NOTES IN HUMAN RIGHTS EDUCATION

HUMAN RIGHTS
- Your right is something that cannot be taken away.
- Once, you violated a crime, that said rights could be revoke.
- Are created to protect the welfare of the people.
- People of the past are treated as slaves or possession.
- The punishment from the past were different from what we have now, as they did not undergo process.
- Every one of us, no matter who we are or where we are born, is entitled to the same basic rights and freedom.
Human rights is not a privilege and cannot be granted or revoked because they are inalienable and universal.

According to Kamruzzaman, (2016), the ancient age expanded approximately from 500 years before A.D. to in 4th
century. Slavery was viewed as a legal custom within the social organization during that time. During this period a slave was
considered as ‘animal tool’s or ‘living possession’ and was derived from minimum basic needs. They were abused and
torture just to satisfy their desires. The slave had no political or economic freedom; they were used as an instrument of
production without the enjoyment of any kinds of rights. It is hard being born in a lower class of society; you have no choice
but to follow the rules. These and other decrees were recorded on a baked-clay cylinder within the Akkadian language with
a cuneiform script. Known today as the Cyrus Cylinder (the Cylinder was inscribed in Babylonian cuneiform on the
orders of the Persian king Cyrus the Great after he captured Babylon in 539 B.C. It marks the establishment of
Persian rule and records how Cyrus restored shrines and allowed deported peoples to return home), this
ancient record has now been recognized as the world’s first charter of human rights.

Cyrus The Great – the (first) king of Persia who freed the slaves from Babylon, 539 B.C.
- Declared that each one people had the right to choose their own religion, and established racial quality.

Code of Hammurabi - a set of rules or laws enacted by the Babylonian King Hammurabi.
- One of the most famous examples of the ancient precept of “lex talionis,” or law of retribution, a form of
retaliatory justice commonly associated with the saying “an eye for an eye.” Under this system, if a man
broke the bone of one his equals, his own bone would be broken in return.
- Is an ancient law of Babylonian in Mesopotamia, it is one of the oldest decipher writing in significance to the world.

Basic Characteristics of Human Rights

Inherent (Natural & Inborn rights)
- They are not granted by any person or authority. Human rights do not have to be bought, earned, or
inherited; they belong to people simply because they are human.
Fundamentals
- Without them the life and dignity of man will be meaningless.
- It is important because we get to choose what we want.
Inalienable (exclusively for you)
- They cannot be rightfully taken away from a free individual and they cannot be given away or forfeited. It
may be restricted if a person is found guilty of a crime by court of law.
Imprescriptible
- Cannot be lost even if that person failed to use or assert that said rights, even by a long passage time.
Indivisible
- Not capable of being divided.
- Cannot be denied even when other rights have already been enjoyed.
- Different human rights are intrinsically connected and cannot be viewed in isolation from each other.
The enjoyment of one right depends on the enjoyment of many other rights and no one right is more
important than the rest.

Universal
- It applies to anyone.
- Everyone can enjoy the rights with regards with your status in life.
- They apply equally to all people everywhere in the world, and with no time limit. Every individual is
entitled to enjoy his or her human rights without distinction of "race" or ethnic background, colour,
sex, sexual orientation, disability, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social
origin, birth or other status.

Interdependent
- The same with indivisible. You have the right to enjoy other rights
- All human rights are indivisible and interdependent. This means that one set of rights cannot be enjoyed
fully without the other. For example, making progress in civil and political rights makes it easier to
exercise economic, social, and cultural rights. Similarly,
- All human rights are indivisible and interdependent.  This means that one set of rights
cannot be enjoyed fully without the other. For example, making progress in civil and political
rights makes it easier to exercise economic, social and cultural rights. Similarly, violating
economic, social and cultural rights can negatively affect many other rights.

Three Branches of Human Rights

1. Natural Rights
- The god given rights/the unwritten rules.
Ex: The right to live, the right to be happy

2. Constitutional Rights
- Protected by constitution.
- 1987 Philippine Constitution Law, established a representative democracy with power divided among
three separate and independent branches of government: the Executive, a bicameral Legislature,
and the Judiciary.)
- Was made for the welfare of the people.
Ex: The right to vote

3. Statutory Rights
- The rights of the accused.
- Provided by the law-making body
- Revised penal code, EO, Ordinances
Three Branches of Government
1. Executive
- Headed by the president who functions as both the head of state and the head of government.
- The one who approves/grant pardon
2. Legislative
- Senator/congressman
- Law-making body.
3. Judiciary
- Court/trial
- In charge of deciding the meaning of laws, how to apply them in real life situations, and whether a law
breaks the rules of Constitution.

