Human rights

This article adopts the colloquial interpretation of the term human rights as a universal body of entitlements, as distinct from its broader interpretation as the equivalent of domestic "civil rights". It is mainly concerned with the developments of the concept of human rights that have taken place since the issue in 1948 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Among those developments have been its near-universal popular endorsement as a statement of the principles that should govern the way governments treat their citizens, and a far from universal realisation of those principles. Agencies of the United Nations have conferred operational significance on the declaration by the creation of an agreed body of international treaties and have implemented mechanisms for monitoring compliance with them. Regional and national authorities have taken further action, extending in some cases to legislation. A number of civil and criminal law actions concerning human rights have been taken in courts created for the purpose. Misgivings remain however, concerning the philosophical foundations of the concept, and there has been popular opposition to some of its court rulings, and to the adoption of the promotion of human rights as an objective of foreign policy.

Introduction

Historical background

The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights is generally held to have been inspired by revulsion at the treatment or the victims of the holocaust and by wartime aspirations for a better post-war world. Although much of its content was new, there were precedents for its concept of universally innate human entitlements in the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man. Its unprecedented feature was its claim to be doubly universal - to invoke the universal acceptance of agreed obligations, as well as the recognition of what were agreed to be universal entitlements. It was an overstated claim, however, in view of the abstention of the Soviet bloc countries, the necessary absence of the British and American colonies, and the exclusion of Germany, Italy and Japan. Also, the inclusion of China and Cuba shows that many of its proponents were themselves in breach of its proposed obligations. But although, its signatories may have, as Michael Ignatieff suggests, regarded the declaration as no more than "a pious set of cliches" " yet once articulated as international norms, rights language ignited both the colonial revolutions abroad and the civil rights revolution at home". As a result, positive action has in fact been taken in response to the declaration's call for its legislative implementation (articles 8 and 10). The actual content of the declaration was, as Justice Michael Kirby recalls a political compromise, the outcome of prolonged negotiation, but it has survived as a framework for the creation of the "human rights instruments" that were to be the next step toward the realisation of its stated intentions.

Philosophical objections

cultural relativism