29. Human Rights

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120Emporium Current EssaysEmporium Current Essays121The attention that Human Rights has gained in the postWorld War modern societiesaround the world is fairly recent -- a communal .concern, though, for the sufferings of fellow human beings is as old as history. In undertaking to trace the development of thisconcept in history, therefore, the immediate job must of necessity be the conceptualelucidation of the theory in the framework of the which the current idea of human rightsworks. Since the evaluation of such a theory lies outside the scope of the present article,this writing will restrict itself to the theoretical evolution of the concept of human rightsin human history.The concept of human rights envisages a just dispensation of what the world and itsinhabitants over to every human being. Obviously, an implicit substantive moral theorydetermines the distinguishing features of the concept. To be able to trace the historicaldevelopment of the concept, as well a the ideology supporting it, one must look firstinto the Greco-Roman pre-modcrn natural law doctrines of Stoicism which, holding thata universal force pervaded and consequently provided the principles of right action for man, judged human conduct according to the law of nature. This natural law extendedcertain universal rights to people, though teaching more of duties than of rights. Acceptedas based on rationality, natural law provided a standard or mode! against which man-made laws could be measured;. Rooted in nature and deriving its authority from theuniversal and eternal, it became the ideal that the local, mortal, positive law ~ made byman and lacking an authority higher than the will of the law-makers and force of thestate--strove to attain.Plato and Aristotle, though never stated so explicitly, based their social and political philosophy on moral and ethical principles they understood to be natural and eternal.Plato, for example, attacked the argument that all justice is merely conventional anddemonstrated in the Republic that there must exist an idea of justice which allows men, indifferent political systems, to recognise some actions as just and others as unjust.Similarly, Aristotle sought to judge the value of a political system according to the degreeinwhich it perfected the human nature of its citizens. Travelling down in time from ancientto medieval, the stoic doctrines of natural law underwent an alteration as scholastics likeThomas Aquinas, Augustine, and John Duns Scotus sought to make natural lawcompatible with revealed Christianity, replacing ,God, with his power and will to punishtransgressors in this life and in the next, with nature. They thus made absolute submissionto divine will the only rule for human laws and life. Establishing these laws securely inthe political life of nations, and opting for an attainable rather than a Utopian objective,

political thinkers like Hobbcs and Locke, among many others, developed the theory of social contract in relatively more modern times. The social contract between the state andthe citizens guaranteed a general right to self-preservation to all members of community,and it restricted the citizens from trampling on the rights of others through a governmentstrong enough to enforce the terms of the contract on every one.Somewhere along the journey, the general right to selfpreservation expanded to includethe specific inalienable right: life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, as appealed to in theAmerican Declaration of Independence. Thus, the rights which nature assures to manwere replaced by rights which the state guarantees, and the natural rights, which wereearlier rights, which were earlier always kept subordinate to natural duties, evolved intohuman rights.In moving from natural law - which had recognised the legitimacy of slavery andserfdom, and, in so doing, excluded perhaps the central-most ideas of human rights as theare understood'today -- society had to go through sonic necessary and basic changes in beliefs and practices. Beginning of such a change in said to be most noticeable in Europe between the 13th century to17th century; it was a period when resistance to religious intolerance and political andeconomic bondage began the transition to liberal notions of freedom and equality, particularly in relation to the use and ownership of property, and it was then that thefoundations of what today are called human rights were truly laid. A more comprehensiveview of human rights grew in the late 18th century, the Age of Enlightenment, and earlynineteenth century, when following the practical example of England's Revolution of 1686 and the resulting Bill of Rights, revolutionary spirit permeated the West, mostnotably North America and France. Thomas Jefferson asserted in 1776 in the AmericanDeclaration of Independence that all men are created equal, that they are-endowed bytheir Creator with certain inalienable Rights, [and] that among these are Life, Liberty andthe Pursuit of Happiness." Similarly, thei122Emporium Current EssaysEmporium Current Essays123American Deceleration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789) insisted that "menare born and remain free and equal in rights" and that "the aim of every politicalassociation is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man,"identifying these rights as "Liberty, Property, Safety, and Resistance to Oppression.""Liberty" in this Declaration was defined so as to include the right to free speech,freedom of association, religious freedom, and freedom from arbitrary arrest andconfinement. The" Bill of Rights added in 1791 to the Constitution of the United States of 1787 also defined human rights on the same lines.

Today, a vast majority of legal scholars, philosophers, and moralists agree, irrespective of culture or civilisation, that every human being is entitled, at least in theory, to certain basic rights. With almost universal acceptance of human rights in principle, governmentsstand the chance of exposing themselves to strong public censure, and, in extreme cases,even downfall, should they dissent from the ideology of human rights. In the last half of the 20th century, the international as well as the universal recognition of human rightswas codified in the treaty establishing the United Nations, when all members pledgedthemselves to take joint and separate action for the achievement of "universal respect for,and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for al without distinction asto race, sex, language, or religion." In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948),representatives from many adverse cultures endorsed the rights therein set forth as a"common standard of achievement for all .peoples' and all nations." And in 1976, theInternational Covenant on Economic, Social and . Cultural Rights and the InternationalCovenant on Civil and Political Rights entered into force and effect.The Universal Declaration of Human Rights has been the first global effort towardsestablishing an international standard for the states' treatment of their citizens and thusemphasising that the , human rights issue is in any country is no more a domestic matter,rather, it is a global concern. The Declaration consists of 30 articles that envisage allhuman beings free and equal in dignity and rights and entitled to all the rights andfreedoms set .forth in the Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race,colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or •social origin, property,-birth or other status, or political, jurisdictional, or international status of thecountry or territory to which the person belongs. It recognises everyone's right to life,liberty, and security; prohibits slavery or servitude; and disallows torture, inhuman or degrading treatment and punishment. It stands for everyone's equality before law andequal protection of law against arbitrary interference with privacy family, home, or correspondence, or attacks upon his honour and reputation. It protects individual's right tofreedom of movement; to a nationality; to marry, found a family and dissolve it; to own property; to freedom of through and expression; to freedom of peaceful assembly andassociation; to take pat in the government of his country; to social security and freechoice of employment; and to education.The pronouncements of the Declaration, simple as they may appear, have not come easywith specific governments items of application. The problems for most governments inthe way of extending human rights to all the citizens arise usually from the states' own particular set of problems arising out of their own social, economic, political, or ideological conditions. More often than not a government has also to overcome its ownmental block before recognising or appreciating the human rights of a particular sectionof its society. A major societal condition tlrat encourages abuse of human rights is a lack of awareness at all of the existence of such rights, or if such an awareness exists, theconditioning on the part of the sufferers over decades and centuries allows governmentsabuse and violations of rights with impunity. Not surprisingly, this latter situationoccurs frequently in countries with democratic governments: having derived

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very nice.

reply02 / 25 / 2010