International law

Perceptions on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - Would you like to amend any of the articles or add a new article to the declaration?

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Perceptions on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Universal human rights are often expressed and guaranteed by law, in the forms of treaties, customary international law, general principles and other sources of international law. International human rights lay down obligations of Governments to act in certain ways or to refrain from certain acts, in order to promote and protect human rights and fundamental freedoms of individual group.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is generally agreed to be the foundation of international human rights law. Adopted in 1948, the UDHR has inspired a rich body of legally binding international human rights treaties. It continues to be an inspiration to us all whether in addressing injustices, in times of conflicts, in societies suffering repression, and in our efforts towards achieving universal enjoyment of human rights.

It represents the universal recognition that basic rights and fundamental freedoms are inherent to all human beings, inalienable and equally applicable to everyone, and that every one of us is born free and equal in dignity and rights. Whatever our nationality, place of residence, gender, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, language, or any other status, the international community on December 10 1948 made a commitment to upholding dignity and justice for all of us.

Universal Values

The core principles of human rights first set out in the UDHR, such as universality, interdependence and indivisibility, equality and non-discrimination, and that human rights simultaneously entail both rights and obligations from duty bearers and rights owners, have been reiterated in numerous international human rights conventions, declarations, and resolutions. Today, all United Nations member States have ratified at least one of the nine core international human rights treaties, and 80 percent have ratified four or more, giving concrete expression to the universality of the UDHR and international human rights.

The General Idea of Human Rights:

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) sets out a list of over two dozen specific human rights that countries should respect and protect. These specific rights can be divided into six or more families: security rights that protect people against crimes such as murder, massacre and  torture; due process rights that protect against abuses of the legal system such as imprisonment without trial, secret trial, and excessive punishment; liberty that protect freedoms in area such as belief, expression, association, assembly, and movement; political rights that protect the liberty to participate in politics through action such as communicating, assembling, protesting, voting, and serving in public office; equality rights that guarantee equal citizenship, equality before the law, and nondiscrimination; and social rights that require provision of education to all children and protections against severe poverty and  starvation.

a) Human Rights are political norms dealing mainly with how people should be treated by their government and institutions.

b) Human rights exist as moral and /or legal rights

c) Human rights are numerous (several dozen) rather then few. They   presuppose criminal trials, governments funded by income taxes, and formal systems of education.

d) Human rights are minimal standard. They are concern with avoiding the terrible rather than     with achieving the best.

e) Human rights are international norms covering all countries and all people living today.

f)  Human rights are high-priority norms.

g) Human rights require robust justification that apply everywhere and support their high priority.

h) Human rights are rights, but not necessarily in strict sense. As rights they have several features. One is that they have right holders and another feature of rights is that they focus on a freedom, protection, status, or benefit for the right holders.

2. The Existence of Human Rights:

The most obvious way in which human right exist is the as norms of national and international law created by enactment and judicial decision. At the international level, human rights norms exist because of treaties that have turned them into international law. At the national level, human rights norms exist because they have through legislative enactment, judicial decision, or custom become part of a country’s law. When rights are embedded in international law we speak of them as human rights; but when they are enacted in national law we more frequently describe them as civil or constitutional rights. As this illustrates, it is possible for a right to exist within more than one normative system at the same time.

Enactment in national and international law is one of the ways in which human rights exist. But many have suggested that this is not the only way. If human rights exist only because of enactment, their availability is contingent on domestic and international political development. Many people have sought to find a way to support the idea that human rights have roots that are deeper and less subject to human decision than legal enactment.

3. WHICH RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS:

Not every question of social justice or wise governance is a human rights issue. For example, a country could have too much income inequality, inadequate provision for higher education, or no national parks without violating any human rights. Deciding which norms should be counted as human rights is a matter of some difficulty. And there is continuing pressure to example lists of human rights to include new areas. Many political movements would like to see their main concerns categorized as matters of human rights, since this would publicize, promote, and legitimate their concerns at the international level.

The Future of Human Rights Law

Success in promoting human rights requires hard to achieve success in other areas including building more capable, responsive, efficient, and non-corrupt government, dealing with failed states, increasing economic productivity (to pay for the protections and service that human rights require), improving the power and status of women, improving education, and managing international tensions and conflicts. Realizing human rights worldwide is a project for centuries, not decades.Still, there are some grounds for optimism. Human rights are more widely accepted then they have ever been. They have become part of the currency of international relations, and most countries participate in the human rights system. Treaty arrangements help encourage and pressure countries to deal with their human rights problems. The human rights project continues and has not failed.

Would you like to amend any of the articles or add a new article to the declaration? YES !

Rights are often spoken of as inalienable and sometimes even absolute. However, in practice this is often taken as graded absolutism; rights are ranked by degree of importance, and violations of lesser ones are accepted in the course of preventing violations of greater ones. Thus, even if the right not to be killed is inalienable, the corresponding obligation on others to refrain from killing is generally understood to have at least one exception: self-defense. Certain widely accepted negative obligations (such as the obligations to refrain from theft, murder, etc.) are often considered primafacie, meaning that the legitimacy of the obligation is accepted ; but even if not questioned, such obligations may still be ranked for ethical analysis.

