globalization has done much more good than harm when looked at in a greater perspective. When the genocide happened in Rwanda the world stepped in and prevented more harm. Whether the United Nations (UN) should have stepped in earlier to prevent the slaughter or not, they still managed to bring the genocide to an end and by that save lives. The UN is a global network, which means here globalization has played a very important role. If globalization wouldn’t have existed, it might have been worse.

Additionally, globalization simplifies tourism and traveling. People can travel around and see if there are areas where human rights aren’t met, and they can inform other people about this so something can be done against that violation. Without globalization every country would just mind its own business and nobody could ever find out whether human rights are met or not. Through tourism and open borders countries need to be mindful of their image towards visitors. No country wants to show that they mistreat people or they don’t have enough money or resources to meet all the human rights. By opening countries’ borders they also make their country transparent to the rest of the world so everyone can help if human rights are violated.

I still have a few open ended questions which I don’t have an answer to. For example, why doesn’t the government intervene when international companies exploit their workers? Or would the workers leave their jobs if they were told to by the government or would they illegally still work at places like Nike?

#globalization #country #international #human rights

The Scramble for Africa, the only way to deal with Africa?

In my humanities class we were looking at human rights as well as the Scramble for Africa where Europeans basically divided up Africa. This was a very interesting topic to study, especially the scramble for Africa because I live in Africa.

The scramble for Africa basically was when European countries like Britain, France, Germany and more met at the Berlin Conference and divided up Africa. Their reasons for those actions were to bring civilization to the people and to free the Africans from the slavery as well as the need for resources.

They wanted to bring “civilization” to the continent. How do you define civilization? Different people might have different opinions on the word civilization. To some people it might mean to have the fastest Internet and the most expensive technology. To others it might mean to be a community and to live in peace. How can one person or one country define this term all by itself and then make somebody else obey?

I think the Scramble for Africa was not necessary. The Africans could have evolved by themselves. They could have gotten to their own form of civilization, defined by them and not Europe. Europe only wanted to get to the resources; they didn’t care about the people. They used the excuse to be a good helper so they wouldn’t look so bad.

They didn’t need to get involved with Africa; they weren’t supposed to ‘deal’ with Africa at all. Africa could have been a united, strong continent by itself, they didn’t need the Europeans to come in and just brutally take over.

Instead of what they did, it would have been more helpful to everyone if Europe would have stayed in their places, and both continents could have learned from each other, they could have learned from each other's cultures and each other's differences. Nowadays people want to visit foreign countries BECAUSE they are different. They want to see something new. Europe should have kept that in mind before they tried to make Africa like Europe.