But sometimes the offenders, asserting some vague sovereign right to abuse their own subjects, persist, or even retaliate against their own victims. Another favorite gambit is to cite any interference from abroad as a neo-colonial act or a form of cultural imperialism, which they pretend to see as a blot on the international landscape as dark as their own invasions of human dignity. No one is fooled by these defenses for long, though they sometimes produce embarrassment on the part of reformers. Arguments like these will presumably fade away when leaders change or when international attention becomes too onerous to ignore, even though they may avert moral or economic sanctions. In the end, these malignant leaders sometimes don a masking cloak of respectability by signing protocols that ratify international documents, or by passing reassuring domestic laws, in the hope of gaining retrospective absolution.
International exposure improves the human rights record.
Reproaches against reluctant leaders have sometimes nudged them to better performance. But more positive steps are also possible. Such steps toward peace suggest ways in which we can also move toward direct and positive affirmations of policies that promote human dignity. Beyond Moral Sanctions To improve human rights, we need to go beyond the moral sanctions that we have been using to eliminate the most egregious wrongs. We need to take steps to encourage positive actions as well as to punish continued violations.