Human Rights

Human rights refers to the concept of human beings as having universal rights, or status, regardless of legal jurisdiction, and likewise other localizing factors, such as ethnicity and nationality.

The existence, validity and the content of human rights continue to be the subject to debate in philosophy and political science. However human rights are defined in international law & covenants, and further, in the domestic laws of many states. There is, however, a great deal of variance between how human rights norms are defined in these multiple contexts and how they are upheld in different local jurisdictions.

Within particular states, "human rights" refer to safeguards for the individual against arbitrary use of power by the government regarding 1) the well being of individuals, 2) the freedom and autonomy of individuals, and 3) the representation of the human interest in government. These rights commonly include the right to life, the right to an adequate standard of living, freedom from torture and other mistreatment, freedom of religion and of expression, freedom of movement, the right to self-determination, the right to education, and the right to participation in cultural and political life. These norms are based on the legal and political traditions of United Nations member states and are incorporated into international human rights instruments (see below).

With the exception of so called non-derogable human rights (the four most important are the right to life, the right to be free from slavery, the right to be free from torture and the right to be free from retroactive application of penal laws), most human rights can be limited or even pushed aside during times of war. Conduct in war is governed by International Humanitarian Law.

Human Rights in international law
The 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights resolution was adopted virtually unanimously by the United Nations General Assembly. While not legally binding, it urged member nations to promote a number of human, civil, economic and social rights, asserting these rights are part of the "foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world". The declaration limits the behavior of the state, which now has duties to the citizen (rights-duty duality). Efforts to create a legally binding form of the charter led to disagreements between various states over which rights were acceptable. Thus, two different covenents, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (opened for signature 1966, entered into force March 23, 1976) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (opened for signature 1966, entered into force January 3, 1976)  were created which bind those states that ratify them to protect the rights listed in the respective covenant. Together these three documents constitute the International Bill of Human Rights. There have also been a number of other conventions regarding particular rights, including the
 * Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (entry into force: 1951)
 * Convention against Torture (entry into force: 1984)
 * Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (entry into force: 1969)
 * Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (entry into force: 1981)
 * Convention on the Rights of the Child (entry into force: 1989)
 * Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (entry into force: 2002)

A modern interpretation of the original Declaration of Human Rights was made in the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, adopted by the World Conference on Human Rights in 1993. The degree of unanimity over these conventions, in terms of how many and which countries have ratified them vary, as does the degree to which they are respected by various states. The UN has set up a number of bodies to monitor and study human rights, under the leadership of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (HCHR).

There are also many regional agreements and organisations governing human rights including the European Court of Human Rights, the only international court with jurisdiction to deal with cases brought by individuals (not states). the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

Types of human rights
Human rights are typically divided into two categories: negative human rights (rights to be free from) and positive human rights (rights to), although other categorizations exist. Negative human rights, which follow mainly from the Anglo-American legal tradition, denote actions that a government should not take. These are codified in the United States Bill of Rights, the English Bill of Rights and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and include freedoms of speech, religion and assembly.

Positive human rights follow mainly from the Rousseauian Continental European legal tradition, denote rights that the state is obliged to protect and provide. Examples of such rights include: the rights to education, to a livelihood, to legal equality. Positive rights have been codified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in many 20th-century constitutions.

A categorization offered by Karel Vasak is the three generations of human rights: first-generation civil and political rights (right to life and political participation), second-generation economic, social and cultural rights (right to subsistence) and third-generation solidarity rights (right to peace, right to clean environment). Out of these generations, the third generation is the most debated and lacks both legal and political recognition.

Some theorists discredit these divisions by claiming that rights are interconnected. Arguably, for example, basic education is necessary for the right to political participation.

History of human rights
The best-known histories of the human rights movement tend to begin with the ancient religions and societies and show the evolution of concepts and institutions of human rights across civilizations. The roots of the notion of human rights can be drawn as far back as the Ancients (the role of the individual in the state) but the idea of civil and political rights stems from liberal freedoms advocated by John Stuart Mill in On Liberty. The concepts of economic, social and cultural rights can be traced back to Hegel's Elements of the Philosophy of Right.

The Persian empire for instance, governed on a basis of human rights never seen before until the spread of the large Persian Empire. The Cyrus (early Persian king) Cylinder is recognised as the first document of human rights; according to the cylinder's transcripts it states that the Persian Empire freely lets the people of the empire practise their own religious beliefs. This of course was also conveyed in the Bible where it shows the Persians releasing the followers of Judaism from opression and letting them migrate back to their land. The cylinder also introduces such concepts as the abolishment of slavery, this was practised too by the kings of Persia, where all palaces made were built by paid workers, an unusual concept at the time. The cylinder now lies in the British Museum London and its contents have also been engraved atop the UN headquarters main entrance.

