Human Rights

The collection of human rights specified in international human rights law draws on a long tradition of rights from philosophy, history, and normative political theory and now includes three sets of rights:

(1) civil and political rights, (2) economic, social, and cultural rights, and (3) solidarity rights.

Civil rights include such rights as the right to life, liberty, and personal security; the right to equality before the law; the right of protection of arbitrary arrest; the right to the due process of law; the right to a fair trial; and the right to religious freedom and worship. When protected, civil rights guarantee one's 'personhood' and freedom from state-sanctioned interference or violence.

Political rights include such rights as the right to speech and expression; the rights to assembly and association; and the right to vote and political participation. Political rights thus guarantee individual rights to involvement in public affairs and the affairs of state.

Social and economic rights include such rights as the right to a family; the right to education; the right to health and well being; the right to work and fair remuneration; the right to leisure time; and the right to social security. When protected, these rights help promote individual flourishing, social and economic development, and self- esteem.

Cultural rights, on the other hand, include such rights as the right to the benefits of culture; the right to indigenous land, rituals, and shared cultural practices; and the right to speak one's own language and bilingual education. Cultural rights are meant to maintain and promote sub-national cultural affiliations and collective identities, and protect minority communities against the incursions of national assimilationist and nation-building projects.

Solidarity rights include rights to public goods such as development and the environment. This collection of rights seeks to guarantee that all individuals and groups have the right to share in the benefits of the earth's natural resources, as well as those goods and products that are made through processes of economic growth, expansion, and innovation.

The end of World War II ushered in a new period of international concern and awareness that a global system of institutions, legal guarantees and mechanisms should be established to promote and protect these individual and collective rights. These desires found expression in the creation of the United Nations system and its key documents for the promotion and protection of human rights: the 1945 United Nations Charter and the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These two documents were soon followed by two more legally binding instruments, promulgated in 1966 and entered into force in 1976: The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (IESCR).

These two international legal instruments and those that followed have set an ideal standard of achievement for the promotion and protection of human rights. Countries that sign and ratify these instruments are legally obliged to uphold their commitment to protect human rights as set out in the instruments. As of 2000, there are between 122 and 190 states parties to these various instruments, demonstrating that the idea of human rights has gained considerable global recognition. Such global recognition is further evidenced by the full ratification of the Rome Statute in April 2002 establishing the permanent International Criminal Court for the prosecution of 'crimes against humanity'. In addition to these global developments, there have been regional systems for the promotion and protection of human rights established in Europe, the Americas, and Africa, while moves are afoot to set up a system in Asia. Taken together, this evolution in international and regional human rights systems and legal instruments suggests that at the beginning of the 21st Century, we live in an 'age of rights'. The process of globalisation, particularly its impact on global media and communications technologies, has meant that the idea of human rights and the international norms for their realisation have become increasingly diffused around the world.

However, the continued violation of human rights and the persistence of global economic inequality and poverty means that despite the great triumph of human rights as an idea, there is a long way to go in the world to realise the full protection of human rights. The disparity between official proclamations and actual implementation of human rights protection motivates human rights activists around the world to struggle for their improvement. State and non-state actors within governments, inter- governmental organisations, and national and international non-governmental organisations pursue such activism. Throughout the last decades of the 20th Century, there have emerged different 'transnational advocacy networks' made up of international and national non-governmental groups. Groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International monitor human rights practices of countries and make global appeals through lobbying and other advocacy strategies to investigate such abuses and to promote the improvement in human rights protection. Indeed, it is often such advocacy groups that can establish linkages between the formal institutions for human rights protection and domestic human rights groups, effectively creating pressure from above and below for states to change their practices. But the relationship between groups who struggle for human rights and the change in state behaviour is often fragmented, uneven, and contradictory, such that states may make initial concessions to opposition groups, but then crack down and revert to previous repressive tactics.

Thus, human rights have emerged as an appealing idea with universal applicability, a development fortified by the growth of the international law of human rights and the diffusion of human rights norms through the emergence of transnational advocacy networks. The struggle for human rights has become globalised, with a proliferation of systems, mechanisms, and groups trying to transform state behaviour in order to bring about sustained improvement in the quality of life. Yet, state behaviour is such that human rights activists and groups must remain ever vigilant since the protection of such rights is always and everywhere precarious.

Suggested readings:

Bobbio, N. (1996) The Age of Rights, Cambridge: Polity Press.

Davidson, S. (1993) Human Rights, Open University Press.

Donnelly, J. (1998) International Human Rights, Boulder: Westview.

Dunne, T. and Wheeler, N. J. (eds) (1999) Human Rights in Global Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Forsythe, D. (2000) Human Rights in International Relations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Jones, P. (1994) Rights, London: Macmillan.

Perry, M. J. (1998) The Idea of Human Rights: Four Inquiries, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Risse, T., Ropp, S. C., Sikkink, K. (eds) (1999) The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Robertson A. H. and Merrills, J. G. (1996) Human Rights in the World: An Introduction to the Study of the International Protection of Human Rights, 4th edn., Manchester: University of Manchester Press.

Steiner H. J. and Alston P. (1996) International Human Rights in Context: Law, Politics, Morals, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Suggested websites:

1. United Nations www.un.org
2. United Nations Development Programme www.undp.org
3. Human Rights Watch www.hrw.org/
4. Amnesty International www.amnesty.org
5. World Bank www.worldbank.org
6. One World www.oneworld.org
7. Council of Europe www.coe.fr
8. International Committee of Jurists www.icj.org
9. International Committee of the Red Cross www.icrc.org
10. Human Rights Web www.hrweb.org
11. Human Rights Internet www.hri.ca
12. World Audit www.worldaudit.org

Dr. Todd Landman (BA UPenn, MA Georgetown, MA Colorado, PhD Essex) is Lecturer in Politics and Deputy Director of the Human Rights Centre at the University of Essex. He is author of Issues and Methods in Comparative Politics (Routledge 2000), co-author of Citizenship Rights and Social Movements: A Comparative and Statistical Analysis (Oxford University Press 1997) and Governing Latin America (Polity Press, forthcoming).

Email: todd@essex.ac.uk
http://www.essex.ac.uk
http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~todd

Placed on Fabian Global Forum, May 2002