Example :

A thief may have a negative obligation not to steal, and a police officer may have a negative obligation not to tackle people—but a police officer tackling the thief easily meets the burden of proof that he acted justifiably, since his was a breach of a lesser obligation and negated the breach of a greater obligation. Likewise a shopkeeper or other passerby may also meet this burden of proof when tackling the thief. But if any of those individuals pulled a gun and shot the thief for stealing, most modern societies would not accept that the burden of proof had been met. The obligation not to kill—being universally regarded as one of the highest, if not the highest obligation—is so much greater than the obligation not to steal that a breach of the latter does not justify a breach of the former. Most modern societies insist that other, very serious ethical questions need come into play before stealing could justify killing.

Human Rights are deontic powers (abilities, privileges, etc.) derived from collectively accepted “status functions.” Status functions are collectively agreed-upon labels that ascribe particular deontic powers to the holder of the status function. Deontic means typically, one of the first two is taken as basic, and the others defined in terms of it A status function has the logical form: “x counts as Y in context C” where Y is the status function “human being” in the case of human rights. If x counts as a human being, x is entitled to a set of deontic powers attached to the status function. Because x has the status function Y that carries particular deontic powers (rights), here is the resulting logical form:

x has right (x does A)

Where A is a particular action that x has the right to do in virtue of holding a particular status function.

It is important to note that because human rights are derived from status functions,he says it follows that rights are intentionality-relative. That means they are assigned, created, and maintained by collective agreement on their meaning. This is why universal human rights can only exist in the context of international agreement on their existence. Because universal human rights have this logical structure, they imply universal obligations that accompany each right. This means that rights are always held against someone or something else. Thus, for every right, there is an obligation for everyone not to interfere with the exercise of that right. That is, if x has right (x does A), then it follows:

∀y has an obligation (y does not interfere (x does A))

For example, if I have a right to vote, everyone is under the obligation not to interfere with my voting. In this example, my right to vote is against everyone else, and, as a result, everyone has the corresponding obligation to not hinder my act of voting. Here is the logical form about the structure of universal human rights:

∀x (biologically human x → x has status S (because of S, x has UHR (x does A))

Where S is the status function “human being” and UHR stands for Universal Human Right.

Now that we have this logical structure for a universal human right, let’s examine two

test cases to see what universal obligations result. The two cases are the right to freedom of speech and the right to decent housing as outlined in Articles 19 and 25 respectively. Let’s take freedom of speech first. According to Article 19, everyone has the right to speak freely:

∀x has right R (x speaks freely))

It follows, then, that everyone must allow everyone else to speak freely:

                           ∀y has obligation to x to allow (x speak freely))

This is what I call a negative universal human right, and it has the following logical structure:

∀x (x has NegUHR (x speaks freely) → ∀y (y is under an obligation (y does not interferewith (x speaks freely))))

Let’s try the other case: the right to decent housing in Article 25:

∀x has right R (x has decent housing)

It follows from the structure of the negative universal human right that everyone must allow everyone else to possess decent housing:

 ∀x has right R (x has decent housing)→∀y has obligation to x to allow (x has decent housing)

This, however, does not seem to satisfy the notion of the right to decent housing because it is not sufficient to ensure x possesses decent housing as Article 25 demands. The above structure only means is that everyone is under the obligation not to interfere with everyone else’s pursuit of decent housing. If we want to have a right ensuring that everyone possesses decent housing, we need a different logical structure of the universal right.

If we are going to get a structure that captures the notion of the right to decent

housing, there are three restrictions to this right that follow from what has been said so far.

§  First, we must be able to clearly state whom the right is against.

§  Second, we must be able to express exactly what everyone is obligated to do (or not to do) to the bearer of the

§  right.

§  Third, we must be able to say why the person whom the right is against is obligated to act in this way. If there is a universal right to decent housing, then it must be the case that everyone is obligated to everyone else to supply each other with decent housing.

Here is the logical form the right to decent housing must take to satisfy Article 25:

∀x (x has PosUHR (x has decent housing) →∀y (y is under an obligation (y takes action to guarantee (x has decent housing))))

As we can see, all three restrictions proposed have been met.

ü  First, the right is against everyone.

ü  Second, everyone is obligated to provide decent housing to everyone else.

ü  Third, as I stated earlier, the right applies to everyone because everyone else is a biological human and thus the logical bearer of the obligation to respect the right.

Conclusion

Despite the difficulties in gaining an international consensus on the specific contents of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, there are atleast two ways to make the document logically tenable. First, if the rights in the Declaration are to be held solely in virtue of being a human being it must be stripped of all positive rights to remain logically tenable. The best way to make the Declaration tenable, however, is to rewrite the Declaration. This makes it the case that all rights within the declaration (including positive rights) are held against the relevant member government presiding over any particular individual in their jurisdiction. Thus, the obligations corresponding with every universal human right would be held by a distinct political entity. This makes it possible for the international community to define a distinct political entity to hold accountable for violations of any of the rights listed in the revised Declaration. Thus, there is at least the distinct possibility of revising the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to an efficacious and binding document, even in light of the various difficulties surrounding such a task.