UNIT -1

Human rights are the rights that belong to an individual or group of individuals simply for
being human or as a consequence of inherent human vulnerability or because they are
requisite to the possibility of a just society. Whatever their theoretical justification, human
rights refer to a wide continuum of values or capabilities thought to enhance human
agency or protect human interests and declared to be universal in character, in some sense
equally claimed for all human beings, present and future.

 Human rights are universal, inalienable, indivisible, interdependent, and interrelated

fundamental entitlements inherent to all human beings, regardless of race, gender,
nationality, ethnicity, language, religion, or any other status.
 These rights are incorporated in various international instruments, such as the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and subsequent covenants, conventions, and treaties.
 Human rights include civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights, also include the
right to life, liberty, equality before the law, freedom from torture, freedom of expression,
the right to work, education, and an adequate standard of living.
 The State has its primary responsibility to respect, protect, and fulfill human rights through
appropriate measures, legislation, and policies.
 Human rights are legally guaranteed by human rights law, protecting individuals and
groups against actions that interfere with fundamental freedoms and human dignity.
 These rights impose obligations on states to act in certain ways or refrain from certain acts,
to promote and protect the human rights and fundamental freedoms of individuals or
groups.
 While some human rights may be limited under specific circumstances prescribed by law,
certain rights, such as the prohibition of torture, are considered absolute and cannot be
suspended or restricted under any circumstances.
 The international human rights framework provides mechanisms for monitoring and
enforcing compliance with human rights obligations, including treaty bodies, special
procedures, and regional human rights courts.

Sources of Human Rights

 Human rights developed from many sources over time, including religious beliefs,
philosophical ideas, and political theories. Different cultures and historical events across the
world have all contributed to shaping our understanding of human rights today.
 Seminal documents such as
o The Magna Carta (1215),
o The English Bill of Rights (1689),
o The U.S. Declaration of Independence (1776)
o The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789)
o All these laid foundational principles for modern human rights concepts, including
limitations on governmental power and affirmation of fundamental liberties.
 The 17th-18th centuries significantly advanced human rights theory through philosophers'
work.
o John Locke and Immanuel Kant, who developed concepts of natural rights and human
dignity that greatly influenced subsequent human rights discourse.
 The atrocities of World War II (1939-45) created the international community to codify
universal human rights standards.

Concept of Human Rights

 International Law was solely concerned with States in the classical period ,only
States create rules of International Law. Thus, no place was left for the individuals
Individuals were related to one State through the bond of citizenship or nationality,
 If an injury was caused to an individual it was the State. Rights in question were
enjoyed by the individuals concerned not as rights in International Law but as rights
derived from national law.
 Thus, as for both substance and procedure, States were the only subjects of
International Law; other entities including individuals were mere objects.
 The transformation of the position of the individuals after the Second World War
has been one of the most remarkable developments in contemporary International
Law. In addition to the States, individuals are regarded as the real subjects and
beneficiaries of International Law .

Meaning of Human Rights

 Human beings possess certain basic and inalienable rights which are commonly
known as human rights. Since these rights belong to them because of their very
existence, they become operative with their birth Human rights, are, therefore,
inherent in all the individuals irrespective of their caste, creed, religion, sex and
nationality.
 Human rights are also sometimes referred to as fundamental rights, basic rights,
inherent rights, natural rights and birth rights.
  Presently, the vast majority of legal scholars and philosophers agree that every
human being is entitled to some basic rights. Thus, there is universal acceptance of
human rights in principle in domestic and international plane.
 It is therefore difficult to give a precise definition of the term human rights.
 Chief Justice of India, J.S. Verma has rightly stated that All those rights which are
essential for the protection and maintenance of dignity of individuals and create
conditions in which every human being can develop his personality to the fullest
extent may be termed human rights.

Kinds of Human Rights

1. Human rights are indivisible and interdependent, and therefore precisely there
cannot be different kinds of human rights. All human rights are equal in importance
and are inherent in all human beings. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
therefore did not categorize the different kinds of human rights. It simply
enumerated them in different articles/However, the subsequent developments made
in the human rights field under the United Nations system make it clear that human
rights are of two kinds viz.; (1) Civil and Political Rights, and (2) Economic, Social
and Cultural Rights.

