Human rights
Human rights
Human rights, rights that belong to an individual or group of individuals simply for being human, or as a consequence of inherent human vulnerability, or because they are requisite to the possibility of a just society. Whatever their theoretical justification, human rights refer to a wide continuum of values or capabilities thought to enhance human agency or protect human interests and declared to be universal in character, in some sense equally claimed for all human beings, present and future.
It is a common observation that human beings everywhere require the realization of diverse values or capabilities to ensure their individual and collective well-being. It also is a common observation that this requirement—whether conceived or expressed as a moral or a legal demand—is often painfully frustrated by social as well as natural forces, resulting in exploitation, oppression, persecution, and other forms of deprivation. Deeply rooted in these twin observations are the beginnings of what today are called “human rights” and the national and international legal processes associated with them.
ethics: Rights theories
Although appeals to rights have been common since the great 18th-century declarations of the rights of man (seeDeclaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen; Declaration of Independence), most ethical theorists have treated rights as something that must be derived…
Human rights
Historical Development
The expression human rights is relatively new, having come into everyday parlance only since World War II, the founding of the United Nations in 1945, and the adoption by the UN General Assembly of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. It replaced the phrase natural rights, which fell into disfavour in the 19th century in part because the concept of natural law (to which it was intimately linked) had become controversial with the rise of legal positivism. Legal positivism rejected the theory, long espoused by the Roman Catholic Church, that law must be moral to be law. The term human rights also replaced the later phrase the rights of Man, which was not universally understood to include the rights of women.
Origins in ancient Greece and Rome
Most students of human rights trace the origins of the concept of human rights to ancient Greece and Rome, where it was closely tied to the doctrines of the Stoics, who held that human conduct should be judged according to, and brought into harmony with, the law of nature. A classic example of this view is given in Sophocles’ play Antigone, in which the title character, upon being reproached by King Creon for defying his command not to bury her slain brother, asserted that she acted in accordance with the immutable laws of the gods.
In part because Stoicism played a key role in its formation and spread, Roman law similarly allowed for the existence of a natural law and with it—pursuant to the jus gentium (“law of nations”)—certain universal rights that extended beyond the rights of citizenship. According to the Roman jurist Ulpian, for example, natural law was that which nature, not the state, assures to all human beings, Roman citizens or not.
It was not until after the Middle Ages, however, that natural law became associated with natural rights. In Greco-Roman and medieval times, doctrines of natural law concerned mainly the duties, rather than the rights, of “Man.” Moreover, as evidenced in the writings of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, these doctrines recognized the legitimacy of slavery and serfdomand, in so doing, excluded perhaps the most important ideas of human rights as they are understood today—freedom (or liberty) and equality.
The conception of human rights as natural rights (as opposed to a classical natural order of obligation) was made possible by certain basic societal changes, which took place gradually beginning with the decline of European feudalism from about the 13th century and continuing through the Renaissance to the Peace of Westphalia (1648). During this period, resistance to religious intolerance and political and economic bondage; the evident failure of rulers to meet their obligations under natural law; and the unprecedented commitment to individual expression and worldly experience that was characteristic of the Renaissance all combined to shift the conception of natural law from duties to rights. The teachings of Aquinas and Hugo Grotius on the European continent, the Magna Carta (1215) and its companion Charter of the Forests (1217), the Petition of Right (1628), and the English Bill of Rights (1689) in England were signs of this change. Each testified to the increasingly popular view that human beings are endowed with certain eternal and inalienable rights that never were renounced when humankind “contracted” to enter the social order from the natural order and never were diminished by the claim of the “divine right of kings.”
Natural law transformed into natural rights
The modern conception of natural law as meaning or implying natural rights was elaborated primarily by thinkers of the 17th and 18th centuries. The intellectual—and especially the scientific—achievements of the 17th century (including the materialism of Hobbes, the rationalism of Descartes and Leibniz, the pantheism of Spinoza, and the empiricism of Bacon and Locke) encouraged a distinctly modern belief in natural law and universal order and, during the 18th century—the so-called Age of Enlightenment, inspired by a growing confidence in human reason and in the perfectibility of human affairs—led to the more comprehensive expression of this belief. Particularly important were the writings of Locke, arguably the most important natural-law theorist of modern times, and the works of the 18th-century thinkers known as the philosophes, who, centred mainly in Paris, included Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Locke argued in detail, mainly in writings associated with the English Glorious Revolution (1688–89), that certain rights self-evidently pertain to individuals as human beings (because these rights existed in the hypothetical “state of nature” before humankind entered civil society); that chief among them are the rights to life, liberty (freedom from arbitrary rule), and property; that, upon entering civil society, humankind surrendered to the state—pursuant to a “social contract”—only the right to enforce these natural rights and not the rights themselves; and that the state’s failure to secure these rights gives rise to a right to responsible, popular revolution. The philosophes, building on Locke and others and embracing many and varied currents of thought with a common supreme faith in reason, vigorously attacked religious and scientific dogmatism, intolerance, censorship, and social and economic restraints. They sought to discover and act upon universally valid principles governing nature, humanity, and society, including the inalienable “rights of Man,” which they treated as a fundamental ethical and social gospel.
Not surprisingly, this liberal intellectual ferment exerted a profound influence in the Western world of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Together with the Glorious Revolution in England and the resulting Bill of Rights, it provided the rationale for the wave of revolutionary agitation that swept the West, most notably in North America and France. Thomas Jefferson, who had studied Locke and Montesquieu, gave poetic eloquence to the plain prose of the 17th century in the Declaration of Independence proclaimed by the 13 American colonies on July 4, 1776:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Similarly, the marquis de Lafayette, who won the close friendship of George Washington and who shared the hardships of the American Revolution, imitated the pronouncements of the English and American revolutions in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of August 26, 1789, proclaiming that “men are born and remain free and equal in rights” and that “the aim of every political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man.”
In sum, the idea of natural rights, forebear to the contemporary notion of human rights, played a key role in late 18th- and early 19th-century struggles against political absolutism. It was, indeed, the failure of rulers to respect the principles of freedom and equality that was responsible for this development.
“Nonsense upon stilts”: the critics of natural rights
The idea of natural rights was not without its detractors, however. In the first place, because it was frequently associated with religious orthodoxy, the doctrine of natural rights became less attractive to philosophical and political liberals. Additionally, because they were conceived in essentially absolutist terms, natural rights were increasingly considered to conflict with one another. Most importantly, the doctrine of natural rights came under powerful philosophical and political attack from both the right and the left.
In England, for example, conservative political thinkers such as Edmund Burke and David Hume united with liberals such as Jeremy Bentham to condemn the doctrine, the former out of fear that public affirmation of natural rights would lead to social upheaval, the latter out of concern lest declarations and proclamations of natural rights substitute for effective legislation. In his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), Burke—a believer in natural law who nonetheless denied that the “rights of Man” could be derived from it—criticized the drafters of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen for proclaiming the “monstrous fiction” of human equality, which, he argued, serves but to inspire “false ideas and vain expectations into men destined to travel in the obscure walk of laborious life.” Bentham, one of the founders of utilitarianism, was no less scornful. “Rights,” he wrote,
is the child of law; from real law come real rights; but from imaginary laws, from “law of nature,” come imaginary rights.…Natural rights is simple nonsense; natural and imprescriptible rights (an American phrase)…[is] rhetorical nonsense, nonsense upon stilts.
Agreeing with Bentham, Hume insisted that natural law and natural rights are unreal metaphysical phenomena.
This assault upon natural law and natural rights intensified and broadened during the 19th and early 20th centuries. John Stuart Mill, despite his vigorous defense of liberty, proclaimed that rights ultimately are founded on utility. The German jurist Friedrich Karl von Savigny, England’s Sir Henry Maine, and other “historicalist” legal thinkers emphasized that rights are a function of cultural and environmental variables unique to particular communities. The English jurist John Austin argued that the only law is “the command of the sovereign” (a phrase of Hobbes). And the logical positivists of the early 20th century insisted that the only truth is that which can be established by verifiable experience and that therefore ethical pronouncements are not cognitively significant. By World War I there were scarcely any theorists who would defend the “rights of Man” along the lines of natural law. Indeed, under the influence of 19th-century German idealism and parallel expressions of rising European nationalism, there were some—the Marxists, for example—who, though not rejecting individual rights altogether, maintained that rights, from whatever source derived, belong to communities or whole societies and nations preeminently.
The persistence of the notion
Although the heyday of natural rights proved short, the idea of rights nonetheless endured. The abolition of slavery, the implementation of factory legislation, the rise of popular education and trade unionism, the universal suffragemovement—these and other examples of 19th-century reformist impulses afford ample evidence that the idea was not to be extinguished, even if its a priori derivation had become a matter of general skepticism. But it was not until the rise and fall of Nazi Germany that the idea of human rights truly came into its own. Many of the gruesome atrocities committed by the Nazi regime had been officially authorized by Nazi laws and decrees, and this fact convinced many that law and morality cannot be grounded in any purely idealist or utilitarian or other consequentialist doctrine. Certain actions, according to this view, are absolutely wrong, no matter what the circumstances; human beings are entitled to simple respect, at least.
