Principles

1. Rights –

ü Claim rights and Liberty rights – A claim right is a right which entails responsibilities,
duties or obligations on other parties regarding the right-holder. In contrast, a liberty right is a
right which does not entail obligations on other parties, but rather only freedom or permission for
the right-holder.

ü Individual and Group rights – Group rights are rights held by a group rather than by its
members separately, or rights held only by individuals within the specified group; in contrast,
individual rights are rights held by individual people regardless of their group membership or
lack thereof.

ü Natural rights and Legal rights – Rights not contingent upon the laws, customs, beliefs of
any particular culture or government, and therefore universal and inalienable (incapable of being
alienated, surrendered, or transferred.) In contrast, Legal rights are those bestowed onto a
person by the law of a particular political and legal system, and therefore relative to specific
cultures and governments.

ü Negative and Positive rights – Positive rights permit or oblige action of another person or
group – a government whereas Negative rights permit or oblige inaction pf another person or
group – a government. (Right not to be subjected to an action of another person or group – a
government.)

ü Non-derogable rights – right to life, the right to be free from slavery, right to be free from
torture and the right to be free from retroactive application of penal laws are non-derogable.
Human rights such as right to free movement can be limited or even pushed aside during times
of national emergency except of these rights. This emergency must be actual, affect the whole
population and the threat must be to the very existence of the nation. The declaration of
emergency must also be a last resort and a temporary measure.

ü Hierarchy of Human Rights –

§ First generation – “Blue rights”, deal essentially with liberty and participation in political
life. Fundamentally civil and political in nature, as well as strongly individualistic. Serve
negatively to protect the individual from excesses of the state. *Freedom of speech, right to a
fair trial, freedom of religion, voting rights.

§ Second generation – “Red rights”, related to equality. Began to be recognized by

governments after World War II. Fundamentally economic, social, and cultural in nature.*right to
education, right to be employed, rights to housing, and healthcare as well as social security and
unemployment benefits.

§ Third generation – Those that go beyond the mere civil and social rights.*group and
collective rights, right to self-determination, right to economic and social development, right to a
healthy environment, right to natural resources, right to communicate and communication rights,
right to participation in cultural and heritage, rights to inter-generational equity and sustainability.

2. Sanctity of life – in religion and ethics, inviolability or sanctity of life is a principle of

implied protection regarding aspects of sentient* life which are said to be holy, sacred, or
otherwise of such value that they are not to be violated. *Sentience is the ability to feel, perceive
or be conscious or to have subjective experiences. Sentience is a metaphysical quality of all
things that requires respect and care. The concept is central to the philosophy of animal rights
(animals viewed as non-human persons and members of the moral community, and should not
be used as food, clothing, research subjects, or entertainment) because sentience is necessary
for the ability to suffer, which entails certain rights.

3. Harm principle – The actions of individuals should only be limited to prevent harm to
other individuals. (The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any
member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.)

4. Deontology (Greek “Deon”: “obligation, duty”) – Normative ethical position that judges the
morality of an action based on the action’s adherence to a rule or rules.

5. Utilitarianism – The proper course of action is the one that maximizes the overall
“happiness”. Thus a form of Consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is
determined only by its resulting outcome and that one can only weigh the morality of an action
after knowing all its consequences.

6. Meritocracy – System of government or other administration (such as business

administration) where in appointments or responsibilities are objectively assigned to individuals
based upon their “merits”, namely intelligence, credentials, and education determined through
evaluations or examinations.

7. Perfect information -

ü Moral Hazard – in economic theory, a moral hazard is a situation where there is a

tendency to take undue risks because the costs are not borne by the party taking the risk. A
moral hazard may occur where the behaviour of one party may change to the detriment of
another after a transaction has taken place. For example, a person with insurance against
automobile theft may be less cautious about locking their car, because the negative
consequences of vehicle theft are now (partly) the responsibility of the insurance company.
ü Adverse selection – Adverse selection, anti-selection or negative selection is a term
used in economics, insurance, statistics, and risk management. It refers to a market process in
which “bad” results occur when buyers and sellers have asymmetric information, (information
asymmetry deals with the study of decisions in transactions where one party has more or better
information than the other creating imbalance of power in transactions which can sometimes
cause the transaction to go awry, a kind of market failure in the worst case i.e. access to
different information) the “bad” products or services are more likely to be selected. Example –
the term adverse selection was originally used in insurance. It describes a situation where an
individual’s demand for insurance (either the prosperity to buy insurance, or the quantity
purchased, or both) is positively correlated with the individual’s risk of loss (e.g. higher risks buy
more insurance) and the insurer is unable to allow for this correlation in the price of insurance.
This may be because of private information known only to the individual (information
asymmetry), or because of regulations or social norms which prevent the insurer from using
certain categories of known information to set prices (e.g. the insurer may be prohibited from
using information such as gender, ethnic origin, genetic test results, or preexisting medical
conditions, the last of which amount to a 100% risk of the losses associated with the treatment
of that condition) The later scenario is sometimes referred to as regulatory adverse selection.
8. Social contract (Political contract) – An intellectual construct that typically addresses two
questions: first that of the origin of society, and second, the question of the legitimacy of the
authority of the state over the individual. Social contract arguments typically posit that
individuals have consented, either explicitly of tacitly, to surrender some of their freedoms and
submit to the authority of the ruler or magistrate (or to the decision of a majority) in exchange for
protection of the natural rights. The question of the relation between natural and legal rights
therefore, is often an aspect of social contract theory.