Historical development

The expression human rights having come into everyday parlance only since World War II,
the founding of the United Nations in 1945 and the adoption by the UN General
Assembly of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. It replaced the
phrase natural rights, which fell into disfavour in the 19th century in part because
the concept of natural law.
Legal positivism rejected the theory, long espoused by the Roman Catholic Church, that law
must be moral to be law. The term human rights also replaced the later phrase the rights of
Man, which was not universally understood to include the rights of women.

Origins in ancient Greece and Rome

The origins of the concept of human rights to ancient Greece and Rome, where it was
closely tied to the doctrines of the Stoics, who held that human conduct should be judged
according to, and brought into harmony with, the law of nature.
Stoicism played a key role in its formation and spread, Roman law similarly allowed for the
existence of a natural law and with it—pursuant to the jus gentium (“law of nations”)—
certain universal rights that extended beyond the rights of citizenship.

It was not until after the Middle Ages, however, that natural law became associated with
natural rights. In Greco-Roman and medieval times, doctrines of natural law concerned
mainly the duties, rather than the rights, of “Man.” The conception of human rights as
natural rights, was made possible by certain basic societal changes, which took place
gradually beginning with the decline of European feudalism from the 13th century and
continuing through the Renaissance to the Peace of Westphalia (1648). During this period,
resistance to religious intolerance and political and economic bondage; the evident failure
of rulers to meet their obligations under natural law; and the unprecedented commitment
to individual expression and worldly experience that was characteristic of
the Renaissance all combined to shift the conception of natural law from duties to rights.
The teachings of Aquinas and Hugo Grotius on the European continent, the Magna
Carta (1215) and its companion Charter of the Forests (1217), the Petition of Right (1628),
and the English Bill of Rights (1689) in England were signs of this change. Each testified to
the increasingly popular view that human beings are endowed with certain eternal and
inalienable rights that never were renounced when humankind “contracted” to enter the
social order from the natural order and never were diminished by the claim of the “divine
right of kings.”

Natural law transformed into natural right

The modern conception of natural law as meaning or implying natural rights was
elaborated primarily by thinkers of the 17th and 18th centuries. The intellectual and
especially the scientific—achievements of the 17th century (including the materialism
of Hobbes, the rationalism of Descartes and Leibniz, the pantheism of Spinoza, and the
empiricism of Bacon and Locke) encouraged a distinctly modern belief in natural law
and universal order and during the 18th century—the Age of Enlightenment, inspired by a
growing confidence in human reason and in the perfectibility of human affairs led to the
more comprehensive expression of this belief.

Particularly important were the writings of Locke, arguably the most important
natural-law theorist of modern times, and the works of the 18th-century thinkers known as
the philosophes, who, centred mainly in Paris, included Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Jean-
Jacques Rousseau. Locke argued in detail, mainly in writings associated with the
English Glorious Revolution (1688–89) that certain rights self-evidently pertain to
individuals as human beings (because these rights existed in the hypothetical “state of
nature” before humankind entered civil society); that chief among them are the rights to
life, liberty (freedom from arbitrary rule), and property; that, upon entering civil society,
humankind surrendered to the state pursuant to a “social contract” only the right to enforce
these natural rights and not the rights themselves; and that the state’s failure to secure these
rights gives rise to a right to responsible, popular revolution. The philosophes, building on
Locke and others and embracing many and varied currents of thought with a common
supreme faith in reason, vigorously attacked religious and scientific dogmatism,
intolerance, censorship, and social and economic restraints. They sought to discover and act
upon universally valid principles governing nature, humanity, and society, including the
inalienable “rights of Man,” which they treated as a fundamental ethical and social gospel.

This liberal intellectual ferment exerted a profound influence in the Western world of the
late 18th and early 19th centuries. Together with the Glorious Revolution in England and
the resulting Bill of Rights, it provided the rationale for the wave of revolutionary agitation
that swept the West, most notably in North America and France. Thomas Jefferson, who had
studied Locke and Montesquieu, gave poetic eloquence to the plain prose of the 17th
century in the Declaration of Independence proclaimed by the 13 American colonies on
July 4, 1776:

All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Similarly, the marquis de Lafayette, who won the close friendship of George
Washington and who shared the hardships of the American Revolution, imitated the
pronouncements of the English and American revolutions in the Declaration of the Rights of
Man and of the Citizen of August 26, 1789, proclaiming that “men are born and remain
free and equal in rights” and that “the aim of every political association is the preservation
of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man.”