Today the vast majority of legal scholars and philosophers—particularly in the liberal West—agree that every human being has, at least in theory, some basic rights. Indeed, except for some essentially isolated late 19th-century and early 20th-century demonstrations of international humanitarian concern, the last half of the 20th century may fairly be said to mark the birth of the international as well as the universal recognition of human rights. In the charter establishing the United Nations, for example, all member states pledged themselves to take joint and separate action for the achievement of “universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.” In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, representatives from many cultures endorsed the rights therein set forth “as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations.” And in 1976 the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), each approved by the UN General Assembly in 1966, entered into force and effect. Together with the Universal Declaration and their additional protocols, these documents came ultimately to be known as core elements of the “International Bill of Human Rights.”
Defining Human Rights
To say that there is widespread acceptance of the principle of human rights is not to say that there is complete agreement about the nature and scope of such rights or, indeed, their definition. Among the basic questions that have yet to receive conclusive answers are the following: whether human rights are to be viewed as divine, moral, or legal entitlements; whether they are to be validated by intuition, culture, custom, social contract, principles of distributive justice, or as prerequisites for happiness or the achievement of human dignity; whether they are to be understood as irrevocable or partially revocable; and whether they are to be broad or limited in number and content. Even when the principle of human rights is accepted, there are controversies: whether human rights are a way of privileging narrowly conceived special interests over the common interest; whether they are the political tools of predominantly progressive elites; whether they are a stalking horse for Western economic imperialism; and so forth. It is thus sometimes claimed that there exists no universally agreed upon theory or even understanding of human rights.
The story of of hu rights
The nature of human rights: commonly accepted postulates
Despite this lack of consensus, a number of widely accepted (and interrelated) postulates can assist in the task of defining human rights. Five in particular stand out, though not even these are without controversy.
First, regardless of their ultimate origin or justification, human rights are understood to represent both individual and group demands for political power, wealth, enlightenment, and other cherished values or capabilities, the most fundamental of which is respect and its constituent elements of reciprocaltolerance and mutual forbearance in the pursuit of all other such values or capabilities. Consequently, human rights imply both claims against persons and institutions impeding the realization of these values or capabilities and standards for judging the legitimacy of laws and traditions. At bottom, human rights qualify state sovereignty and power, sometimes expanding the latter even while circumscribing the former (as in the case of certain economic and social rights, for example). Increasingly, human rights are said also to qualify “private sovereignty” (as in the case, for example, of challenging the impunity of overbearing business enterprises, protecting family members from domestic violence, and holding non-state terrorist actors to account).
Second, human rights are commonly assumed to refer, in some vague sense, to “fundamental,” as distinct from “nonessential,” claims or “goods.” In fact, some theorists go so far as to limit human rights to a single core right or two—for example, the right to life or the right to equal opportunity. The tendency is to emphasize “basic needs” and to rule out “mere wants.”
Third, reflecting varying environmental circumstances, differing worldviews, and inescapable interdependencies within and between different value or capability systems, human rights refer to a wide continuum of claims, ranging from the most justiciable (or enforceable) to the most aspirational. Human rights partake of both the legal and the moral orders, sometimes indistinguishably. They are expressive of both the “is” and the “ought” in human affairs.
Fourth, most assertions of human rights—though arguably not all (freedom from slavery, genocide, or torture are notable exceptions)—are qualified by the limitation that the rights of individuals or groups in particular instances are restricted as much as is necessary to secure the comparable rights of others and the aggregate common interest. Given this limitation, which connects rights to duties, human rights are sometimes designated “prima facie rights,” so that ordinarily it makes little or no sense to think or talk of them in absolutist terms.
Finally, if a right is determined to be a human right, it is understood to be quintessentially general or universal in character, in some sense equally possessed by all human beings everywhere, including in certain instances even the unborn. In stark contrast to the divine right of kings and other such conceptions of privilege, human rights extend in theory to every person on Earth, without regard to merit or need, simply for being human or because they mitigate inherent human vulnerability or are requisite to social justice.
In several critical respects, however, all these postulates raise more questions than they answer. For instance, if, as is increasingly asserted, human rights qualify private power, precisely when and how do they do so? What does it mean to say that a right is fundamental, and according to what standards of importance or urgency is it so judged? What is the value of embracing moral as distinct from legal rights as part of the jurisprudence of human rights? Do nonjusticiable rights harbour more than rhetorical significance? If so, how? When and according to what criteria does the right of one person or group of people give way to the right of another? What happens when individual and group rights collide? How are universal human rights determined? Are they a function of culture or ideology, or are they determined according to some transnational consensus of merit or value? If the latter, is the consensus in question regional or global? How exactly would such a consensus be ascertained, and how would it be reconciled with the right of nations and peoples to self-determination? Is the existence of universal human rights incompatible with the notion of national sovereignty? Should supranational norms, institutions, and procedures have the power to nullify local, regional, and national laws on capital punishment, corporal punishment of children, “honour killing,” veil wearing, female genital cutting, male circumcision, the claimed right to bear arms, and other practices? For some in the human rights debate, this raises a further controversy concerning how such situations comport with Western conceptions of democracy and representative government.
In other words, though accurate, the five foregoing postulates are fraught with questions about the content and legitimatescope of human rights and about the priorities, if any, that exist among them. Like the issue of the origin and justification of human rights, all five are controversial.
The content of human rights: three “generations” of rights
Like all normative traditions, the human rights tradition is a product of its time. Therefore, to understand better the debate over the content and legitimate scope of human rights and the priorities claimed among them, it is useful to note the dominant schools of thought and action that have informed the human rights tradition since the beginning of modern times.
Particularly helpful in this regard is the notion of three “generations” of human rights advanced by the French jurist Karel Vasak. Inspired by the three themes of the French Revolution, they are: the first generation, composed of civil and political rights (liberté); the second generation of economic, social, and cultural rights (égalité); and the third generation of solidarity or group rights (fraternité). Vasak’s model is, of course, a simplified expression of an extremely complex historical record, and it is not intended to suggest a linear process in which each generation gives birth to the next and then dies away. Nor is it to imply that one generation is more important than another, or that the generations (and their categories of rights) are ultimately separable. The three generations are understood to be cumulative, overlapping, and, it is important to emphasize, interdependent and interpenetrating.
What are the universal human rights ?
Liberté: civil and political rights
The first generation, civil and political rights, derives primarily from the 17th- and 18th-century reformist theories noted above (i.e., those associated with the English, American, and French revolutions). Infused with the political philosophy of liberal individualism and the related economic and social doctrine of laissez-faire, the first generation conceives of human rights more in negative terms (“freedoms from”) than positive ones (“rights to”); it favours the abstention over the intervention of government in the quest for human dignity. Belonging to this first generation, thus, are rights such as those set forth in Articles 2–21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including freedom from gender, racial, and equivalent forms of discrimination; the right to life, liberty, and security of the person; freedom from slavery or involuntary servitude; freedom from torture and from cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; freedom from arbitrary arrest, detention, or exile; the right to a fair and public trial; freedom from interference in privacy and correspondence; freedom of movement and residence; the right to asylum from persecution; freedom of thought, conscience, and religion; freedom of opinion and expression; freedom of peaceful assembly and association; and the right to participate in government, directly or through free elections. Also included are the right to own property and the right not to be deprived of it arbitrarily—rights that were fundamental to the interests fought for in the American and French revolutions and to the rise of capitalism.
Yet it would be wrong to assert that these and other first-generation rights correspond completely to the idea of “negative” as opposed to “positive” rights. The right to security of the person, to a fair and public trial, to asylum from persecution, or to free elections, for example, manifestly cannot be assured without some affirmative government action. What is constant in this first-generation conception is the notion of liberty, a shield that safeguards the individual—alone and in association with others—against the abuse of political authority. This is the core value. Featured in the constitution of almost every country in the world and dominating the majority of international declarations and covenants adopted since World War II (in large measure due to the brutal denial of the fundamentals of civic belonging and democratic inclusion during the Nazi era), this essentially Western liberal conception of human rights is sometimes romanticized as a triumph of the individualism of Hobbes and Locke over Hegel’s glorification of the state.
Égalité: economic, social, and cultural rights
The second generation, composed of economic, social, and cultural rights, originated primarily in the socialist tradition, which was foreshadowed among adherents of the Saint-Simonian movement of early 19th-century France and variously promoted by revolutionary struggles and welfare movements that have taken place since. In large part, it is a response to the abuses of capitalist development and its underlying and essentially uncritical conception of individual liberty, which tolerated, and even legitimized, the exploitation of working classes and colonial peoples. Historically, economic, social, and cultural rights are a counterpoint to the first generation, civil and political rights, and are conceived more in positive terms (“rights to”) than in negative ones (“freedoms from”); they also require more the intervention than the abstention of the state for the purpose of assuring the equitable production and distribution of the values or capabilities involved. Illustrative are some of the rights set forth in Articles 22–27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, such as the right to social security; the right to work and to protection against unemployment; the right to rest and leisure, including periodic holidays with pay; the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of self and family; the right to education; and the right to the protection of one’s scientific, literary, and artistic production.