The origin of modern positive rights in international law may be traced to the creation of the International Labour Organization in 1919 as a Western response to the socialist ideology of the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Philosophical basis of human rights
Numerous theoretical approaches have been advanced to explain how human rights become part of social expectations. The biological theory considers the comparative reproductive advantage of human social behavior based on empathy and altruism in the context of natural selection. Other theories hold that human rights codify moral behavior, which is a human, social product developed by a process of biological and social evolution (associated with Hume) or as a sociological pattern of rule setting (as in the sociological theory of law and the work of Weber). This approach includes the notion that individuals in a society accept rules from legitimate authority in exchange for security and economic advantage (as in Rawls).

Natural law theories base human rights on the “natural” moral order based on religious precepts, the assumed common understandings of justice, or the belief that moral behavior is a set of objectively valid prescriptions. In legend, literature, religion and political thought, justice (and eventually the concept of human rights) became socially constructed over time into complex webs of social interaction striving toward a social order in which human beings are treated fairly. Religious societies tend to try to justify human rights through religious arguments. For example, liberal movements within Islam have tried to use the Qur'an to support human rights in a Muslim context.

Other theories are based on human agency, positing such constructs for agreement to rules on the utilitarian principles mediated by public reasoning. The social evolution model is based on human needs and struggle that incorporates an analysis of the norm-creating process. Values become norms through the constitutive process of authoritative decision-making. Such norms may take the form of law through a particular form of authoritative decision making of institutions associated with a legal system. It is the process of public reasoning through human rights norm-creating that progressively weeds out the culturally bound behaviors that are inconsistent with contemporary human rights. In this sense, culturally particular norms adapt to evolving human rights standards as defined in national constitutions and international human rights instruments.

Ultimately, the term "human rights" is often itself an appeal to a transcendent principle, without basing it on existing legal concepts. The term "humanism" refers to the developing doctrine of such universally applicable values.

Some authors argue that nationalism and realism weaken human rights, while individualism and cosmopolitanism strengthen them. This is argued by Demetrius Klitou in his book "The Friends and Foes of Human Rights." Klitou also outlines the need for a "human identity" in order to empower the human rights movement.

In the Western political tradition, human rights are held to be "inalienable" and to belong to all humans. They are necessary for freedom and the maintenance of a "reasonable" quality of life. If a right is inalienable, that means it cannot be bestowed, granted, bartered, or sold away (e.g., one cannot sell oneself into slavery). Rights may also be non-derogable (not limited in times of national emergency); these often include the right to life, the right to be prosecuted only according to the laws that are in existence at the time of the offense, the right to be free from slavery, and the right to be free from torture.

Human rights controversies
There are a number of controversies regarding human rights including:
 * 1) Are human rights political, moral or legal entities (or all three at the same time)?
 * 2) Is there or should there be a hierarchy of human rights?
 * 3) Do human rights impede on state sovereignty? What if the state itself has ratified international conventions?
 * 4) Should human rights be used as a context for economic or military intervention? (Often leads to a worsening of the human rights situation in the target country)
 * 5) Questions of cultural relativism&mdash;e.g. "Political participation is not a part of African culture. Who are you to say that we should have political participation?" These arguments can also be made on religious basis: e.g., "In our religion marriages have always been arranged; why should we not continue this practice?" Some arguments claim that human rights policies are a form of cultural imperialism in which powerful countries dictate which rights they consider most important to less powerful countries. The increasing number of third-world states that are party to international human rights treaties has made these arguments weaker, but they have not disappeared altogether. It is also worthy of note that many who criticize the actions and policies of the first-world or industrialized nations, such as the perceived interference of the United States in foreign affairs, often set up the need for human rights in opposition to imperialism, making the relationship between the two concepts highly complex.
 * 6) Who should hold the moral duty to uphold rights? For civil and political rights, many would answer 'the state'. But in practice, it is frequently one's fellow citizens and civil society who need to shoulder this responsibility. It is not quite so clear who should be responsible for promoting economic, social and cultural rights (do we have a global duty?). This debate mirrors debates between communitarianism and cosmopolitanism.
 * 7) Which rights should be defined as fundamental human rights? Should all human rights be considered equal?
 * 8) Are countries guilty of human rights violations when their governments substantially support foreign governments that do not adhere to the established principles of human rights (within their own countries or in other countries)? (For instance, the Kirkpatrick Doctrine.)

