"“Humanity Must Be Defended”?" by Ayça Çubukçu

Ayça Çubukçu

Deposited 2008

Abstract
This dissertation bears witness to a process of bearing witness to the war on Iraq, which began on March 20, 2003 at 5:00 a.m. Baghdad time. As an active participant and observer of the making of the World Tribunal on Iraq, of which the Istanbul session was the culmination of twenty others held around the world in the course of two years, I have written to give an account. The documentation of the process I hereby attempt to construct locates particular dilemmas experienced by the organizers of the WIT within a larger context concerning the politics of human rights and international law at the turn of the twenty-fast century. I am especially concerned with the possible vectors of divergence and convergence between "imperial" mobilizations of international law and ideas of humanity and human rights on the one hand, and "anti-imperial" ones on the other. A singular thread, which runs through the following account of the WTI's debates and dilemmas in its praxis "to stop the establishment of the new imperial world order as a permanent 'state of exception' with constant wars as one of its main tools," is this concern. In addressing it, I also study various positions taken by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) such as the Amnesty International and the Human Rights Watch, as well as international lawyers and cosmopolitan theorist, in the course of the continuing occupation of Iraq. Finally, I locate these positions in the context of the practices of the United States and its allies, and the politics of a global anti-war movement as became manifest in the World Tribunal on Iraq network While the main body of the following account concerns the time period between 2003 and 2008, I also strive to place conflicting political tendencies and positions in an historical light, within various theoretical traditions in political praxis, philosophy, and international law.