But in the same way that not all the rights embraced by the first generation (civil and political rights) can be designated as “negative rights,” so not all the rights embraced by the second generation (economic, social, and cultural rights) can be labeled as “positive rights.” For example, the right to free choice of employment, the right to form and to join trade unions, and the right to participate freely in the cultural life of the community (Articles 23 and 27) do not inherently require affirmative state action to ensure their enjoyment. Nevertheless, most of the second-generation rights do necessitate state intervention, because they subsume demands more for material than for intangible goods according to some criterion of distributive justice. Second-generation rights are, fundamentally, claims to social equality. However, in part because of the comparatively late arrival of socialist-communist and compatible “Third World” influence in international affairs, but more recently because of the ascendency of laissez-faire capitalism and the globalization of neoliberal, free-market economics since the end of the Cold War, the internationalization of these “equality rights” has been relatively slow in coming and is unlikely to truly come of age any time soon. On the other hand, as the social inequities created by unregulated national and transnational capitalism become more and more evident over time and are not directly accounted for by explanations based on gender or race, it is probable that the demand for second-generation rights will grow and mature, and in some instances even lead to violence. Indeed, this tendency was apparent already at the beginning of the 2010s, most notably in the widespread protests against austerity measures in Europe as the euro-zone debt crisisunfolded and in wider efforts (including social movements such as the “Occupy” movement) to regulate intergovernmental financial institutions and transnational corporations to protect the public interest.
Fraternité: solidarity or group rights
Finally, the third generation, composed of solidarity or group rights, while drawing upon and reconceptualizing the demands associated with the first two generations of rights, is best understood as a product of both the rise and the decline of the state since the mid-20th century. Foreshadowed in Article 28 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which proclaims that “everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights set forth in this declaration can be fully realized,” this generation appears so far to embrace six claimed rights (although events of the early 21st century arguably suggest that a seventh claimed right—a right to democracy—may be in the process of emerging). Three of the claimed rights reflect the emergence of nationalism in the developing world in the 1960s and ’70s and the “revolution of rising expectations” (i.e., its demand for a global redistribution of power, wealth, and other important values or capabilities): the right to political, economic, social, and cultural self-determination; the right to economic and social development; and the right to participate in and benefit from “the common heritage of mankind” (shared Earth and space resources; scientific, technical, and other information and progress; and cultural traditions, sites, and monuments). The three remaining claimed solidarity or group rights—the right to peace, the right to a clean and healthy environment, and the right to humanitarian disaster relief—suggest the impotence or inefficiency of the state in certain critical respects.
All of these claimed rights tend to be posed as collective rights, requiring the concerted efforts of all social forces, to a substantial degree on a planetary scale. However, each of them also manifests an individual dimension. For example, while it may be said to be the collective right of all countries and peoples (especially developing countries and non-self-governing peoples) to secure a “new international economic order” that would eliminate obstacles to their economic and social development, so also may it be said to be the individual right of every person to benefit from a developmental policy that is based on the satisfaction of material and nonmaterial human needs. It is important to note, too, that the majority of these solidarity rights are more aspirational than justiciable in character and that their status as international human rights norms remains somewhat ambiguous.
Thus, at various stages of modern history, the content of human rights has been broadly defined, not with any expectation that the rights associated with one generation would or should become outdated upon the ascendancy of another, but expansively or supplementally. The history of the content of human rights reflects evolving and conflicting perceptions of which values or capabilities stand, at different times and through differing lenses, most in need of responsible attention and, simultaneously, humankind’s recurring demands for continuity and stability. Such dynamics are reflected, for example, in a rising consensus that human rights extend to the private as well as to the public sector—i.e., that non-state as well as state actors must account for their violations of human rights. Similarly reflecting the continuing pressure for human rights evolution is a current suggestion that there exists a “fourth generation” of human rights consisting of women’s and intergenerational rights (i.e., the rights of future generations, including existing children) among others.
Legitimacy and priority
Liberté versus égalité
The fact that the content of human rights has been broadly defined should not be taken to imply that the three generations of rights are equally accepted by everyone. Nor should broad acceptance of the idea of human rights suggest that their generations or their separate elements have been greeted with equal urgency. The ongoing debate about the nature and content of human rights reflects, after all, a struggle for power and for favoured conceptions of the “good society.”
First-generation proponents, for example, are inclined to exclude second- and third-generation rights from their definition of human rights altogether or, at best, to regard them as “derivative.” In part this is because of the complexities involved in putting these rights into operation. The suggestion that first-generation rights are more feasible than other generations because they stress the absence over the presence of government is somehow transformed into a prerequisite of a comprehensive definition of human rights, such that aspirational claims to entitlement are deemed not to be rights at all. The most-compelling explanation for such exclusions, however, has more to do with ideology or politics than with operational concerns. Persuaded that egalitarianclaims against the rich, particularly where collectively espoused, are unworkable without a severe decline in liberty, first-generation proponents, inspired by the natural law and laissez-faire traditions, are committed to the view that human rights are inherently independent of organized society and are necessarily individualistic.
Conversely, second- and third-generation defenders often look upon first-generation rights, at least as commonly practiced, as insufficiently attentive to material—especially “basic”—human needs and, indeed, as being instruments in service to unjust social orders, hence constituting a “bourgeois illusion.” Accordingly, if they do not place first-generation rights outside their definition of human rights, these partisans tend to assign such rights a low status and to treat them as long-term goals that will come to pass only after the imperatives of economic and social development have been met, to be realized gradually and fully achieved only sometime vaguely in the future.
This liberty-equality and individualist-collectivist debate was especially evident during the period of the Cold War, reflecting the extreme tensions that then existed between liberal and Hegelian-Marxist conceptions of sovereign public order. Although Western social democrats during this period, particularly in Scandinavia, occupied a position midway between the two sides, pursuing both liberty and equality—in many respects successfully—it remains true that the different conceptions of rights contain the potential for challenging the legitimacy and supremacy not only of one another but, more importantly, of the sociopolitical systems with which they are most intimately associated.
The relevance of custom and tradition: the universalist-relativist debate
With the end of the Cold War, however, the debate took on a more North-South character and was supplemented and intensified by a cultural-relativist critique that eschewed the universality of human rights doctrines, principles, and rules on the grounds that they are Western in origin and therefore of limited relevance in non-Western settings. The viewpoint underlying this assertion—that the scope of human rights in any given society should be determined fundamentally by local, national, or regional customs and traditions—may seem problematic, especially when one considers that the idea of human rights and many of its precepts are found in all the great philosophical and religious traditions. Nevertheless, the historical development of human rights demonstrates that the relativist critique cannot be wholly or axiomatically dismissed. Nor is it surprising that it should emerge soon after the end of the Cold War. First prominently expressed in the declaration that emerged from the Bangkok meeting held in preparation to the second UN World Conference on Human Rights convened in Vienna in June 1993 (which qualified a reaffirmation of the universality of human rights by stating that human rights “must be considered in the context of…national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds”), the relativist critique reflects the end of a bipolar system of alliances that had discouraged independent foreign policies and minimized cultural and political differences in favour of undivided Cold War loyalties.
Against the backdrop of increasing human rights interventionism on the part of the UN and by regional organizations and deputized coalitions of states (as in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Somalia, Liberia, Rwanda, Haiti, Serbia and Kosovo, Libya, and Mali, for example), the relativist viewpoint serves also as a functional equivalent of the doctrine of respect for national sovereignty and territorial integrity, which had been declining in influence not only in the human rights context but also in the contexts of national security, economics, and the environment. As a consequence, there remains sharp political and theoretical disagreement about the legitimate scope of human rights and about the priorities that are claimed among them.
Inherent risks in the debate
On final analysis, however, this legitimacy-priority debate can be dangerously misleading. Although useful for pointing out how notions of liberty and individualism have been used to rationalize the abuses of capitalism and Western expansionism and for exposing the ways in which notions of equality, collectivism, and culture have been alibis for authoritariangovernance, in the end the debate risks obscuring at least three essential truths that must be taken into account if the contemporary worldwide human rights movement is to be understood objectively.
First, one-sided characterizations of legitimacy and priority are very likely, at least over the long term, to undermine the political credibility of their proponents and the defensibility of the rights they regard as preeminently important. In an increasingly interdependent global community, any human rights orientation that does not support the widest possible shaping and sharing of values or capabilities among all human beings is likely to provoke widespread skepticism. The period since the mid-20th century is replete with examples, among them the official U.S. position that only civil and political rights—including the rights to own property and to invest in processes of production and exchange—can be deemed legally recognizable rights.