In sum, the idea of natural rights, forebear to the contemporary notion of human rights,
played a key role in late 18th- and early 19th-century struggles against
political absolutism. It was, indeed, the failure of rulers to respect the principles of freedom
and equality that was responsible for this development.
In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, representatives from
many cultures endorsed the rights therein set forth “as a common standard of achievement
for all peoples and all nations.” And in 1976 the International Covenant on Economic, Social
and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
(ICCPR), each approved by the UN General Assembly in 1966, entered into force and effect.
Together with the Universal Declaration and their additional protocols, these documents
came ultimately to be known as core elements of the “International Bill of Human Rights.”

The nature of human rights: commonly accepted postulates

Despite this lack of consensus, a number of widely accepted only five in particular stand
out.

First, regardless of their ultimate origin or justification, human rights are understood to
represent both individual and group demands for political power, wealth, enlightenment,
and other cherished values or capabilities, the most fundamental of which is respect and
its constituent elements of reciprocal tolerance and mutual forbearance in the pursuit of all
other such values or capabilities. Consequently, human rights imply both claims against
persons and institutions impeding the realization of these values or capabilities and
standards for judging the legitimacy of laws and traditions. At bottom, human rights qualify
state sovereignty and power, sometimes expanding to “private sovereignty” for example,
challenging the impunity of overbearing business enterprises, protecting family members
from domestic violence, and holding non-state terrorist actors to account.

Second, human rights are commonly assumed to refer, in some vague sense, to
“fundamental,” as distinct from “nonessential,” claims or “goods.” In fact, some theorists go
so far as to limit human rights to a single core right or two—for example, the right to life or
the right to equal opportunity. The tendency is to emphasize “basic needs” and to rule out
“mere wants.”

Third, reflecting varying environmental circumstances, differing worldviews, and

inescapable interdependencies within and between different value or capability systems,
human rights refer to a wide continuum of claims, ranging from the most justiciable to the
most aspirational. Human rights partake of both the legal and the moral orders, sometimes
indistinguishably. They are expressive of both the “is” and the “ought” in human affairs.

Fourth, most assertions of human rights—though arguably not all (freedom

from slavery, genocide, or torture are notable exceptions)—are qualified by the limitation
that the rights of individuals or groups in particular instances are restricted as much as is
necessary to secure the comparable rights of others and the aggregate common interest.
Given this limitation, which connects rights to duties, human rights are sometimes
designated “prima facie rights,” so that ordinarily it makes little or no sense to think or talk
of them in absolutist terms.
Finally, if a right is determined to be a human right, it is understood to be quintessentially
general or universal in character, in some sense equally possessed by all human beings
everywhere, including in certain instances even the unborn. In stark contrast to the divine
right of kings and other such conceptions of privilege, human rights extend in theory to
every person on Earth, without regard to merit or need, simply for being human or because
they mitigate inherent human vulnerability or are requisite to social justice.

In several critical respects, however, all these postulates raise more questions than they
answer. In other words, though accurate, the five foregoing postulates are fraught with
questions about the content and legitimate scope of human rights and about the priorities, if
any, that exist among them. Like the issue of the origin and justification of human rights, all
five are controversial.

The content of human rights: three “generations” of rights

The three “generations” of human rights advanced by the French jurist Karel Vasak. Inspired
by the three themes of the French Revolution, they are: the first generation, composed of
civil and political rights (liberté); the second generation of economic, social, and cultural
rights (égalité); and the third generation of solidarity or group rights (fraternité). Vasak’s
model is, of course, a simplified expression of an extremely complex historical record, and it
is not intended to suggest a linear process in which each generation gives birth to the next
and then dies away. Nor is it to imply that one generation is more important than another,
or that the generations (and their categories of rights) are ultimately separable. The three
generations are understood to be cumulative, overlapping, and, it is important to emphasize,
interdependent and interpenetrating.

Liberté: civil and political rights

The first generation, civil and political rights, derives primarily from the 17th- and 18th-
century reformist theories, (i.e., those associated with the English, American, and French
revolutions). Infused with the political philosophy of liberal individualism and the related
economic and social doctrine of laissez-faire, the first generation conceives of human rights
more in negative terms (“freedoms from”) than positive ones (“rights to”); it favours the
abstention over the intervention of government in the quest for human dignity. Belonging
to this first generation, thus, are rights such as those set forth in Articles 2–21 of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including freedom from gender, racial, and
equivalent forms of discrimination; the right to life, liberty, and security of the person;
freedom from slavery or involuntary servitude; freedom from torture and from cruel,
inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; freedom from arbitrary arrest, detention,
or exile; the right to a fair and public trial; freedom from interference in privacy and
correspondence; freedom of movement and residence; the right to asylum from persecution;
freedom of thought, conscience, and religion; freedom of opinion and expression; freedom
of peaceful assembly and association; and the right to participate in government, directly or
through free elections. Also included are the right to own property and the right not to be
deprived of it arbitrarily—rights that were fundamental to the interests fought for in the
American and French revolutions and to the rise of capitalism.

