120 Emporium Current Essays Emporium Current Essays 121 The attention that Human Rights has gained

in the postWorld War modern societies around 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 this concept in history, therefore, the immediate job must of necessity be the conceptual elucidation of the theory in the framework of the which the current idea of human rights works. 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 rights in human history. The concept of human rights envisages a just dispensation of what the world and its inhabitants over to every human being. Obviously, an implicit substantive moral theory determines the distinguishing features of the concept. To be able to trace the historical development of the concept, as well a the ideology supporting it, one must look first into the Greco-Roman pre-modcrn natural law doctrines of Stoicism which, holding that a 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 extended certain universal rights to people, though teaching more of duties than of rights. Accepted as based on rationality, natural law provided a standard or mode! against which manmade laws could be measured;. Rooted in nature and deriving its authority from the universal and eternal, it became the ideal that the local, mortal, positive law ~ made by man and lacking an authority higher than the will of the law-makers and force of the state--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 and demonstrated in the Republic that there must exist an idea of justice which allows men, in different 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 degree in which it perfected the human nature of its citizens. Travelling down in time from ancient to medieval, the stoic doctrines of natural law underwent an alteration as scholastics like Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, and John Duns Scotus sought to make natural law compatible with revealed Christianity, replacing ,God, with his power and will to punish transgressors in this life and in the next, with nature. They thus made absolute submission to divine will the only rule for human laws and life. Establishing these laws securely in the 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 and the 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 government strong enough to enforce the terms of the contract on every one. Somewhere along the journey, the general right to selfpreservation expanded to include the specific inalienable right: life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, as appealed to in the American Declaration of Independence. Thus, the rights which nature assures to man were replaced by rights which the state guarantees, and the natural rights, which were earlier rights, which were earlier always kept subordinate to natural duties, evolved into human rights. In moving from natural law - which had recognised the legitimacy of slavery and serfdom, and, in so doing, excluded perhaps the central-most ideas of human rights as the are 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 to 17th century; it was a period when resistance to religious intolerance and political and economic 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 the foundations of what today are called human rights were truly laid. A more comprehensive view of human rights grew in the late 18th century, the Age of Enlightenment, and early nineteenth century, when following the practical example of England's Revolution of 1686 and the resulting Bill of Rights, revolutionary spirit permeated the West, most notably North America and France. Thomas Jefferson asserted in 1776 in the American Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal, that they are-endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, [and] that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness." Similarly, the i122 Emporium Current Essays Emporium Current Essays 123 American Deceleration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789) insisted 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," 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 and confinement. 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, governments stand 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 rights was codified in the treaty establishing the United Nations, when all members pledged themselves 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 as to 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, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and . Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights entered into force and effect. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights has been the first global effort towards establishing an international standard for the states' treatment of their citizens and thus emphasising 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 all human beings free and equal in dignity and rights and entitled to all the rights and freedoms 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 the country 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 and equal protection of law against arbitrary interference with privacy family, home, or correspondence, or attacks upon his honour and reputation. It protects individual's right to freedom 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 and association; to take pat in the government of his country; to social security and free choice of employment; and to education. The pronouncements of the Declaration, simple as they may appear, have not come easy with specific governments items of application. The problems for most governments in the 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 own mental block before recognising or appreciating the human rights of a particular section of 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, the conditioning on the part of the sufferers over decades and centuries allows governments abuse and violations of rights with impunity. Not surprisingly, this latter situation occurs frequently in countries with democratic governments: having derived

their right to rule from a popular mandate, such governments would like o focus on something of more immediate public interest or demand. Thus, agreeing on a standard of behaviour by being signatories to various convenants of the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations has not ^ensured that the liberty and dignity of people around the world will not be violated. On the international scene also, human rights are being trampled over daily and hourly: looking at the current and recent happenings in Kashmir, Bosnia, and Palestine, one needs no. argument to be convinced that the laudable purposes of the Universal Human Rights Declaration are being openly flouted.