Second, such characterizations do not accurately reflect reality. In the real world, virtually all societies, whether individualistic or collectivist in essential character, at least consent to, and most even promote, a mixture of all basic values or capabilities. U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms(freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear) is an early case in point. A later demonstration is found in the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action of the 1993 conference mentioned above, adopted by representatives of 171 states. It proclaims that
[w]hile the significance of national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds must be borne in mind, it is the duty of States, regardless of their political, economic and cultural systems, to promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms.
Finally, in the early 21st century, none of the international human rights instruments in force or proposed said anything about the legitimacy or priority of the rights it addresses, save possibly in the case of rights that by international covenant are stipulated to be “nonderogable” and therefore, arguably, more fundamental than others (e.g., freedom from arbitrary or unlawful deprivation of life, freedom from torture and from inhuman or degrading treatment and punishment, freedom from slavery, and freedom from imprisonment for debt). To be sure, some disagreements about legitimacy and priority can derive from differences of definition (e.g., what is “torture” or “inhuman treatment” to one may not be so to another, as in the case of punishment by caning or waterboarding or by death). Similarly, disagreements can arise also when treating the problem of implementation. For instance, some insist first on certain civil and political guarantees, whereas others defer initially to conditions of material well-being. Such disagreements, however, reflect differences in political agendas and have little if any conceptual utility. As confirmed by numerous resolutions of the UN General Assembly and reaffirmed in the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, there is a wide consensus that all human rights form an indivisible whole and that the protection of human rights is not and should not be a matter of purely national jurisdiction. The extent to which the international community actually protects the human rights it prescribes is, on the other hand, a different matter.
International Human Rights: Prescription And Enforcement
Developments before World War II
Ever since ancient times, but especially since the emergence of the modern state system, the Age of Discovery, and the accompanying spread of industrialization and European culture throughout the world, there has developed, for economic and other reasons, a unique set of customs and conventions regarding the humane treatment of foreigners. This evolving International Law of State Responsibility for Injuries to Aliens, as these customs and conventions came to be called, represents the beginning of active concern—however much they served the interests of colonial expansion—for human rights on the international plane. The founding fathers of international law—particularly Francisco de Vitoria, Grotius, and Emmerich de Vattel—were quick to observe that all persons, outlander as well as the Other, were entitled to certain natural rights, and they emphasized, consequently, the importance of according aliens fair treatment.
With the exception of occasional treaties to secure the protection of Christian denominations, it was not until the start of the 19th century, however, that active international concern for the rights of nationals began to make itself felt. Then, in the century and a half before World War II, several noteworthy efforts to encourage respect for nationals by international means began to shape what today is called the International Law of Human Rights (which for historical but no theoretically convincing reasons was treated separately from the International Law of State Responsibility for Injuries to Aliens).
Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, numerous military operations and diplomatic representations, not all of them with the purest of motives but performed nonetheless in the name of “humanitarian intervention” (a customary international law doctrine), undertook to protect oppressed and persecuted minorities in the Ottoman Empire, Syria, Crete, various Balkan countries, Romania, and Russia. Paralleling these actions, first at the Congress of Vienna (1814–15) and later between the two World Wars, a series of treaties and international declarations sought the protection of certain racial, religious, and linguistic minorities in central and eastern Europe and the Middle East. During the same period, the movement to combat and suppress slavery and the slave tradefound expression in treaties sooner or later involving the major commercial powers, beginning with the Treaty of Paris (1814) and culminating in the International Slavery Convention (1926).
In addition, beginning in the late 19th century and continuing well beyond World War II, the community of nations, inspired largely by persons associated with what is now the International Committee of the Red Cross, concluded a series of multilateral declarations and agreements designed to temper the conduct of hostilities, protect the victims of war, and otherwise elaborate the humanitarian law of war (now commonly referred to as International Humanitarian Law). At about the same time, first with two multilateral labour conventions concluded in 1906 and subsequently at the initiative of the International Labour Organisation (established in 1919), a reformist-minded international community embarked upon a variety of collaborative measures directed at the promotion of human rights. These measures addressed not only concerns traditionally associated with labour law and labour relations (e.g., industrial health and safety, hours of work, and annual paid holidays), but also—mainly after World War II—such core human rights concerns as forced labour, discrimination in employment and occupation, freedom of association for collective bargaining, and equal pay for equal work.
Finally, during the interwar period, the covenant establishing the League of Nations (1919)—though not formally recognizing “the rights of Man” and failing to lay down a principle of racial nondiscrimination as requested by Japan (mainly because of the resistance of Great Britain and the United States)—nevertheless committed its members to several human rights goals: fair and humane working conditions, the execution of agreements regarding trafficking of women and children, the prevention and control of disease in matters of international concern, and the just treatment of indigenous colonial peoples. Also, the victorious powers—who as “mandatories” were entrusted by the League of Nations with the tutelage of colonies formerly governed by Germany and Turkey—accepted responsibility for the well-being and development of the inhabitants of those territories as “a sacred trust of civilization.” This arrangement was later carried over into the trusteeship system of the United Nations.
As important as these efforts were, however, it was not until after the war—and the Nazi atrocities accompanying it—that active concern for human rights truly came of age internationally. In the proceedings of the International Military Tribunal at Nürnberg in 1945–46 (the Nürnberg trials), German high officials were tried not only for “crimes against peace” and “war crimes” but also for “crimes against humanity” committed against civilian populations, even if the crimes were in accordance with the laws of the country in which they were perpetrated. Although the tribunal, whose establishment and rulings subsequently were endorsed by the UN General Assembly, applied a cautious approach to allegations of crimes against humanity, it nonetheless made the treatment by a state of its own citizens the subject of international criminal process. The ad hoc international criminal tribunals established in 1993–94 for the prosecution of serious violations of International Humanitarian Law in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda were its first heirs on the international plane. Both courts were empowered to impose sentences of life imprisonment (though not the death penalty), and both focused their efforts, with some success, on political leaders who had authorized human rights abuses. Most conspicuouswas the arrest and detention in June 2001 of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Miloševic by the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia, representing the first time a former head of state was placed in the physical custody of an international judicial authority. The tribunal charged him with war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed by Serbian forces in Kosovo in 1999 and subsequently with the crime of genocide allegedly committed by Serbian forces during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992–95. His trial ended with his death in March 2006.
Also heir to the Nürnberg tribunal is the International Criminal Court (ICC), authorized by the adoption by 120 countries of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in July 1998. The statute created an independent, permanent international criminal court with legal personality separate from the United Nations and whose substantive jurisdiction includes crimes against humanity, crimes of genocide, war crimes, and crimes of “aggression” (pending the adoption of an acceptable definition of that term). However, the creation of the court, which depended on the ratification of the statute by at least 60 signatory states, was resisted by some countries, notably the United States, on the ground that it would unduly infringe upon their national sovereignty. Indeed, during the administration of President George W. Bush (2001–09), the United States not only refused to ratify the statute but also took the unusual step of withdrawing its signature from it. Given the sway of the United States in world affairs, this rendered the long-term future of the court uncertain. Despite some initial operational problems and uneven support from states party to the Rome Statute, the ICC subsequently made notable progress in prosecuting perpetrators of the world’s most heinous crimes and thus bolstered its near-term future.
Human rights in the United Nations
The United Nations, founded in 1945 after World War II and the Holocaust, was created principally to maintain international peace and security and to encourage and promote respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. The Charter of the United Nations confirms these two purposes and begins its recognition of the second by reaffirming a
faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small.
It states that the purposes of the UN are, among other things:
to develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples…[and] to achieve international co-operation…in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.
In addition, in two key articles, “all members pledge themselves to take joint and separate action in co-operation with the Organization for the achievement of” these and related purposes.
It must be noted, however, that a proposal to ensure the protection (i.e., enforcement) of human rights as distinct from their promotion (i.e., advocacy) was explicitly rejected at the Charter-drafting San Francisco conference establishing the UN. Accordingly, while providing for the UN Security Council to enforce the UN’s first primary purpose (maintaining international peace and security), the drafters did not specify a comparable body to give teeth to its second primary purpose (promoting human rights and fundamental freedoms). Also, the Charter expressly provides that nothing in it “shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state,” except upon a Security Council finding of a “threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression.” Furthermore, though typical of major constitutive instruments, the Charter is conspicuously given to generality and vagueness in its human rights clauses, among others.
Thus, not surprisingly, the reconciliation of the Charter’s human rights provisions with the history of its drafting and its “domestic jurisdiction” clause has given rise to legal and political controversy. Some authorities have argued that, in becoming parties to the Charter, states accept no more than a nebulous promotional obligation toward human rights and that, in any event, the UN has no standing to insist on human rights safeguards in member states. Others have insisted that the Charter’s human rights provisions, being part of a legally binding treaty, clearly involve some element of legal obligation; that the “pledge” made by states upon becoming party to the Charter consequently represents more than a moralstatement; and that the domestic jurisdiction clause does not apply, because human rights can be considered no longer a matter “essentially within the domestic jurisdiction” of states.