Égalité: economic, social, and cultural rights

The second generation, composed of economic, social, and cultural rights, originated
primarily in the socialist tradition, which was foreshadowed among adherents of the Saint-
Simonian movement of early 19th-century France and variously promoted by revolutionary
struggles and welfare movements that have taken place. In large part, it is a response to the
abuses of capitalist development and its underlying and essentially uncritical conception of
individual liberty, which tolerated, and even legitimized, the exploitation of working classes
and colonial peoples. Historically, economic, social, and cultural rights are a counterpoint to
the first generation, civil and political rights, and are conceived more in positive terms
(“rights to”) than in negative ones (“freedoms from”); they also require more the
intervention than the abstention of the state for the purpose of assuring the equitable
production and distribution of the values or capabilities involved. Some of the rights set
forth in Articles 22–27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, such as the right
to social security; the right to work and to protection against unemployment; the right to
rest and leisure, including periodic holidays with pay; the right to a standard of
living adequate for the health and well-being of self and family; the right to education; and
the right to the protection of one’s scientific, literary, and artistic production.

Not all the rights embraced by the first generation (civil and political rights) can be
designated as “negative rights,” so not all the rights embraced by the second generation
(economic, social, and cultural rights) can be labeled as “positive rights.” For example, the
right to free choice of employment, the right to form and to join trade unions, and the right
to participate freely in the cultural life of the community (Articles 23 and 27) do not
inherently require affirmative state action to ensure their enjoyment. Nevertheless, most of
the second-generation rights do necessitate state intervention, because they subsume
demands more for material than for intangible goods according to some criterion of
distributive justice. Second-generation rights are, fundamentally, claims to social equality.

On the other hand, as the social inequities created by unregulated national and
transnational capitalism become more and more evident over time and are not directly
accounted for by explanations based on gender or race, it is probable that the demand for
second-generation rights will grow and mature, and in some instances even lead
to violence.

Fraternité: solidarity or group rights

Finally, the third generation, composed of solidarity or group rights, while drawing upon
and reconceptualizing the demands associated with the first two generations of rights, is
best understood as a product of both the rise and the decline of the state since the mid-20th
century. Foreshadowed in Article 28 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which
proclaims that “everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights
set forth in this declaration can be fully realized,” this generation appears so far to embrace
six claimed rights. Early 21st century arguably suggest that a seventh claimed right can be
—a right to democracy. Three of the claimed rights reflect the emergence of nationalism in
the developing world in the 1960s and ’70s and the “revolution of rising expectations”. The
right to political, economic, social, and cultural self-determination; the right to economic
and social development; and the right to participate in and benefit from “the common
heritage of mankind”. The three remaining claimed solidarity or group rights—the right to
peace, the right to a clean and healthy environment, and the right to humanitarian
disaster relief—suggest the impotence or inefficiency of the state in certain critical respects.

`First-generation proponents, for example, are inclined to exclude second- and third-
generation rights from their definition of human rights altogether. The suggestion that first-
generation rights are more feasible than other generations because they stress the absence
over the presence of government is somehow transformed into a prerequisite of
a comprehensive definition of human rights. The first-generation proponents, inspired by
the natural law and laissez-faire traditions, are committed to the view that human rights
are inherently independent of organized society and are necessarily individualistic.
Conversely, second- and third-generation defenders often look upon first-generation
rights.
First prominently expressed in the declaration that emerged from the Bangkok meeting
held in preparation to the second UN World Conference on Human
Rights convened in Vienna in June 1993 the relativist critique reflects the end of a bipolar
system of alliances that had discouraged independent foreign policies and minimized
cultural and political differences in favour of undivided Cold War loyalties.