Similar topics

 * Civil rights
 * Inalienable rights
 * Natural rights
 * Prisoners' rights
 * Rights
 * Women's rights
 * Children rights
 * Ombudsman

General

 * Democratic ideals
 * Femicide
 * Genocide
 * Human rights abuse
 * Human rights education
 * International human rights instruments
 * Social justice
 * Slavery
 * Trafficking in human beings
 * Three generations of human rights
 * Torture

Weblogs on Human Rights
Human Rights Issues

Human rights organizations

 * Amnesty International
 * Ansar Burney Trust - Working in Pakistan and the Middle East
 * Bahrain Centre for Human Rights
 * ARTICLE 19
 * Carter Center
 * Forum 18
 * Freedom House
 * Human Rights Campaign
 * Human Rights Watch
 * International Freedom of Expression Exchange
 * International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights
 * Memorial (society)
 * Montagnard Foundation
 * Network Against Prohibition
 * Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
 * Prisoners Overseas
 * Southern Poverty Law Center

Africa

 * South Africa: Human rights in South Africa
 * Sudan: Human rights in Sudan
 * Tunisia: Human rights in Tunisia
 * Uganda: Human rights in Uganda
 * Zimbabwe: Human rights in Zimbabwe
 * Note: Citizens of the African nations are provided supranational human rights protection by the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights.

Americas

 * Brazil: Human rights in Brazil
 * Canada: Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms
 * Cuba: Human rights in Cuba
 * Mexico: Human rights in Mexico
 * Peru: APRODEH
 * USA: Human rights in the United States
 * Note: Citizens of the American nations enjoy varying degrees of supranational human rights protection from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

Asia

 * See Human rights in East Asia and Human rights in Central Asia


 * Bangladesh: Human rights in Bangladesh
 * Cambodia: Human rights in Cambodia
 * Kazakhstan: Human rights in Kazakhstan
 * India: Human rights in India
 * Iran: Human rights in Iran
 * Iraq: Human rights in Iraq
 * Japan: Human rights in Japan
 * Malaysia: Human rights in Malaysia
 * Mongolia: Human rights in Mongolia
 * Myanmar (Burma): Human rights in Myanmar
 * North Korea: Human rights in North Korea
 * Pakistan: Human rights in Pakistan
 * PRC: Human rights in the People's Republic of China
 * Russia: Human rights in Russia
 * South Korea: Human rights in South Korea
 * Saudi Arabia: Human rights in Saudi Arabia
 * Sri Lanka: Human rights in Sri Lanka
 * Thailand: Human rights in Thailand
 * Turkmenistan: Human rights in Turkmenistan
 * Uzbekistan: Human rights in Uzbekistan
 * Vietnam: Human rights in Vietnam

Europe

 * See Human rights in Europe
 * Note: The most powerful human rights organization is the European Court of Human Rights, which is the only international court with jurisdiction to deal with cases brought by individuals (not states).

Oceania

 * Australia: Human rights in Australia

Information

 * Human Rights Quarterly
 * United Nations- Universal Declaration of Human Rights
 * United Nations- Human Rights
 * Better World Links Biggest Link List on Human Rights
 * A Tamil human rights news portal
 * Rights Philosophy Forum
 * Country reports on human rights from the U.S. Department of State
 * ngoCHR.org – Volunteer reporting on the United Nations Commission on Human Rights
 * University of Leicester, UK, list of sources and links.
 * Introduction to Human Rights & Humanitarian Law
 * Photojournalist's approach to human rights in Sudan
 * A Muslim approach to human rights
 * Mission and Justice – Human Rights, Justice and Peace news from the Asia Pacific region.
 * Sri Lanka – Human Rights of the Tamil People
 * Children's Rights Alliance
 * Human rights development in Asia
 * Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry
 * University of Minnesota Human Rights Library
 * International Freedom of Expression Exchange - Monitoring censorship around the world
 * Human Rights News Headlines by NewsXS - Aggregated news and RSS feed
 * Survivor bashing - bias motivated hate crimes
 * Human Rights Video Project - NVR's Program in Public Libraries

Human rights organizations

 * Amnesty International
 * Ansar Burney Welfare Trust
 * Anti Slavery
 * Asian Human Rights Commission
 * Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission
 * Better World Links on Human Rights Organizations
 * Committee for Information and Initiative on Punjab
 * Dalit Human Rights (DHR)
 * ENSAAF: Fighting Impunity in India
 * FoodFirst Information and Action Network
 * Global Rights: Partners for Justice
 * Human Rights Watch
 * International Order of Human Rights - IOHR
 * Justice For The World
 * Olympic Watch: Human Rights in China and Beijing 2008
 * The International Voice: A Youth Human Rights Newsmagazine
 * The Magnus Hirschfeld Center for Human Rights

حقوق الإنسان Lidská práva Menneskerettighederne Menschenrechte Derechos humanos Droits de l'Homme Luonnonoikeusteoria זכויות האדם Hak Asasi Manusia Mannréttindi Diritti umani 人権 Žmogaus teisės Cilvēktiesības 인권 Rechten van de Mens Menneskerettigheter Prawa człowieka Direitos humanos Права человека Human rights Ľudské práva De mänskliga rättigheterna Права людини 人权 Jîn-kôan