9. Popular sovereignty (sovereignty of the people) – The principle that the legitimacy of the
state is created and sustained by the will or consent of its people, who are the source of all
political power.

10. Egalitarianism – A trend of thought that favors equality among living entities. Egalitarian
doctrines maintain that all humans are equal in fundamental worth of social status.

11. Redistribution of wealth – Transfer of income, wealth or property from some individuals to
others caused by a social mechanism such as taxation, monetary policies, welfare,
nationalization, charity, divorce or tort law. (Diminishes the amount of income one individual or
corporation receives, while at the same time benefiting others – a high income earner will pay a
higher tax rate than a low income earner.)

12. Due process – The legal requirement that the state must respect all of the legal rights that
are owed to a person. Due process balances the power of law of the land and protects
individual persons from it. When a government harms a person without following the exact
course of the law, this constitutes a due-process violation, which offends against the rule of law.
13. Externalities – In economics, an externality, or transaction spillover, is a cost or benefit that
is not transmitted through prices and is incurred by a party who did not agree to the action
causing the cost or benefit. The cost of an externality is a negative externality, or external cost,
while the benefit of an externality is a positive externality, or external benefit. For example,
manufacturing that cause’s air pollution imposes costs on the whole society, while fire-proofing
a home improves the fire safety of neighbours.

ü Internalizing externalities – There are a number of potential means of improving overall

social utility when externalities are involved. The market-driven approach to correcting
externalities is to “internalize” third party costs and benefits. For example, by requiring a polluter
to repair any damage caused. But, in many cases internalizing costs or benefits is not feasible,
especially if the true monetary value cannot be determined.

14. Public goods – In economics, a public good is a good that is both non-excludable and
non-rivalrous in that individuals can not be effectively excluded from use and where use by one
individual does not reduce availability to others. Examples of public goods include fresh air,
clean water, knowledge, lighthouses, open-source software, radio and television broadcasts,
roads, street lighting. Public goods that are available everywhere are sometimes referred to as
global public goods. In the real world, many public goods may at times be subject to excessive
use resulting in negative externalities affecting all users; for example air pollution and traffic
congestion. Public goods problems are often closely related to the tragedy of the commons.

15. Tragedy of the commons – A dilemma arising from the situation in which multiple
individuals, acting independently and rationally consulting their own self-interest, will ultimately
deplete a shared limited resource even when it is clear that it is not in anyone’s long-term
interest for this to happen.

16. Affirmative action – Refers to policies that take factors including “race, colour, religion,
gender, sexual orientation or national origin” into consideration in order to benefit an
underrepresented group “in areas of employment, education and business”, usually justified as
countering the effects of a history of discrimination.

17. Prisoner’s dilemma – A canonical example of a game analyzed in game theory (study of
strategic decision making. More formally, it is “the study of mathematical models of conflict and
cooperation between intelligent rational decision-makers”) that shows why two individuals might
not cooperate, even if it appears that it is in their best interest to do so.

18. Retrospective legislation – An ex post facto law (from the Latin for “from after the action” or
“after the fact”) or retroactive law is a law that retroactively charges the legal consequences (or
status) of actions committed or relationships that existed prior to the enactment of the law. In
reference to criminal law, it may criminalize actions that were legal when committed; or it may
aggravate a crime by bringing it into a more severe category than it was in at the time it was
committed; or it may change or increase the punishment prescribed for a crime, such as by
adding new penalties or extending terms; or it may alter the rules of evidence in order to make
conviction for a crime more likely than it would have been at the time of the action for which a
defendant is prosecuted. Conversely, a form of ex post facto law commonly known as an
amnesty law may decriminalize certain acts or alleviate possible punishments (for example by
replacing the death sentence with lifelong imprisonment) retroactively. Such laws are also
known by the Latin term In mitius.

19. Vicarious liability – Is a form of strict, secondary liability that arises under the common law
doctrine of agency – respondeat superior – the responsibility of the superior for the acts of their
subordinate, or, in a broader sense, the responsibility of any third party that had the “right,
ability, or duty to control” the activities of a violator.