When all is said and done, however, it is clear from the actual practice of the UN that the problem of resolving these opposing contentions has proved less formidable than the statements of governments and the opinions of scholars would suggest. Neither the Charter’s drafting history nor its domestic jurisdiction clause—nor, indeed, its generality and vagueness in respect of human rights—has prevented the UN from investigating, discussing, and evaluating specific human rights situations. Nor have they prevented it from taking concrete action in relation to them—at least not in the case of “a consistent pattern of gross violations,” as in the Security Council’s imposition of a mandatory arms embargo against South Africa in 1977 and its authorization of the use of military force to end human rights abuses in Somalia and Haiti in the early 1990s.
In 2003 the Security Council intervened in a civil war in Côte d’Ivoire by authorizing a military peacekeeping force—an action that, with the help of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), led ultimately to the ouster of an electorally defeated presidential incumbent (Laurent Gbagbo) and the reestablishment of public order under a newly elected president (Alassane Ouattara). Additionally, during the Libya Revolt of 2011, a civil war fought between forces loyal to Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi and those seeking to oust his government, the Security Council authorized UN member states to establish and enforce a no-fly zone over Libya and to use “all necessary measures” to prevent attacks on civilians.
In 2005 the member states of the United Nations recognized the principle of the “responsibility to protect” (often called R2P). Under this principle, states have a responsibility to protect their civilian populations against genocide and other mass human rights atrocities. If they fail to do so, according to the R2P principle, states forfeit their sovereign immunity, and the international community is responsible for using appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian, and other means to protect the populations being victimized—and to this end, in accordance with the UN Charter, to be prepared to take collective action in their defense.
The R2P principle was controversial because it contradicted the long-established principle of state sovereignty. It was invokedby the UN Security Council to authorize military interventions in a second civil war in Côte d’Ivoire (2010), in Libya (2011), and in other countries. However, in 2013 the international community’s resistance to U.S. plans to launch missile strikes against Syria in retaliation for that country’s alledged use of internationally prohibited chemical weapons against its own population added significant doubt to the already controversial assertion that the R2P principle, however warranted morally, is a legally binding principle.
Of course, governments usually are protective of their sovereignty, or domestic jurisdiction. Also, the UN organs responsible for the promotion and protection of human rights suffer from most of the same disabilities that afflict the UN as a whole, in particular, the absence of supranational authority, the presence of divisive power politics, and the imposition of crippling financial constraints by member states (most notably the United States). Hence, it cannot be expected that UN actions in defense of human rights will be, normally, either swift or categorically effective. Indeed, many serious UN efforts at human rights implementation have been deliberately thwarted by the major powers. In 1999, for example, opposition by China and Russia prevented the Security Council from agreeing on forceful measures to end ethnic cleansing by Yugoslav and Serbian forces in Kosovo, prompting the United States and other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to take matters into their own hands through a massive bombing campaign against Serbian targets. Assuming some political will, however, the legal obstacles to UN enforcement of human rights are not insurmountable.
From the beginning, four of the six principal organs of the United Nations (the General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council [ECOSOC], the Trusteeship Council, and the Secretariat) shared responsibility for the encouragement and promotion of human rights—although, as the UN’s history bears witness, the Security Council and the International Court of Justice (World Court) have been called into protective human rights service in special circumstances from time to time. Primary responsibility for the advancement of human rights under the UN Charter rests, however, in the General Assembly (the UN’s main deliberative body) and, under its authority, in its Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Affairs Committee (commonly referred to as the “Third Committee”), the Human Rights Council (which replaced the former Commission on Human Rights in 2006), and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. ECOSOC’s responsibility for human rights (though diminished when the former Commission on Human Rights under its authority was replaced by the Human Rights Council under the jurisdiction of the General Assembly) extends to several other commissions, such as the Commission on the Status of Women, the Commission for Social Development, and the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, as well as UN specialized agencies such as the International Labor Organization and the World Health Organization. The Trusteeship Council suspended operations in November 1994 following the independence of Palau, the last remaining UN trust territory. The Secretariat facilitates and administers many human rights policies and programs by virtue of its multifaceted day-to-day work on behalf of the United Nations as a whole, including working closely with each of the UN’s principal organs.
The UN Commission on Human Rights (1946–2006) and the UN Human Rights Council
The UN Commission on Human Rights and its instruments
Between 1946 and 2006 the UN Commission on Human Rights, created as a subsidiary body of ECOSOC, served as the UN’s central policy organ in the human rights field. For the first 20 years of its existence, however, the commission believed itself to be unauthorized to deal with human rights complaints. During its first two decades, therefore, and together with other UN bodies such as the ILO, UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), the UN Commission on the Status of Women, and the Commission on Human Rights Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, it concentrated on setting human rights standards and drafting a number of historically vital international human rights instruments. Among the most important of these were the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and its two Optional Protocols (1966 and 1989). Together, these three instruments and the Optional Protocols constitute what has come to be known as the International Bill of Human Rights, serving as touchstones for interpreting the human rights provisions of the UN Charter. Also central in this regard were the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979), the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984), and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), each of which elaborated on provisions of the International Bill of Human Rights.
Beginning in 1967, the commission was explicitly authorized to deal with violations of human rights, and shortly thereafter it set up elaborate mechanisms and procedures to investigate alleged human rights violations and otherwise monitor compliance by states with international human rights law. Thus, much of the work of the commission became investigatory, evaluative, and advisory in character. Each year it established a working group to consider and make recommendations concerning alleged “gross violations” of human rights, reports of which were referred to the commission by its Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities—later known as the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights—on the basis of both “communications” from individuals and groups and investigations by the subcommission or one of its working groups. Also, on an ad hoc basis, the commission appointed special rapporteurs, special representatives, special committees, and other envoys to examine human rights situations—both country-oriented and thematic—and to report back to it on the basis of trustworthy evidence. These fact-finding and implementation mechanisms and procedures were the focus of the commission’s attention during the 1970s and ’80s. In the 1990s the commission turned increasingly to economic, social, and cultural rights, including the right to development and the right to an adequate standard of living. Increased attention was paid also to the rights of minorities, indigenous peoples, women, and children. (See also Sidebar: Children and Human Rights.)
In the early 21st century the Commission on Human Rights came to be viewed as ineffective, in part because its membership included countries with poor human rights records. It therefore was replaced by the UN Human Rights Council in 2006.
The UN Human Rights Council and its instruments
The UN Human Rights Council was created as a subsidiary intergovernmental body of the UN General Assembly and initially comprised nearly 50 UN member states. The council was charged with strengthening the promotion and protection of human rights worldwide. To this end, it was mandated to address and make recommendations regarding human rights violations wherever found and to discuss all human rights issues and situations that require its attention throughout the year, including, but not limited to, violence against women and children, sexual violence in conflict, genocide, the human rights of indigenous peoples and the disabled, child soldiers, and human trafficking.
One year after its founding, the council adopted an “institution-building package” to guide its work and to establish its mechanisms and procedures. Among them were: the universal periodic review mechanism, by which the council assesses the human rights records of every UN member state, including members of the council itself during their terms of membership; the Advisory Committee, the council’s “think tank” for advice on thematic human rights issues, superceding the Subcommission on the Promotion and Promotion of Human Rights, established under the former UN Commission on Human Rights; and the complaint procedure, giving standing to individuals and civil-society organizations to bring human rights violations to the council’s attention.
Like its predecessor, the council also works with special rapporteurs, special representatives, independent experts, and working groups that monitor, examine, advise, and report publicly on human rights issues and on particular human rights situations in specific countries.
Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), established by the UN General Assembly in 1993, is the UN bureau mandated to promote and protect human rights guaranteed under international law. To this end, it focuses on standard setting, monitoring, and implementation and serves as a secretariat providing administrative, logistical, and substantive support to the Human Rights Council and other UN bodies concerned with human rights. It was consolidated with the former UN Centre for Human Rights in 1997.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is the official within the OHCHR principally responsible for implementingand coordinating UN human rights programs and projects around the world. Appointed by the secretary-general in a regular rotation of geographic regions and approved by the General Assembly, the UN high commissioner serves a fixed term of four years with the possibility of renewal for an additional four-year term. The first high commissioner, José Ayala Lasso of Ecuador, held office from 1994 to 1997. He was succeeded by the former president of Ireland, Mary Robinson(1997–2002); the Brazilian diplomat Sergio Vieira de Mello(2002–03), who was tragically killed by terrorists; the former deputy high commissioner for human rights and assistant secretary-general Bertrand Ramcharan (interim 2003–04); the Canadian judge Louise Arbour (2004–08); and the South African jurist Navanethem Pillay, whose four-year mandate(beginning in 2008) was renewed for two years in 2012.