The Magna Carta (1215)

Magna Carta “Great Charter”

Most vital legacy is that everybody including the leaders should follow the laws and set as an example for their
subordinate. It is widely viewed as one of the foremost important legal documents within the development of modern
democracy, the Magna Carta was a vital turning point within the struggle to establish freedom. What started out as the
documents of specific complaints from a bunch of barons has turned into a world symbol of liberty, without which we’d not
have the rights we valued so much today (Dela Cruz and Florendo, 2017)

King John

- The worst king.

- He imprisoned his former wife and allegedly murder his nephew.

- The youngest son, who inherited the throne at a young age, was burdened by the sudden weight of responsibility.

- During his reign, he was already face with problems, like with the lands, and so in order to retrieve the land he get heavy
taxes on the baron

- The Baron is the lowest

- He punished those who goes against him by severely seizing their properties.

- has violated a number of ancient laws and customs by which England had been governed, his subjects forced him to sign
the Magna Carta, which enumerates what later came to be thought of as human rights

A. should not impose heavy taxes

B. widows who owns property shall or shall not marry
C. the rights of the church to be free
D. impose due process of law (the proper way of doing things in legal means).

The right of the church to be free citizens to have and inherit property and to be shielded from excessive taxes. It
established the right of widows who owned property to choose not to remarry, and established principles of due process of
law and equality before the law. Due process is a proper way of doing things in a legal case. It also contained provisions
forbidding bribery and official misconduct. It has become powerful symbol of liberty around the world.
Petition of Rights (1628)
- On June 7, 1628 was approved by King Charles I.
- Charles I succeeded his father James I in 1625 as king of England and Scotland. During his reign, his actions
frustrated his parliament and resulted in the wars of English Civil War, eventually leading to his execution in 1649.

- The petition is a major constitutional document that recognizes four key principle of government and was initiated
by Sir Edward Coke;

(1) No taxes may be levied without the consent of Parliament, so this means that imposition or collecting a taxes
is forbidden without Parliamentary consent.
(2) No subject may be imprisoned without cause shown (reaffirmation of the right of habeas corpus), as an
example, they ought to not imprison a free man without a cause or reason, an example of habeas corpus is if you
file a petition with the court because you want to be brought before a judge where reasons for your arrest and
detention must be shown.
(3) No soldiers may be quartered upon the citizenry, so this means that no soldier at the time of peace shall be
resettled in any house without the consent of the owner.

and

(4) Martial Law may not be used in the time of peace, during a normal situation martial law isn’t advisable to use.
It is still enforced in the United Kingdom today.

- Major reason of petition of right was that Charles firmly believe in divine right, the idea that God had chosen him
to rule.
- Charles to rule by royal prerogative meaning that he tried to govern without consulting Parliament. However,
Parliament felt that Charles was overreaching his authority, especially when he begun to gather forced loans from
his subjects and he started anyone who refused to pay. They were angered by Charles taking money from his
subjects without Parliamentary approval and that he was imprisoning people without trial since this undermined
Magna Carta and habeas corpus (a law that states that a person cannot be kept in prison unless they
have first been brought before a court of law, which decides whether it is legal for them to be kept in prison).
- Charles was initially unwilling to ratify the petition and even sent a message to Parliament forbidding them to
meddle with the fair of state. When it became clear that Parliament would not back down, Charles finally relented
and he ratified the petition on the 7th of June. However, he continued to govern the country in much the same way
as before, setting in place a major factor for the outbreak of English civil war less than fifteen years later (Dela Cruz
and Florendo, 2017).
- In 1648, Charles was forced to appear before in high court controlled by his enemies, where he was convicted of
treason and sentenced to death attempting to "uphold in himself an unlimited and tyrannical power to
rule according to his will, and to overthrow the rights and liberties of the people".

Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (1789)

- On August 26 1789, the national constituent assembly of France adopted the declaration of the rights of man and
the citizen as the first step toward writing a constitution for the Republic of France.
- The principal author of this Declaration was Marquis de La Fayette with the collaboration of Thomas Jefferson one
of the American founding father.
- The citizen of France wanted to switch from monarchy to republic.

The Declaration proclaims that each one citizen is to be guaranteed the rights of liberty, property, security, and
resistance to oppression. Thus, the Declaration sees law as an expression of the will, intended to promote this
equality of rights to forbid only actions harmful to society. In other words, Declaration of the rights of man and of
the citizen defines a set of individual and collective rights of the people. The document held to be universal not
only to French citizens but to all men without exemption (Dela Cruz and Florendo, 2017).
 The First Geneva Convention (1864)
- Originally it is documents provided care to wounded soldiers.
- They established a ranged of protections for victims and armed conflict around the globe
- The European countries and American states attended a conference in Geneva. The diplomatic conference was
held for the aim of adopting a convention for the treatment of wounded soldiers in combat.

