Vol. 2 No. 3 (1990)

Laws have been made among humans in one form or another for at least six millennia before the present. Historians record that while laws and rules of conduct were orally proclaimed and occasionally written in various forms throughout antiquity, no laws defining the responsibilities of a ruler and the ruled had been codified until 1068 AD. It was in that year that the Código o Compilación de los Usatges, a written code defining the reciprocal rights and responsibilities of the sovereign and his subjects in Catalunya of the Kingdom of Aragon, was penned by Ponç Bofill March of Barcelona. Ponç Bofill March was appointed “judge of the palace” in 1030 AD, but he did not begin to write the Código until 1035 AD. One hundred forty-seven years before the English barons forced King John to accept the Magna Carta (1215 AD), the people of Catalunya instituted the world’s first document declaring fundamental human rights. For more than 900 years, the definition and practice of human rights has continued to evolve.

As Bertha R. Miller’s Rights of Distinct Peoples reveals, principles of human rights may be extended to peoples of the Fourth World through a Universal Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples currently being debated in the United Nations. Miller reviews the revised first draft of the Declaration and reports the differing viewpoints of states, nations, and non-governmental organizations participating in sessions of the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations.

In his review of Dan Jacobs’ The Brutality of Nations, Associate Editor Jerome E. Taylor comments on the Nigerian/Biafran war and how Jacobs’ book may more accurately describe the “brutality of states.”

A frequent contributor to the Journal, Bernard Q. Nietschmann reveals for the first time the detailed circumstances surrounding the death of a leading Miskito warrior, Brww Gabriel, during the war between Nicaragua and the Miskito, Sumo, and Rama peoples of Yapti Tasbia in 1984. Nietschmann’s closeness to the Miskito people and conversational writing style reveal the truth of a life that should have continued and a war that should never have been.

After World War II, reconstruction of war-torn Europe became both a moral and economic necessity to the countries on the winning side. Without reconstruction, the world’s economy was surely to collapse along with the rubble under millions of tons of bombs. But, after Europe regained its economic footing, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (“The World Bank,” as it is more commonly known, was established in 1945) turned its attention to “developing the Third World.” The World Bank became a major source of investment revenue for building roads, hydroelectric dams, communications facilities, and urban and agricultural development projects. While such development efforts often failed to produce economic prosperity for Third World states, and instead seemed to serve the interests of businesses and governments of the Second and First worlds, in the 1970s and 1980s the World Bank discovered the Fourth World. Fourth World nations were discovered to be an obstacle to World Bank development projects, due in large measure to the frequent encroachment of such projects into Fourth World nation territories. In The World Bank’s Tribal Economic Policy we discuss the 1982 policy and its impact and implications for nations and states.