Against the backdrop of increasing human rights interventionism on the part of the UN and
by regional organizations and deputized coalitions of states (as in Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Somalia, Liberia, Rwanda, Haiti, Serbia and Kosovo, Libya, and Mali, for example), the
relativist viewpoint serves also as a functional equivalent of the doctrine of respect for
national sovereignty and territorial integrity, which had been declining in influence not
only in the human rights context but also in the contexts of national security, economics,
and the environment. As a consequence, there remains sharp political and theoretical
disagreement about the legitimate scope of human rights and about the priorities that are
claimed among them.

Second, such characterizations do not accurately reflect reality. In the real world, virtually
all societies, whether individualistic or collectivist in essential character, at least consent to,
and most even promote, a mixture of all basic values or capabilities. U.S. President Franklin
Delano Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms (freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship,
freedom from want, and freedom from fear) is an early case in point. A later demonstration
is found in the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action of the 1993 conference
mentioned above, adopted by representatives of 171 states.

Finally, in the early 21st century, none of the international human rights instruments in
force or proposed said anything about the legitimacy or priority of the rights. Some
disagreements arose when treating the problem of implementation. For instance, some insist
first on certain civil and political guarantees, whereas others defer initially to conditions of
material well-being. Such disagreements, however, reflect differences in political agendas.
As confirmed by numerous resolutions of the UN General Assembly and reaffirmed in the
Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, there is a wide consensus that all human
rights form an indivisible whole and that the protection of human rights is not and should
not be a matter of purely national jurisdiction. The extent to which the international
community actually protects the human rights it prescribes is.

Developments before World War II

Ever since ancient times, the emergence of the modern state system, the Age of Discovery,
and the spread of industrialization and European culture throughout the world, there has
developed, for economic and other reasons, a unique set of customs and conventions
regarding the humane treatment of foreigners. This evolving International Law of State
Responsibility for Injuries to Aliens, as these customs and conventions came to be called,
represents the beginning of active concern. The founding fathers of international law
particularly Francisco de Vitoria, Grotius, and Emmerich de Vattel were quick to observe
that all persons, outlander as well as the Other, were entitled to certain natural rights, and
they emphasized, consequently, the importance of according aliens fair treatment.

With the exception of occasional treaties to secure the protection

of Christian denominations, it was not until the start of the 19th century, however, that
active international concern for the rights of nationals began to make itself. Then, in the
century and a half before World War II, several noteworthy efforts to encourage respect for
nationals by international means began to shape what today is called the International Law
of Human Rights.

Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, numerous military operations
and diplomatic representations, not all of them with the purest of motives but performed
nonetheless in the name of “humanitarian intervention”, undertook to protect oppressed
and persecuted minorities in the Ottoman Empire, Syria, Crete, various Balkan countries,
Romania, and Russia. Paralleling these actions, first at the Congress of Vienna (1814–15)
and later between the two World Wars, a series of treaties and international declarations
sought the protection of certain racial, religious, and linguistic minorities in central and
eastern Europe and the Middle East. During the same period, the movement to combat and
suppress slavery and the slave trade found expression in treaties sooner or later involving
the major commercial powers, beginning with the Treaty of Paris (1814) and culminating
in the International Slavery Convention (1926).

In addition, beginning in the late 19th century and continuing well beyond World War II,
the community of nations, inspired largely by persons associated with what is now
the International Committee of the Red Cross, concluded a series of multilateral declarations
and agreements designed to temper the conduct of hostilities, protect the victims of war,
and otherwise elaborate the humanitarian law of war. It made way to form International
Humanitarian Law. At about the same time, first with two multilateral labour conventions
concluded in 1906 and subsequently at the initiative of the International Labour
Organisation, 1919, a reformist-minded international community embarked upon a
variety of collaborative measures directed at the promotion of human rights. These
measures addressed not only concerns traditionally associated with labour law and labour
relations (e.g., industrial health and safety, hours of work, and annual paid holidays), but
also—mainly after World War II—such core human rights concerns as forced
labour, discrimination in employment and occupation, freedom of association for collective
bargaining, and equal pay for equal work.

Finally, during the interwar period, the covenant establishing the League of
Nations (1919)—though not formally recognizing “the rights of Man” and failing to lay
down a principle of racial non-discrimination as requested by Japan nevertheless
committed its members to several human rights goals: fair and humane working conditions,
the execution of agreements regarding trafficking of women and children, the prevention
and control of disease in matters of international concern, and the just treatment
of indigenous colonial peoples. Also, the victorious powers—who as “mandatories” were
entrusted by the League of Nations with the tutelage of colonies formerly governed by
Germany and Turkey—accepted responsibility for the well-being and development of the
inhabitants of those territories as “a sacred trust of civilization.” This arrangement was later
carried over into the trusteeship system of the United Nations.

