Delivering On The Promise of Human Rights — Where Are We And Where Do We Need To Be? (original) (raw)
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2018
Since 1948, seven decades have passed. Even though this is said to be the “fastest time” in the history of time, these seven decades are probably too short a period to enable us to draw a line under and truly and thoroughly re-examine the heritage of the most ambitious charter in the history of human rights. Too little time has passed to understand how to realize the promise of the Universal Declaration: that world peace is necessary for each member of the human community to have the right to life. Finally, it is possible that such a request can never move further than a promise, and the decades which are behind us can perhaps do nothing other than confirm that this promise stands firstly as a warning, rather than as any kind of model for use.
The Progressive Potential of Human Rights
De Gruyter eBooks, 2015
ing, to protect from deprivation and to aid the deprived (Shue 1996, p. 60). Shue's typology entered official UN discourse in the 1980ies through Philip Alston and Asbjorn Eide (Alston 1984, pp. 162, 169-174; see generally Alston and Tomaševski 1984). 13 My sketch of the accepted role or function of human rights essentially follows Charles Beitz' two-level model according to which human rights are urgent interests, with (a) primary responsi
Human Rights: Promise and Reality
The WEA Global Issues Series, 2014
“All men are free …” When the Universal Charter of Human Rights was launched in 1948, it was a great step towards a just world. Yet the road from a good declaration to reality and to specific actions can be long. Worldwide humans are still treated without dignity, are suppressed, tortured, enslaved or deprived of their freedom. This book undertakes two things at the same time: 1. It tells the story of human rights and discusses their basis, their theory and their content. 2. It describes the reality of today: How are human rights violated, how far are we away from a just world? Only those two sides taken together inform readers to take action.
Test of Our Progress: The Translation of Economic and Social Rights Norms Into Practice
Journal of Human Rights, 2011
Applying the language of "rights" to the economic and social conditions of the world's impoverished populations has gained a great deal of momentum since the establishment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000. Disappointing results of earlier development efforts motivated this reframing, and several scholars and practitioners have since examined the incorporation of economic and social rights (ESR) norms (as reflected in international treaties and other multilateral documents) in development policy. Though the MDGs did not explicitly invoke a human right to goods such as water, housing, education, and health care, or frame the international cooperation necessary to address these concerns in terms of rights-related obligations, the natural affinity between these "rights" and "goals" has become increasingly clear. Yet there are few systematic analyses of how ESR norms are more or less effectively realized in practice. In this paper, we explore the diverse and complex means by which justice norms may be realized, and evaluate the analytic and practical leverage that human rights offer over previous framings in the achievement of basic minimum standards of human welfare. Research on economic and social development has historically diverged from human rights scholarship, and the latter itself has tended toward segmentation, both in terms of categories of rights addressed and in terms of scale or place. 1 1 Stryker, Robin and LaDawn Haglund. 2010. "Rights and Their Translation into Practice: Toward a Synthetic Framework." National Science Foundation. Law and Social Sciences Division Workshop. Bridging the gaps between categories of rights, in scholarship and practice, was the motivation behind the aforementioned workshop. Scholars who work on civil and political rights in the United States, for example, draw minimally on global human rights literatures and vice-versa (see Somers and Roberts 2008). The literature on what often are called human integrity rights-the right to be free of torture, disappearance, extrajudicial killing and political imprisonment-remains mostly separate from a growing literature on ESR (compare, for example, references from Halfner-Burton and Tsutsui 2005 with those from Guari and Brinks 2010). The literature on global ESR, in turn, relies on empirical settings mainly in the developing
The Moral Reality of Human Rights
The elevation of the discourse of human rights in recent times to the status of an ethical lingua franca has fuelled an unruly proliferation of incompatible or often just incredible rights claims. If human rights are not to fall victim to their own popularity, some principled way of distinguishing the genuine articles from the presumed spate of counterfeits is required. It is no answer to invoke the 'human rights' proclaimed as such in international treaties and declarations. To begin with, they lack the requisite universality: the instruments in which they are set out are often not legally binding and even those that are binding are not subscribed to by all states (or are subscribed to by many states subject to eviscerating reservations). More importantly, the international regime of human rights is not self-validating; instead, its legitimacy depends upon compliance with independent moral standards, including genuine human rights. So the intended shortcut through law and political practice rapidly leads back to our original problem. Although philosophers disagree about whether or how the problem can be solved, many of them agree on the general character of any adequate solution. According to this standard picture, as I shall call it, which human rights exist is a moral question to be distinguished from the predominantly institutional question of the extent to which they are recognized, respected or enforced. An uncompromising formulation of the view is given by Thomas Nagel: The existence of moral rights does not depend on their political recognition or enforcement but rather on the moral question whether there is a decisive justification for including these forms of inviolability in the status of every member of the moral community. The reality of moral rights is purely normative rather than institutional-though of course institutions may be designed to enforce them (Nagel, 2002: 33). 1 Human rights, so conceived, have implications for the creation, modification or abolition of institutions, but their existence is determined by moral reasoning, not by whatever institutional facts happen to obtain. Of course, institutional mechanisms-such as treaties, Bills of Rights, constitutional courts, and so on-can play a vital role in implementing human rights. In particular, they can render their content more determinate by making or reflecting an authoritative choice from among alternative eligible specifications of human rights norms. But, according to the standard picture, the rights must have a tolerably *Corpus Christi College, Oxford. 1 The standard picture is also elaborated and defended at length in Feinberg (2003).