Human Rights

1988

A glance at history shows that the progressive development of human rights has been considerably conditioned by the evolution of social relations, and the forms in which these relations were institutionalized. It was not in abstract that newly recognised human rights came to be defined, but in the context of the modern state and that of an industrial and technological civilization; in the context of the bitter experience of two World Wars and the social and political evolution after 1945. This evolution has been characterized by a process of decolonialisation, by a growing sense of solidarity among mankind, and by a widespread awareness of the delicate ecological balance of our one and only Earth which is limited in its natural resources. The remarkable thing about the evolution of human rights is that it appears to have followed in a given direction. In fact, we notice the widening of the concept of human rights which had originated in the eighteenth century. Throughout the whole d...

International Human Rights, Social Policy and Global Development: Critical Perspectives., 2020

This chapter discusses the historical development of ‘rights’ and how these transformed into ideas about ‘universal human rights’. It shows how the concept of rights developed historically from notions of legal through to political, social/economic and cultural rights and from individual to group rights. It describes how thinking about rights has developed from identifying rights solely with clans, tribes, communities, ethnic groups and then nation states, to linking them to all humanity - including minorities - through concepts of universal human rights. It recognises the contribution of philosophical ideas about humanity, equality, democracy and social justice, as well as the impact of human agency on the development of a range of rights, and argues that such developments do not take place in a vacuum (Donnelly, 2013: 75-92). Social, economic, ideological, cultural and geo-political influences engender our power to change society and ensure that human rights are a contested site. Rights are contested in their conceptualisation and in the development of oversight mechanisms. They are also contested in their implementation, enforceability and realisability on the ground (Freeman, 2017). In essence, it is argued that humans make human rights. As Karl Marx (1851-52) wrote in The Eighteenth Brumaire: ‘Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past’ (Marx, 1851: 103).

IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 2013

As human civilization grew, a need arose to develop certain institutions & organizations, the most important & latest of which was the state itself. Primarily this institution was concerned with administration of Justice & defence. Now for this administration of justice & defence, the state needed to empower certain people so as to legitimize their work. However more often than not the power conferred came to be abused proving the dictum right that power corrupts & absolute power corrupts absolutely. The State instead of being a protector became an oppressor. The dominating philosophy of Positive Law furthered the dictatorship, which came to be practiced by the regimes like the Nazi in Germany. Such regimes thriving on the philosophy that law is what is made, irrespective of its goodness or badness & completely ignoring the concept of what law "ought" to be, made things worse for the ruled. In this way self-styled autocratic rules came to be formed & promulgated, not for the benefit of the governed but the vested interests of the governing. The failure of these machinations led people to look for an alternative but found no options & started to look to heavens for help & this led to the revival of Natural Law Philosophy. As per this philosophy the Natural law being the supreme law wants every positive law to be subservient to the Cosmic order. Rousseau, a Naturalist in his treatise On the Social Contract in 1762, had observed & very rightly so, "The man is born free but everywhere he is in chains" The Natural law philosophy aimed at preservation of peace & establishment of order solely by relying on morals, ethics & reasoning. This was an immediate cure to the tyrannical enactments & draconian laws of the autocrats. But even the Natural Law failed as well beyond a certain point. The chief argument about its insufficiency was that it was an abstract idea & at times favored the ruler & at times the ruled. As a result a need was felt to have some other device to rescue the abuse & misuse of power by the state. The development gave birth to what we call Human Rights Jurisprudence. The Human Rights Jurisprudence has helped the establishment of legal regimes at the International, National as well as State levels. The need necessitated mankind to make endeavors in this direction so that the sacred humanness is preserved & protected much to the stability of world order.

The belief that everyone, by virtue of her or his humanity, is entitled to certain human rights is fairly new. Its roots, however, lie in earlier tradition and documents of many cultures; it took the catalyst of World War II to propel human rights onto the global stage and into the global conscience. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proclaimed in 1948, provided a framework for a series of international human right conventions. Human Rights involve both rights and obligations. State shoulder responsibilities and duties under International law to respect, to protect and to fulfilled human rights. The main aim of the study is to explore the historical development of Human Rights and analyze the various instruments. The data for this study was collected from several articles, books and related documents regarding Human Rights.

Journal of Human Rights, 2004

The spirit of human rights has been transmitted consciously and unconsciously from one generation to another, carrying the scars of its tumultuous past. Today, invoking the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the General Assembly in 1948, one may think of human rights as universal, inalienable and indivisible, as rights shared equally by everyone regardless of sex, race, nationality and economic background. Yet conflicting political traditions across the centuries have elaborated different visions of human rights rooted in past social struggles. That historical legacy and current conflicting meanings of human rights are, despite the admirable efforts of the architects of the declaration, all reflected in the structure and the substance of this important UN document. Using the main keys developed in the declaration, this article engages six core controversies over human rights that have shaped human rights debate and scholarship. It also draws on the historical record in order to identify and to clarify several misconceptions that persist both within and outside the human rights community today. René Cassin, one of the main drafters of the universal declaration, classified the central tenets of human rights by comparing them to the portico of a temple. Drawing on the battle cry of the French revolution, Cassin identified the four pillars of the declaration as: 'dignity, liberty, equality, and brotherhood'. The 27 articles of the declaration were divided among these four pillars. The pillar supported the roof of the portico (articles 28-30), which stipulated the conditions in which the rights of individuals could be realized within society and the state. Each of the pillars represents a major historical milestone. The first pillar covered in the first two articles of the declaration stands for human dignity shared by all individuals regardless of their religion, creed, ethnicity, religion, or sex; the second, specified in articles 3-19 of the declaration, invokes the first generation of civil liberties and other liberal rights fought for during the Enlightenment; the third, delineated in articles 20-26, addresses the second generation of rights, i.e. those related to political, social and economic equity and championed during the industrial revolution; the fourth (articles 27-28) focuses on the third generation of rights associated with communal and national solidarity, as advocated during the late 19th century and early 20th century and throughout the postcolonial era. In a sense, the sequence of the articles corresponds to the historical appearance of successive generations and visions of universal rights. 1 Yet throughout history, the human rights projects reflected in the declaration-whether liberal, socialist, or 'third world' in origin-generated internal contradictions concerning both how to promote human rights and who should be endowed with equal human rights. For instance, while the modern nation-state was originally justified by claims that it would promote human rights, the subsequent prevalence of realpolitik and particularism inspired 19th and 20th century efforts to embody universalism in the form of a succession of

2012

Introduction 159 9.2 The right to work 160 9.2.1 Is there a guarantee of the right to work? 161 9.2.2 Elements of the right to work 162 Access to employment 163 Free choice in employment 164 Freedom from arbitrary dismissal 165 9.3 The right to education 165 9.3.1 The right to education in international human rights instruments 166 9.3.2 Access to education 166 9.3.3 Aims and objectives of education 168 9.3.3 Academic freedom 170 9.3.4 The right to human rights education 170 904 Conclusion 172

Human rights are moral principles or norms, that describe certain standards of human behavior, and are regularly protected aslegal rights in municipal and international law. They are commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights "to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being," and which are "inherent in all human beings" regardless of their nation, location, language, religion, ethnic origin or any other status. They are applicable everywhere and at every time in the sense of being universal, and they are egalitarian in the sense of being the same for everyone. They require empathy and the rule of law and impose an obligation on persons to respect the human rights of others. Yet, we often are debating on the issues of the existence of these rights. The society has reduced its standard and has lowered down in underestimating the existence of fellow humans. the article analyses the emergence and the existence of human rights being bestowed on humans by the virtue of their existence.