Among other duties, the high commissioner is charged by the General Assembly to promote and protect all civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights; to provide advisory services and technical and financial assistance in the field of human rights to states that request them; to coordinate human rights promotion and protection activities throughout the UN system, including education and public-information programs; and otherwise to enhance international cooperation for the promotion and protection of human rights—all within the framework of the International Bill of Human Rights. The office of the high commissioner for human rights won increasing praise and support for the work it has done over the years, and many observers ascribed these successes to the high calibre of its successive high commissioners.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted without dissent by the UN General Assembly on December 10, 1948. The catalogue of rights set out in it is scarcely less than the sum of most of the important traditional political and civil rights of national constitutions and legal systems, including equality before the law; protection against arbitrary arrest; the right to a fair trial; freedom from ex post facto criminal laws; the right to own property; freedom of thought, conscience, and religion; freedom of opinion and expression; and freedom of peaceful assembly and association. Also enumerated are such economic, social, and cultural rights as the right to work, the right to form and join trade unions, the right to rest and leisure, the right to a standard of living adequate for health and well-being, and the right to education.
The UDHR, it should be noted, is not a treaty. It was meant to proclaim “a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations” rather than enforceable legal obligations. Nevertheless, a number of its provisions have acquired a status juridically more important than originally intended, a reflection of its wide use, even by national courts, as a means of judging compliance with human rights obligations under the UN Charter. It is also one of the instruments constituting the International Bill of Human Rights.
The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) was opened for signature on December 16, 1966, and entered into force on January 3, 1976. Also part of the International Bill of Human Rights, it elaborates upon most of the economic, social, and cultural rights set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including, among others, the right to work, the right to form and join trade unions, the right to health, and the right to education. Unlike its companion agreement, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, however, generally this covenant, sometimes called a “promotional convention,” was not intended for immediate implementation, the state parties having agreed only “to take steps” toward “achieving progressively the full realization of the rights recognized in the…Covenant,” and then subject to “the maximum of [their] available resources.” One obligation, however, was subject to immediate application: the prohibition of discrimination in the enjoyment of the rights enumerated on grounds of race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, and birth or other status. Also, the international supervisory measures that apply to the ICESCR oblige the state parties to report to the UN Economic and Social Council on the steps they have adopted and on the progress they have made in achieving the realization of the enumerated rights. In 2008 the adoption of an Optional Protocol led to the creation of an individual-complaints mechanism for the ICESCR—the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights—which was comparable to the Human Rights Committee of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights..
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Its Optional Protocols
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), likewise a part of the International Bill of Human Rights, was opened for signature on December 19, 1966, and entered into force on March 23, 1976. Just as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights elaborates upon most of the economic social, and cultural rights enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, so the ICCPR elaborates upon most of the civil and political rights set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including the right to nondiscrimination but excluding the right to own property and the right to asylum. The covenant also designates several rights not listed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, among them the right of all peoples to self-determination and the right of ethnic, religious, and linguistic minorities to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practice their own religion, and to use their own language. To the extent that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the covenant overlap, however, the latter is understood to explicate and help interpret the former.
In addition, the covenant calls for the establishment of a Human Rights Committee, comprising persons serving in their individual expert capacities, to study reports submitted by the state parties on measures they have adopted to give effect to the rights recognized in the covenant. For state parties that have expressly recognized the competence of the committee in this regard, the committee also may respond to allegations by one state party that another state party is not fulfilling its obligations under the covenant. If the committee is unable to resolve the problem, the matter is referred to an ad hoc conciliation commission, which eventually reports its findings on all questions of fact, plus its views on the possibilities of an amicable solution. State parties that become party to the covenant’s First Optional Protocol further recognize the competence of the Human Rights Committee to consider and act upon communications from individuals claiming to be victims of covenant violations, provided that the respondent state has recognized the competence of the committee in this regard and that domestic remedies have been exhausted—emulating the legal standing given to individuals before the UN Commission on Human Rights after 1967.
Other treaty-based organs within the UN system that are similarly empowered to consider grievances from individuals in a quasi-judicial manner are the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the Committee on Torture, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and the Committee on Enforced Disappearances. Additionally, the 1990 International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families and the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child contain provisions for individual complaints that are not yet operational.
The Second Optional Protocol of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which is aimed at abolishing the death penalty worldwide, was adopted in 1989 and entered into force in 1991. The protocol has been favourably received in most of the countries of western Europe and in many countries in the Americas, though not in the United States.
Other UN human rights conventions and declarations
Numerous other human rights treaties drafted under UN auspices address a broad range of concerns. Supplementing the ICCPR and ICESCR considered above, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights lists several other “core international human rights instruments,” including the 1965 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination; the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women; the 2002 Optional Protocol of the 1984 Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment; and the 2006 Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The OHCHR also details a non-exhaustive list of “other universal instruments relating to human rights” (although including the core instruments just noted). The list is nonetheless long and diverse and embraces declarations, principles, guidelines, standard rules, and recommendations which, according to the OHCHR, “have no binding legal effect,” as well as covenants, statutes, protocols, and conventions that, it asserts, “are legally-binding.” The wide scope of topical categories includes the right of self-determination, the rights of indigenous peoples and minorities, social welfare, and humanitarian law (i.e., the humanitarian rules of armed conflict).
Thus, across a wide range of issues and themes and in addition to overseeing human rights treaties deemed legally binding in theory, the UN has adopted human rights instruments that are presumptively not legally binding, as is, in contrast, a treaty or a resolution of the Security Council. Such instruments—particularly when they enunciate principles of great and solemn importance—may nevertheless create strong expectations about authority and control. Perhaps the best-known examples subsequent to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples (1960) and the Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States in Accordance with the Charter of the United Nations (1970) which affirms, among other things, “the duty of all states to refrain from organizing, instigating, assisting or participating in…terrorist acts.”
Human rights and the Helsinki process
After World War II, international concern for human rights was evident at the global level outside the UN as well as within it, most notably in the proceedings and aftermath of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE), convened in Helsinki, Finland, on July 3, 1973, and concluded there (after continuing deliberations in Geneva) on August 1, 1975. Attended by representatives of 35 governments—including the NATO countries, the Warsaw Pact nations, and 13 neutral and nonaligned European states—the conference had as its principal purpose a mutually satisfactory definition of peace and stability between East and West, previously made impossible by the Cold War. In particular, the Soviet Unionwished to gain recognition of its western frontiers as established at the end of World War II (which ended without the conclusion of an omnibus peace treaty). The West, with no realistic territorial claims of its own, sought concessionsprimarily on security requirements and human rights, largely in that order.
The Final Act of the conference, also known as the Helsinki Accords, begins with a Declaration on Principles Guiding Relations between Participating States, in which the participating states solemnly declare “their determination to respect and put into practice,” alongside other “guiding” principles, “respect [for] human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief” and “respect [for] the equal rights of peoples and their right to self-determination.” It was hoped that this declaration, the importance of which is reflected in its having been signed by almost all of the principal governmental leaders of the day, would mark the beginning of a liberalization of authoritarian regimes.
From the earliest discussions, however, it was clear that the Helsinki Final Act was not intended as a legally binding instrument. The expressions “determination to respect” and “put into practice” were seen to represent moral commitments only, the Declaration of Principles was said not to prescribe international law, and nowhere did the participants provide for enforcement machinery. On the other hand, the Declaration of Principles, including its human rights principles, was always viewed as being at least consistent with international law; and, in providing for periodic follow-up conferences, it made possible a unique negotiating process (the “Helsinki process”) to review compliance with its terms, thus creating normative expectations concerning the conduct of the participating states. In these ways, the declaration, ergo the Helsinki Final Act, proved to be an important force in the fall of the Iron Curtain and the transformation of eastern Europe in 1989–90.
The Helsinki process, involving long-running “follow-up,” “summit,” and other meetings, served also to establish a mechanism for the evolution of the CSCE from a forum for discussion to an operational institution, beginning with the adoption of the Charter of Paris for a New Europe in 1990. In 1994 the CSCE was renamed the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, and its principal organs and bureaus eventually included an Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (in Warsaw), a Conflict Prevention Centre (in Vienna), a High Commissioner on National Minorities (in The Hague), and a Court of Conciliation and Arbitration (in Geneva). These offices were increasingly pressed into service to alleviatemajor deprivations of human rights, particularly those arising from ethnic conflicts. In addition, the Vienna Human Dimension Mechanism and the Moscow Human Dimension Mechanism provide a preliminary formal means of raising and seeking to resolve disputes about violations of human rights commitments, including the possibility of on-site investigation by independent experts. All these mechanisms bespeak, however, an essentially interstate process; neither individuals nor nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have access to them except indirectly as suppliers of information and conveyors of political pressure. They thus contrast markedly with the individual-complaint procedures that are available within the UN system and in regional human rights systems.
Regional human rights systems and developments
Action for the international promotion and protection of human rights has proceeded at the regional level in Europe, the Americas, Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. By the first decade of the 21st century, however, only the first four of these regions had created enforcement mechanisms within the framework of a human rights charter.
