HUMAN RIGHTS - THE FOUNDATION OF SOCIETY Voltaire, the French writer and social debater, is quoted for having said: “I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend to the death your right to say it.” This quote is often used among human rights proponents as an example of tolerance. Tolerance, in particular, is one of the cornerstones of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Freedom to think and act. Another cornerstone is the protection of vulnerable groups. Basically, the rules on how we should treat one another. Rules applicable to everyone that may not be violated. Societal values It is often said that human rights date back a few hundred years. But some human rights ideas are much older. The concepts of human dignity, obligations and peaceful coexistence have been developed by human communities all over the world. If you look at the Jewish, the Christian and the Muslim faiths, all three religions have an inherent obligation to care for the weak members of society. Obviously, there are also important differences between the old scriptures and today’s human rights. International human rights do not focus on the obligations to others, but on the rights of the individual against the state. The fact is that the modern state has taken over several obligations that were previously undertaken by the family or the local community. All cultures have rules of social interaction for the purpose of maintaining a stable society. However, they also convey some fundamental societal values forming our ethics. Antiquity and the Middle Ages Modern human rights instruments say that humans are born with equal rights. This idea of a natural legal order originates in ancient Greece. The idea of natural rights was developed in the 3rd century BC. In the Middle Ages, each individual depended wholly on his or her family, and the judicial system took into account kinship. Concurrently with the spreading of Christianity to most of Europe, the traditional legal principles gradually changed, emphasising individual responsibility rather than collective responsibility. Another principle desired by the church was the requirement of proof of a defendant’s guilt. The new principle that a person is innocent until proven guilty was gradually introduced. States had limited powers in the Middle Ages, but later kings and nobles signed treaties governing their respective rights and duties. The essential concept of the rule of law was spelled out in Magna Carta, the English charter issued in 1215, as a guarantee of procedural fairness. The same principle of the rule of law was first worded in Denmark in King Eric Klipping’s coronation charter of 1282. This principle of the rule of law granted the individual freedom and security unless he or she violated the law. Role of the state The period around year 1500 saw the tender beginnings of modern political science. The natural-rights thinkers in the 17th and 18th century had different opinions of human nature. Some emphasised the peaceful, social skills of human beings. Others their egoism and greed. Common to all of them was that man was considered a rational being, which is also the fundamental view of the Universal Declaration. The concept of enlightenment was developed by people like the British philosopher John Locke and the French philosopher and writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau. They cast a critical light on the class society, the absolute royal power, and the design of the world as interpreted by the Christian Church. The Enlightenment was a further development of the natural rights, and in 1748 the Frenchman Charles-Louis de Montesquieu articulated the theory of the separation of powers into an executive, a legislature and a judiciary. The thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment created the idea of a reform movement, which developed in the ‘new’ American continent, eventually leading to the 1776 Declaration of Independence of the United States, which reads in the introduction: “… 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…” In France, the social criticism culminated in a revolution in 1789 and the adoption of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Article 1 of the Declaration reads: “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be based only on common utility.” The Declaration also gave several procedural guarantees, such as equality in the eyes of the law, equal eligibility for all public positions and occupations, freedom of opinion, speech and religion and the protection of private property. Even though both the American and the French declarations established that all men are created equal, some were still more equal than others. African slaves in America did not have any human rights, and women were not considered equal to men. Slavery and apartheid were only outlawed much later, and in France, to mention an example, women’s suffrage was only recognised in 1946. Generations Freedom and equality before the law were key concepts of the political movements that created the first human rights. These rights: freedom of religion, speech and organisation, the right to property and privacy, equality before the law and democracy were introduced by the new constitutions written in several European states in the 19th century. They are called first-generation human rights. Concurrently with the development of the new political and civil rights, there was a growing need for caring for the poor and weak in society. Following the migration from countryside to cities, many lost their social safety net that would help them in case of unemployment, illness and old age. This social development led to the emergence of the labour movement, which fought to make governments support basic economic and social rights of their people. During the Russian revolution in 1917, this development was described in the Declaration of Rights of the Working People. The economic and social rights were gradually introduced in most countries in Europe towards the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. This laid the foundation of the second generation of rights. Internationalisation The first and second generation human rights were developed by political movements in the individual countries - in the 18th, 19th and 20th century Europe and America and in Asia and Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries in their fight against colonial powers. The political disagreement often related to the design of political, social, economic and cultural rights in the individual state. The United Nations (UN) was founded in 1945 after the two world wars. Its predominant goal was to maintain peace among all nations of the world; but also to secure to all human beings the enjoyment of fundamental human rights and protection against genocide. This led to the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. The Declaration subsequently developed into several international and European conventions ensuring a number of rights and monitoring bodies within the United Nations systems and in the form of the European Court of Human Rights. In 1993, the United Nations established the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner of Human Rights and simultaneously a network of national human rights institutions (NHRIs). The Danish Institute of Human Rights has the status of the Danish NHRI.
Posted on: Sun, 02 Feb 2014 16:11:16 +0000
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