Actions Louder than Words

     When analyzing human rights on a global scale, it becomes immediately apparent that the global system and international actors are extraordinarily influential on the status of human rights within a state. This is nowhere more evident than the relationship between powerful western countries and economically/democratically developing nations in the world today.
     Less than two weeks after a revolution that deposed a corrupt regime, British Prime Minister David Cameron became the first world leader to visit Egypt yesterday.While this would seem a politically benign, perhaps even beneficial move on the part of a government invested in the successful creation of a stable Egyptian state, Cameron was accompanied on his visit by bosses from major arms and aerospace companies such as BEe Systems, Qinetiq, Thales, Cobham Group, Ultra Electronics and others. Despite claims that any deals made between these companies and the governments of Egypt and perhaps Kuwait will not be used to repress the population, these promises ring hollow. In 2004, the "deal in the desert" between Tony Blair and Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi gave British gas company Shell a £120million contract in exchange for equipment and military training for Libyan soldiers. This weekend, over 200 casualities were reported as the result of violent suppression of civilian protesters in Libya.
      Interestingly enough, the arms dealers joined Cameron mere hours after his public condemnation of the brutal repression of Libyans by Colonel Gaddafi, calling the killings "completely appalling." Of course, arms deals facillitated by Western nations are not illegal, nor should they be, however, it is important to use judgment when the lives of civilians are at stake.  Human rights violations on a state level cannot be eradicated when "the powers that be," mainly powerful Western nations, continually arm and encourage violence in unstable, dictatorial regimes. Nations cannot condemn violence while at the same time, turning around and providing the means for that very violence. The Cold War may be over, but the attitude of powerful nations in dealing with dictatorial regimes at the cost of citizen's lives has changed little in the past 20 years.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1359316/Prime-Minister-David-Cameron-takes-arms-dealers-Egypt-promote-democracy.html
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/africa/110221/egypt-cameron-cairo-hosni-mubarak#
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23925174-desert-deal-that-went-bad.do