Human rights in Europe
On November 4, 1950, the Council of Europe agreed to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, the substantive provisions of which were based on a draft of what is now the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Together with its 11 additional protocols, this convention, which entered into force on September 3, 1953, represents the most advanced and successful international experiment in the field to date. Over the years, the enforcement mechanisms created by the convention have developed a considerable body of case law on questions regulated by the convention, which the state parties typically have honoured and respected. In some European states the provisions of the convention are deemed to be part of domestic constitutional or statutory law. Where this is not the case, the state parties have taken other measures to make their domestic laws conform with their obligations under the convention.
European Court of Human Rights: freedom of religionLearn about Nadia Eweida, a British Airways employee in Great Britain who appealed successfully to the European Court of Human Rights for the right to wear a religious symbol with her uniform
Notwithstanding these successes, a significant streamlining of the European human rights regime took place on November 1, 1998, when Protocol No. 11 to the convention entered into force. Pursuant to the protocol, two of the enforcement mechanisms created by the convention—the European Commission of Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights—were merged into a reconstituted court, which now is empowered to hear individual (as opposed to interstate) petitions or complaints without the prior approval of the local government. The decisions of the court are final and binding on the state parties to the convention.
A companion instrument to the European convention—similar to but preceding the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights—is the European Social Charter(1961) and its additional protocol (1988). In contrast to the adjudicatory enforcement procedures of the European convention, the charter’s provisions are implemented through an elaborate system of control based on progress reports to the various committees and organs of the Council of Europe. The revised European Social Charter, which was intended gradually to replace the 1961 charter and entered into force in 1999, modernizes its forebear’s substantive provisions and strengthens its enforcement capabilities. The basic rights set forth in the revised charter concern housing; health; education, labour rights, employment, and parental leave; protection from poverty and social exclusion; free movement of persons and nondiscrimination; migrant worker rights; and nondiscrimination of persons with disabilities.
Human rights in the Americas
In 1948, concurrent with its establishment of the Organization of American States (OAS), the Ninth Pan-American Conference adopted the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man, which, unlike the Universal Declaration of the UN adopted seven months later, set out the duties as well as the rights of individual citizens. Subsequently, in 1959, a meeting of the American Ministers for Foreign Affairs created the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which has since undertaken important investigative activities in the region. Finally, in 1969, the Inter-American Specialized Conference on Human Rights adopted the American Convention on Human Rights, which, among other things, after entering into force in July 1978, made the existing Inter-American Commission an organ of the convention and established the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which sits in San José, Costa Rica. In November 1988, the OAS adopted the Additional Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights in the Area of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Of the 26 Western Hemispheric states that so far have signed the convention, only the United States has yet to ratify it. Nor is the United States a party to the additional protocol, which entered into force in November 1999.
The core structure of the Inter-American human rights system is similar to that of its European counterpart. Nevertheless, some noteworthy differences exist, and three stand out in particular. First, the American convention, reflecting the influence of the American Declaration, acknowledges the relationship between individual duties and individual rights. Second, the American convention reverses the priorities of the European convention prior to Protocol No. 11 by guaranteeing individual petitions while making interstate complaints optional. Finally, both the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights operate beyond the framework of the American convention. The commission is as much an organ of the OAS Charter as of the American convention, with powers and procedures that differ significantly depending on the source of the commission’s authority. The court, while primarily an organ of the convention, nonetheless has jurisdiction to interpret the human rights provisions of other treaties, including those of the OAS Charter.
Human rights in Africa
In 1981 the Eighteenth Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the Organization of African Unity (replaced by the African Union [AU] in 2002) adopted the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. Also known as the “Banjul Charter” for having been drafted in Banjul, Gambia, it entered into force on October 21, 1986, and boasts the vast majority of the states of Africa as parties.
Like its American and early European counterparts, the African charter provides for a human rights commission (the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights), which has both promotional and protective functions. There is no restriction on who may file a complaint with it. In contrast to the European and American procedures, however, concerned states are encouraged to reach a friendly settlement without formally involving the investigative or conciliatory mechanisms of the commission. Also, the African charter did not, at the beginning, call for a human rights court. African customs and traditions, it has been said, have long emphasized mediation, conciliation, and consensus rather than the adversarial and adjudicative procedures that are common to Western legal systems.
Nevertheless, owing largely to political changes wrought by the end of the Cold War, an African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) was created in January 2004 to render judgments on the compliance by AU states with the African charter. The court did not replace the commission.
A year earlier, however, in 2003, there came into being the African Court of Justice (ACJ), intended to serve as the AU’s principal judicial body and, in this capacity, to rule on disputes over the interpretation of AU treaties. Concern for rising costs in the face of little forward movement on the part of the ACJ, however, led to proposals for the creation of a new court, the African Court of Justice and Human Rights (ACJHR). Designed to have two chambers—one for general legal matters that would supersede the ACJ, the other for judgments on the interpretation and application of human rights treaties—the ACJHR came into being when, in 2008, a merger protocol was adopted uniting the ACJ and the ACHPR. It was believed that the ACJHR had the potential to be progressively influential in the protection of human rights in Africa. It was also recognized, however, that this prospect—above all the ACJHR’s legitimacy—depended on the independence and moral character of its judges and on the training and effectiveness of its staff.
It is, in any event, fair to say that the African human rights system was still in its infancy at the beginning of the 21st century, given especially the turmoil and violence that beset northern and sub-Saharan Africa during this time. But four distinctive features of the African charter—and thus, the African human rights system—are noteworthy and give reason for hope. First, the charter provides for economic, social, and cultural rights as well as civil and political rights. In this respect it resembles the American convention and differs from the European convention. Second, in contrast to both the European and American conventions, it recognizes the rights of groups in addition to the family, women, and children. The aged and the infirm are accorded special protection also, and the right of peoples to self-determination is elaborated in the right to existence, equality, and nondomination. Third, it uniquely embraces two third-generation, or “solidarity,” rights: the right to economic, social, and cultural development and the right to national and international peace and security. It differs from other treaties also by detailing individual duties as well as individual rights—to the family, society, the state, and the international African community.
Human rights in the Arab world
In September 1968 the Council of the League of Arab Statescreated the Arab Commission on Human Rights. Its main purposes were to inform the Arab public about and otherwise promote human rights, not to monitor the human rights practices of the Arab states or to challenge their violations of human rights when found. Primarily the commission has been preoccupied with the rights of Arabs living in Israeli-occupied territories.
On May 22, 2004, however, the Arab League adopted the Arab Charter on Human Rights, which entered into force on March 15, 2008. The charter affirms the principles set forth in the International Bill of Human Rights—including, for example, the right to liberty and security of persons, equality of persons before the law, protection of persons from torture, the right to own private property, freedom to practice religion, and freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
At the same time, the charter does not prohibit cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishments, fails to extend rights to noncitizens in many areas, and authorizes restrictions on freedom of thought, conscience, and religion that exceed what is deemed permissible under international human rights law. Furthermore, the charter relegates many important rights issues to the discretion of national legislation—e.g., the death penalty against children and the rights of men and women in marriage.
Additionally, the charter affirms the principles set forth in the 1990 Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, a declaration of the member states of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference that provides an Islamic perspective on human rights and affirms that all the rights and freedoms mentioned in the declaration are subject to Sharīʿah, or Islamic law, stated in Article 25 to be “the only source of reference for the explanation or clarification of any of the articles of [the] Declaration.” Accordingly, though using universalist language akin to that found in the International Bill of Human Rights, the Arab charter is imbued with an “Islamic particularity.” It also expresses Arab concern regarding territorial disputes between Israel and the Palestinians. Thus, its controversial Article 2(3) provides that
all forms of racism, Zionism and foreign occupation and domination constitute an impediment to human dignity and a major barrier to the exercise of the fundamental rights of peoples; all such practices must be condemned and efforts must be deployed for their elimination.
The charter also provides for the election of a seven-person Committee of Experts on Human Rights, which is empowered to request and study reports and to submit its own findings to the commission. No other institutions or procedures for monitoring human rights are specified in the charter, however. In this sense as well as others, the Arab human rights system compares unfavourably with its European, Inter-American, and African counterparts.
Human rights in Asia
Despite efforts by NGOs and the United Nations, Asian states were at best ambivalent—and at worst hostile—to human rights concerns over many years, thus precluding agreement on almost all regional human rights initiatives. But in early 1993, anticipating the World Conference on Human Rights held in Vienna later that year, a conference of Asia-Pacific NGOs adopted an Asia-Pacific Declaration of Human Rights, and in 1998 another meeting of NGOs adopted an Asian Human Rights Charter. Both of these initiatives supported the universality and indivisibility of human rights. However, while the first initiative called for the creation of a regional human rights regime, the second urged instead the establishment of national human rights commissions and so-called “People’s Tribunals,” which would be based more on moral and spiritual foundations rather than on legal ones.
The states of Asia were slow to respond to these initiatives. Their positions were indicated at a UN-sponsored workshop in 1996, where the 30 participating states concluded that “it was premature…to discuss specific arrangements relating to the setting up of a formal human rights mechanism in the Asian and Pacific region.” The same states agreed, however, to “[explore] the options available and the process necessary for establishing a regional mechanism”—a promise that echoed a similar pledge made by ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) following the 1993 UN World Conference on Human Rights.
