" Ways to Improving International Human Rights Practice in Africa in the 21 st Century. " (original) (raw)
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What are human rights? Six historical controversies
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
The elements of theory of human right I. The Need for a Theory
Few concepts are as frequently invoked in contemporary political discussions as human rights. There is something deeply attractive in the idea that every person anywhere in the world, irrespective of citizenship or territorial legislation, has some basic rights, which others should respect.At the same time, the central idea of human rights as something that people have, and have even without any specific legislation, is seen by many as foundationally dubious and lacking in cogency. A recurrent question is, Where do these rights come from? It is not usually disputed that the invoking of human rights can be politically powerful. Many philosophers and legal theorists see the rhetoric of human rights as just loose talk—perhaps kindly and well meaning forms of locution—but loose talk nevertheless. The contrast between the widespread use of the idea of human rights and the intellectual skepticism about its conceptual soundness is not new.Bentham insisted that " natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights (an American phrase),rhetoricalnonsense, nonsense up on stilts. " That suspicionremains very alive today, and despite persistent use of the ideaof human rights in practical affairs, there are many who see the idea ofhuman rights as no more than " bawling upon paper, " to use another Bentham's barbed portrayals of natural right claims.The dismissal of human rights is often comprehensive and is aimed against any belief in the existence of rights that people can have unconditionally,simply by virtue of their humanity (rather than having them contingently, on the basis of specific qualifications, such as citizenshipor legal entitlements).It is critically important to see the relationship between the force and appeal of human rights, on the one hand, and their reasoned justification and scrutinized use, on the other. There is, thus, need for some theory and also for some defense of any proposed theory. The object of this article is to do just that, and to consider, in that context, the justification of the general idea of human rights and also of the includability of economic and social rights within the broad class of human rights.
A Critical Analysis of The Scope and Nature of The Concept of Human Rights
IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Science
22. 5 The moral foundation of Human rights is also found in Article 1 of the Universal Declaration which says: "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood".
"Human Rights" are the height of political fashion all over the world, but human rights, as such, have no legal validity anywhere. They are, at best, candidates for becoming legal rights -- but even when they receive governmental approval, they are widely disrespected. They are supposed to be universal and objective, but they went unnoticed until the 17th century (and then only in western Europe). These "natural rights" (the earlier name) supposedly derive from "natural law," but for over 2,000 years, even believers in natural law knew nothing of natural rights. It was only when legal rights emerged, that, later, natural rights were by analogy invented. "Human rights" is a myth, in the precise sense that (1) they're not true: they don't exist the way real things exist, and (2) they justify certain political institutions and political claims. Human rights are supposedly deduced from human nature. But there is no universal, immutable nature, just as there is no universal, immutable, objective morality. Critics of human rights (including some Asians, Muslims, anarchists and feminists) argue that they are Eurocentric, ethnocentric, sexist, statist, and instruments of neo-colonialism. Rights legitimate states and their power. These rights, which are so easy to dream up, are by now so numerous that inevitably they contradict each other. The very concept of rights is incoherent, in the sense that there is no credible answer to the question, how do they work? The Will Theory is that rights are certain protected choices. The Interest Theory is that rights are certain protected interests. Each theory is easily debunked. Even the desperate claim that rights are a Platonist noble lie -- an expedient for political mobilization -- gives the lie to any moral basis for rights-claims, and it has little empirical support. Rights-claims are inherently privatizing, alienating, and adversarial. Marx was right this time: all rights are class-specific, bourgeois rights. Liberation -- liberty, equality, fraternity -- necessarily involves the rejection of rights and the affirmation of community.