As important as these efforts were, however, it was not until after the war—and the Nazi
atrocities accompanying it—that active concern for human rights truly came of age
internationally. In the proceedings of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in
1945–46 (the Nuremberg trials), German high officials were tried not only for “crimes
against peace” and “war crimes” but also for “crimes against humanity” committed against
civilian populations, even if the crimes were in accordance with the laws of the country in
which they were perpetrated. The tribunal, whose establishment and rulings subsequently
were endorsed by the UN General Assembly, applied a cautious approach to allegations of
crimes against humanity. The ad hoc international criminal tribunals established in 1993–
94 for the prosecution of serious violations of International Humanitarian Law in the
former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda were its first heirs on the international plane. Both courts
were empowered to impose sentences of life imprisonment and both focused their efforts,
with some success, on political leaders who had authorized human rights abuses.
Most conspicuous was the arrest and detention in June 2001 of former Yugoslav
president Slobodan Miloševic by the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia,
representing the first time a former head of state was placed in the physical custody of an
international judicial authority. The tribunal charged him with war crimes and crimes
against humanity allegedly committed by Serbian forces in Kosovo in 1999 and
subsequently with the crime of genocide allegedly committed by Serbian forces during the
war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992–95. His trial ended with his death in March 2006.
The International Criminal Court (ICC), authorized by the adoption by 120 countries of the
Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in July 1998. The statute created an
independent, permanent international criminal court with legal personality separate from
the United Nations and whose substantive jurisdiction includes crimes against humanity,
crimes of genocide, war crimes, and crimes of “aggression”. However, the creation of the
court, which depended on the ratification of the statute by at least 60 signatory states, was
resisted by some countries, notably the United States, on the ground that it would unduly
infringe upon their national sovereignty. Indeed, during the administration of
President George W. Bush (2001–09), the United States not only refused to ratify the statute
but also took the unusual step of withdrawing its signature from it. Given the sway of the
United States in world affairs, this rendered the long-term future of the court uncertain.
Despite some initial operational problems and uneven support from states party to the Rome
Statute, the ICC subsequently made notable progress in prosecuting perpetrators of the
world’s most heinous crimes and thus bolstered its near-term future.

Human rights in the United Nations

The United Nations, founded in 1945 after World War II and the Holocaust, was created
principally to maintain international peace and security and to encourage and promote
respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. The Charter of the United Nations
confirms these two purposes and begins its recognition of the second by reaffirming a faith
in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal
rights of men and women and of nations large and small.

It states that the purposes of the UN are, among other things:

to develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal
rights and self-determination of people and to achieve international co-operation…in
promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all
without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.

Accordingly, while providing for the UN Security Council to enforce the UN’s first primary
purpose i.e maintaining international peace and security, the drafters did not specify a
comparable body to give teeth to its second primary purpose i.e promoting human rights
and fundamental freedoms. Also, the Charter expressly provides that nothing in it “shall
authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the
domestic jurisdiction of any state,” except upon a Security Council finding of a “threat to the
peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression.” Furthermore, though typical of major
constitutive instruments, the Charter is conspicuously given to generality and vagueness in
its human rights clauses, among others.

The reconciliation of the Charter’s human rights provisions with the history of its drafting
and its “domestic jurisdiction” clause has given rise to legal and political controversy. In
becoming parties to the Charter, states accept no more than a nebulous promotional
obligation toward human rights and that, in any event, the UN has no standing to insist on
human rights safeguards in member states. Others have insisted that the Charter’s human
rights provisions, being part of a legally binding treaty, clearly involve some element of
legal obligation; that the “pledge” made by states upon becoming party to the Charter
consequently represents more than a moral statement; and that the domestic jurisdiction
clause does not apply, because human rights can be considered no longer a matter
“essentially within the domestic jurisdiction” of states.

The above situation has prevented the UN from investigating, discussing, and evaluating
specific human rights situations. Nor have they prevented it from taking concrete action in
relation to them—at least not in the case of “a consistent pattern of gross violations,” as in
the Security Council’s imposition of a mandatory arms embargo against South Africa in
1977 and its authorization of the use of military force to end human rights abuses in
Somalia and Haiti in the early 1990s.