More than 14 years later, in November 2007, ASEAN’s 10 member states adopted the ASEAN Charter, which, following its entry into force in December 2008, gave ASEAN legal personality, established its organizational framework and procedures, and provided for a human rights body that would promote and protect human rights as signaled in the charter’s preamble, purposes, and principles. In October 2009 ASEAN’s member states formally established the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights, and in November 2012 they adopted ASEAN’s first-ever Human Rights Declaration.
In Southeast Asia and around the world, however, ASEAN’s declaration has been greeted with skepticism. Many respected rights groups, including Amnesty International , criticized the declaration for being an unhappy compromise between ASEAN’s communist and noncommunist member state; for containing language both too broad and too restrictive to guarantee people’s rights; and for otherwise falling short of international human rights standards. Of particular concern were provisions that called for rights to be enjoyed in a “balanced” way, subject to “national and regional contexts” and deferential to “different cultural, religious and historical backgrounds,” thus challenging the quintessential universality of human rights. Additionally, critics challenged the declaration for having been drafted in a non-inclusive, non-transparent manner, and they faulted ASEAN’s charter for failing to mandate powers sufficient for its enforcement. Accordingly, they called upon ASEAN leaders to return the declaration to the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights explicitly to redraft the declaration in an inclusive and transparent manner and in keeping with internationally recognized human rights law and standards.
Not to be overlooked, however, are other developments bearing upon human rights instruments and mechanisms in Southeast Asia, specifically in relation to particular groups of people. In January 2007 members of ASEAN adopted a common declaration in which they recognized the need for a new instrument to protect and promote the rights of migrant workers. In April 2010, the ASEAN Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Women and Children was inaugurated in Hanoi.
International human rights in domestic courts
Using domestic courts to clarify and safeguard international human rights is a relatively new and still evolving approach to human rights advocacy, particularly when civil as distinct from criminal litigation is called into play. In addition to the inevitable interpretative problems involved in applying norms fashioned in multicultural settings, controversial theories about the interrelation of national and international law, as well as many procedural difficulties, burden the human rights claimant in this setting. To be sure, significant progress has been made, as is perhaps best evidenced, at least insofar as the United States is concerned, in the far-reaching decision handed down by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Filártiga v. Peña-Irala (1980). In that case, the court interpreted a theretofore obscure provision of the Judiciary Act of 1789 known as the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) as allowing foreign victims of human rights abuses by foreign wrongdoers in foreign countries to seek civil remedies in the U.S. judicial system, holding that the “well-established universal” prohibition of torture under customary international law, which applies regardless of the nationality of the victim or the perpetrator (at least in the case of private litigants), must be honoured in U.S. courts—an outcome akin to an assertion of universal criminal jurisdiction, as confirmed by sympathetic rulings following Filártiga.
In 1998–99, in keeping with Filártiga, the United Kingdom’s highest tribunal, the Law Lords of the British House of Lords, captured international attention when, in response to an extradition request by a Spanish court, it upheld the arrest in England of former Chilean president Augusto Pinochet on charges of torture and conspiracy to commit torture in violation of international treaty law. Although Pinochet was later returned to Chile for reasons of ill health and was declared by a Chilean court to be mentally unfit to stand trial, the Law Lords’ ruling established the precedent that former heads of state do not enjoy immunity from prosecution, at least for systematic human rights crimes—a principle now enshrined in the workings of the International Criminal Court. In addition, a considerable number of British cases, decided in the absence of national legislation expressly enabling claims for extraterritorial human rights abuses and therefore based on principles of common-law tort, have revealed a willingness to hold corporations liable for human rights violations perpetrated abroad. European Union (EU) regulations and civil-law cases within EU member states, assisted by broadened EU and member-state laws regulating tort cases, are similarly inclined, even to the point of referencing customary international law to reinforce legislative intent and allow for universal civil jurisdiction on a “necessity basis.”
Yet, in two prominent human rights cases in the United States, Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain (2004) and Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum (2013), the U.S. Supreme Court moved in the opposite direction, limiting the jurisdictional foundation upon which Filártiga and its progeny rest. Kiobel, the more unfriendly of the two, was a class-action suit on behalf of Nigerian residents who had peacefully protested devastating health and environmental harms resulting from unregulated oil drilling by Royal Dutch Petroleum (RDP; now Royal Dutch Shell PLC) in their homeland, the Ogoniland region of the Niger River delta. The plaintiffs alleged that RDP—which was incorporated in the United Kingdom and headquartered in the Netherlands—had armed, financed, and conspired with Nigeria’s then military dictatorship to suppress the protests and accused the Nigerian authorities of having committed between 1992 and 1995, with RDP’s assistance and complicity, crimes against humanity (including torture and extrajudicial executions), false arrests, and other violations of international law against the Ogoni people. Refusing, however, to follow the Filártiga precedent by invoking a canon of statutory interpretation known as the “presumption against extraterritorial application” (when legislation gives no clear contrary mandate), the Supreme Court, in a splintered decision, held that, because “all the…conduct took place outside the United States,” the ATS did not apply, and it therefore decided in favour of RDP. Accordingly, the court paid no heed to customary international law as authorized in the ATS. Additionally, but without explanation, it rejected a universal-jurisdiction reading of the ATS, seemingly even in suits claiming exceptionally heinous human rights crimes.
Informed observers responding to Kiobel appear generally to have agreed upon at least four implications of the court’s reasoning in the case: (1) that foreign corporations would thenceforth be largely, if not completely, insulated from U.S. prosecution under the ATS for human rights violations committed against foreign nationals in foreign countries, (2) that U.S. corporations would not be so insulated, (3) that the development of litigation in Europe and elsewhere outside the United States would be affected by Kiobel only slightly, if at all, and (4) that the applicability of Kiobel to foreign natural persons, never addressed by the court, was uncertain. There also was substantial agreement that the court’s stated rationales for its decision—the minimization of “international friction” and related separation-of-powers concerns—were insufficient to justify eliding more than three decades of established ATS precedent. Consequently, other rationales have since been advanced, as have also credible proposals for circumventing Kiobel’s actual and potential rationales in favour of laws protecting against at least severe human rights violations anywhere in the world—as the United States already has done to some extent with respect to genocide and war crimes. In these lights, it is not unreasonable to suggest that, with creative and persistent effort, human rights advocacy via domestic courts, supplementing other domestic-law processes and focused especially on severe human rights abuses, is within reach within the United States as well as beyond. If this be so, then human rights can be made to respond more effectively to the multiple ways in which vulnerability is enacted and entrenched in a world with a long and savage record of human abuse.
Human Rights In The Early 21st Century
Whatever the current attitudes and policies of governments, the reality of popular demands for human rights, including both greater economic justice and greater political freedom, is beyond debate. A deepening and widening concern for the promotion and protection of human rights on all fronts, hastened by the ideal of self-determination in a postcolonial era, is now unmistakably woven into the fabric of contemporary world affairs.
Substantially responsible for this progressive development has been the work of the UN, its allied agencies, and such regional organizations as the Council of Europe, the OAS, and the AU. Also contributing to this development, particularly since the 1970s and ’80s, have been six other salient factors: (1) the emergence of nationalism and rising expectations in the developing world following the post-World War II dismantling of colonial empires, (2) the public advocacy of human rights as a key aspect of national foreign policies, made initially legitimate by the example of U.S. President Jimmy Carter, (3) the emergence and spread of civil society on a transnational basis, primarily in the form of activist nongovernmental human rights organizations, (4) a worldwide profusion of teaching and research devoted to the study of human rights in both formal and informal settings, (5) the proliferation of large UN conferences in areas such as children’s rights, population, social development, women’s rights, human settlements, and food production and distribution, and (6) a feminist intellectual and political challenge regarding not only the rights of women worldwide but also what feminists consider to be the paternalistic myths and mythic structures that purport to define humane governance generally.
U.S. Pres. Jimmy Carter speaking on human rights in his farewell speech to the country, January 14, 1981
To be sure, because the application of international human rights law depends for the most part on the voluntary consent of nations, formidable obstacles attend the endeavours of human rights policy makers, activists, and scholars. Human rights conventions continue to be undermined by the failure of states to ratify them, by emasculating reservations and derogations, by self-serving reporting systems that outnumber objective complaint procedures, and by poor financing for the implementation of human rights prescriptions. In short, the mechanisms for the enforcement of human rights are still in their infancy, a situation due in no small measure to the post-Cold War dominance of neoliberalism in world affairs, which is strongly resistant to state and market regulation of the economy. In this context, the vexing question of corporate accountability for human rights abuses, and the dangers to human rights values and capabilities posed by overbearing corporate power, also present complex contemporary challenges for the future of human rights. Nevertheless, it is certain that, out of necessity no less than out of realism, a palpable concern for the advancement of human rights is here to stay.
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