- 1859, 2nd war of Italian independence

- The allied French & Sardinian army defeated Australian army during the “battle of solferino” ( was the decisive
episode in the struggle for Italian unification.)
- After the war, A Memory of Solferino (French: Un souvenir de Solférino) is a book of the Swiss
humanitarian Henry Dunant published in 1862. It proved decisive in the founding of the International
Committee of the Red Cross.
- He found there are infrastructures that are destroyed due to the war and dead people everywhere.
- Spent most of his life to the first Geneva convention

Red Cross (1859)

- Providing medical assistance for wounded soldiers
- 1864, after 5 years of witnessing the horror of solferino, Henry Dunant successfully persuade major
europian state.

- The first Geneva Convention protects wounded and sick soldiers during the war, but also for medical and non-
secular personnel, medical units, and medical transports.

- The second Geneva Convention protects the wounded, sick, and shipwrecked military personnel at sea during
the war. For instance, Soldiers who surrender are entitled to respect for their lives and integrity; they should not be
killed or injured. Captured combatants are entitled to respect for his or her lives, dignity, personal rights, and
convictions. This Convention replaced the Hague Convention of 1907 for the adaptation to Maritime Warfare of the
Principles of the Geneva Convention.

- The third Geneva Convention applies to prisoners of war. This Convention replaced the Prisoners of War
Convention of 1929. It establishes the principle that prisoners of war shall be released and repatriated at once
after the cessation of active hostilities. It means that no punishment without trial and nobody must be subjected to
physical or mental torture, corporal punishment, or cruel or degrading treatment.

- The fourth Geneva Convention provides protection to civilians, including in occupied territory. Because non-
national civilians are entitled to respect for their lives, dignity, personal rights, and convictions. Parties to a conflict
must in the least times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants so as to spare civilian
population and property. Parties to a conflict and members of armed forces don’t have a vast choice of methods
and means of warfare. It’s prohibited to use weapons or methods of warfare of a nature to cause unnecessary
losses or excessive suffering.

2nd and 4th (1941)

1sth (1864)

Protocol 1
- The first Protocol expands the protection for the civilian population as well as the military and civilian medical
workers in international armed conflict.
- Any medical workers are allowed to enter other territories to provide medical assistance.

Protocol 2

- In Protocol II, it elaborates on the protection for victims caught up in high-intensity internal conflicts such as civil
wars.
 Protocol 3
- The third additional protocol to the Geneva Convention was adopted that provides for another distinctive
emblem “the red crystal”.
- Red crystal is just an optional emblem, this is an equivalent to the Red Cross and Red Crescent. The red crystal may
be used in environments where other emblems could be perceived as having cultural, religious, or political
connotations. For instance, the wounded and sick must be cared for by the controlling force and the emblem of the
red cross, red crescent, or red crystal must be respected.
- All Red Cross and Red Crescent activities have one central purpose: to help those who suffer, without
discrimination, whether during conflict, in response to natural or man-made disasters, or due to
conditions of chronic poverty.

Additionally, the principles laid down within the Convention and maintained by the later Geneva Conventions provided for
the duty to increase care without discrimination to wounded and sick military personnel and respect for and marking of
medical personnel transports and equipment with the distinctive sign of the non-governmental organization or Red Cross
on a white background (Dela Cruz and Florendo, 2017).

The United Nations (1864)

- Thousands of years, practically since the world begun. We have peace and war, we marked our boundaries and
went to war to change them. We invented machines and put guns on them. Countless of people were dead,
millions more were homeless or starving during the World War II. Russian forces were closing in on the remnants of
German resistance in Germany’s bombed out capital of Berlin. In the Pacific, US Marines were still battling
entrenched Japanese forces on such islands as Okinawa. In April 1945, delegates from fifty countries who want
peace met in San Francisco filled with optimism and hope. They aim to protect and promote peace, so they decided
to put war out of business. The goal of the United Nations Conference on World Organization was to fashion an
international body to promote peace and prevent future wars. The ideals of the organization were stated in the
preamble to its proposed charter: “We the peoples of the United Nations are determined to save a lot of
succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to
mankind.” This is often to reaffirm the faith in the fundamental of human rights, to possess equal rights in both
men and women, in the honor and worth of a human being, and to promote social progress. The Charter of the
new United Nations organization went into effect on October 24, 1945, a date that is celebrated each year as
United Nations Day (Dela Cruz and Florendo, 2017).
- To prevent future wars
- China is the first one to sign
- They would handle it in a peaceful manner.