In 2003 the Security Council intervened in a civil war in Côte d’Ivoire by authorizing a
military peacekeeping force—an action that, with the help of the Economic Community of
West African States (ECOWAS), led ultimately to the ouster of an electorally defeated
presidential incumbent (Laurent Gbagbo) and the reestablishment of public order under a
newly elected president (Alassane Ouattara). Additionally, during the Libya Revolt of 2011,
a civil war fought between forces loyal to Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi and those seeking
to oust his government, the Security Council authorized UN member states to establish and
enforce a no-fly zone over Libya and to use “all necessary measures” to prevent attacks on
civilians.

In 2005 the member states of the United Nations recognized the principle of the
“responsibility to protect” i.e R2P. Under this principle, states have a responsibility to
protect their civilian populations against genocide and other mass human rights atrocities.
If they fail to do so, according to this principle, states forfeit their sovereign immunity, and
the international community is responsible for using appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian,
and other means to protect the populations being victimized—and to this end, in
accordance with the UN Charter, to be prepared to take collective action in their defense.
This principle was controversial because it contradicted the long-established principle of
state sovereignty. It was invoked by the UN Security Council to authorize military
interventions in a second civil war in Côte d’Ivoire (2010), in Libya (2011), and in other
countries. However, in 2013 the international community’s resistance to U.S. plans to
launch missile strikes against Syria in retaliation for that country’s alledged use of
internationally prohibited chemical weapons against its own population added significant
doubt to the already controversial assertion.

The UN organs responsible for the promotion and protection of human rights suffer from
most of the same disabilities that afflict the UN as a whole, in particular, the absence of
supranational authority, the presence of divisive power politics, and the imposition of
crippling financial constraints by member states. Hence, it cannot be expected that UN
actions in defense of human rights will be, normally, either swift or categorically effective.
Many serious UN efforts at human rights implementation have been deliberately thwarted
by the major powers. In 1999, for example, opposition by China and Russia prevented the
Security Council from agreeing on forceful measures to end ethnic cleansing by Yugoslav
and Serbian forces in Kosovo, prompting the United States and other members of the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to take matters into their own hands through a
massive bombing campaign against Serbian targets. Assuming some political will, however,
the legal obstacles to UN enforcement of human rights are not insurmountable.

From the beginning, four of the six principal organs of the United Nations (the General
Assembly, the Economic and Social Council [ECOSOC], the Trusteeship Council, and
the Secretariat) shared responsibility for the encouragement and promotion of human
rights—although, as the UN’s history bears witness, the Security Council and
the International Court of Justice (World Court) have been called into protective human
rights service in special circumstances from time to time. ECOSOC’s responsibility for
human rights (though diminished when the former Commission on Human Rights under its
authority was replaced by the Human Rights Council under the jurisdiction of the General
Assembly) extends to several other commissions, such as the Commission on the Status of
Women, the Commission for Social Development, and the Commission on Crime Prevention
and Criminal Justice, as well as UN specialized agencies such as the International Labor
Organization and the World Health Organization. The Trusteeship Council suspended
operations in November 1994 following the independence of Palau, the last remaining UN
trust territory. The Secretariat facilitates and administers many human rights policies and
programs by virtue of its multifaceted day-to-day work on behalf of the United Nations as a
whole, including working closely with each of the UN’s principal organs.
The UN Commission on Human Rights (1946–2006) and the UN Human Rights Council

Between 1946 and 2006 the UN Commission on Human Rights, created as a subsidiary
body of ECOSOC, served as the UN’s central policy organ in the human rights field. For the
first 20 years of its existence, however, the commission believed itself to be unauthorized to
deal with human rights complaints. During its first two decades, therefore, and together
with other UN bodies such as the ILO, UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific
and Cultural Organization), the UN Commission on the Status of Women, and the
Commission on Human Rights Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, it concentrated on
setting human rights standards and drafting a number of historically vital international
human rights instruments. Among the most important of these were the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and its two
Optional Protocols (1966 and 1989). Together, these three instruments and the Optional
Protocols constitute what has come to be known as the International Bill of Human Rights,
serving as touchstones for interpreting the human rights provisions of the UN Charter. Also
central in this regard were the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Racial Discrimination (1965), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women (1979), the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel,
Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984), and the Convention on the Rights
of the Child (1989), each of which elaborated on provisions of the International Bill of
Human Rights.

In the early 21st century the Commission on Human Rights came to be viewed as
ineffective, in part because its membership included countries with poor human rights
records. It therefore was replaced by the UN Human Rights Council in 2006.