20. Command responsibility – Command responsibility, sometimes referred to as the

Yamashita Standard or the Medina Standard, and also known as Superior responsibility, is the
doctrine of hierarchical accountability in cases of war crimes. The “Yamashita Standard” is
based upon the precedent set by the US Supreme Court in the case of Japanese General
Tomoyuki Yamashita. He was prosecuted in 1945, in a still controversial trial, for atrocities
committed by troops under his command in the Philippines. Yamashita was charged with
“unlawfully disregarding and failing to discharge his duty as a commander to control the acts of
members of his command by permitting them to commit war crimes. The “Medina Standard” is
based upon the 1971 My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War. It holds that a commanding
officer, being aware of a human rights violation or a war crime, will be held criminally liable when
he does not take action. However, Medina was acquitted of all charges.

21. Fiduciary responsibility – A fiduciary duty (from Latin fiduciarius, meaning “(holding) in
trust”, from fides, meaning “faith”, and fiducia, meaning “trust”) is a legal or ethical relationship of
confidence or trust between two or more parties. In a fiduciary relationship, one person, in a
position of vulnerability, justifiably vests confidence, good faith, reliance, and trust in another
whose aid, advice or protection is sought in some matter. In such a relation, good conscience
requires the fiduciary to act at all times for the sole benefit and interest of the one who trusts. A
fiduciary is someone who has undertaken to act for and on behalf of another in a particular
matter in circumstances which give rise to a relationship of trust and confidence. A fiduciary duty
is the highest standard of care at either equity or law. A fiduciary (abbreviation fid) is expected
to be extremely loyal to the person to whom he owes the duty (the ‘principal’): he must not put
his personal interests before the duty, and must not profit from his position as a fiduciary, unless
the principal consents.

22. R2P – The “Responsibility to Protect” consists of an emerging norm, or set of principles,
based on the idea that sovereignty is not a right, but a responsibility. R2P focuses on preventing
and halting four crimes: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing,
which it places under the generic umbrella term of Mass Atrocity Crimes. The Responsibility to
Protect has three “pillars”.
ü A state has a responsibility to protect its population from mass atrocities.

ü The international community has a responsibility to assist the state if it is unable to

protect its population on its own.

ü If the state fails to protect its citizens from mass atrocities and peaceful measures have
failed, the international community has the responsibility to intervene through coercive
measures such as economic sanctions. Military intervention is considered the last resort.

23. UNSC – The United Nations Security Council is one of the principal organs of the United
Nations and is charged with the maintenance of international peace and security. Its powers,
outlined in the UN Charter, include establishment of peacekeeping operations, the
establishment of international sanctions, and the authorization of military action. Its powers are
exercised through United Nations Security Council resolutions. There are 15 members of the
Security Council, consisting of five veto-wielding permanent members- China, France, Russia,
the United Kingdom, and the United States- based on the great powers that were the victors of
World War II, and 10 elected non-permanent members with two-year terms. Security Council
members must always be present at UN headquarters in New York so that the Security Council
can meet any time. This requirement of the UN Charter was adopted to address a weakness of
the League of Nations since the organization was often unable to respond quickly to a crisis.

24. Collective action problem – The term “collective action problem” describes the situation in
which multiple individuals would all benefit from a certain action, which, however, has an
associated cost making it implausible that any one individual can or will undertake and solve it
alone. The rational choice is then to undertake this as a collective action the cost of which is
shared.

25. Hate speech – Is, outside the law, any communication that vilifies a person or a group on
the basis of race, colour, ethnicity, gender, disability, sexual orientation, nationality, religion, or
other characteristic. In law, hate speech is any speech, gesture or conduct, writing, or display,
which is forbidden because it may incite violence or prejudicial action against or by a protected
individual or group, or because it disparages or intimidates a protected individual or group.

26. Bailout – In economics, a bailout is an act of loaning or giving capital to an entity (a

company, a country, or an individual) that is in danger of failing, in an attempt to save it from
bankruptcy, insolvency, or total liquidation and ruin; or to allow a failing entity to fail gracefully
without spreading contagion.

27. Lobbying – Is the act of attempting to influence decisions made by officials in the
government, most often legislators or members of regulatory agencies. Lobbying is done by
many different types of people and organized groups, including individuals in the private sector,
corporations, fellow legislators or government officials or advocacy groups (interest groups). The
ethics and morality of lobbying are dual-edged. Lobbying is often spoken with contempt; when
the implication is that people with inordinate socioeconomic power are corrupting the law
(twisting it away from fairness) in order to serve their own conflict of interest. But another side of
lobbying is making sure that others’ interests are duly defended against others’ corruption, or
even simply making sure that minority interests are fairly defended against mere tyranny of the
majority. For example, a medical association, or a trade association of health insurance
companies, may lobby a legislature in order to counteract the influence of tobacco companies,
in which case the lobbying would be viewed by most people as justified (duly defending against
others’ corruption).

28. Superannuation – A retirement plan is an arrangement to provide people with an income

during retirement when they are no longer earning a steady income from employment. Often
retirement plans require both the employer and employee to contribute money to a fund during
their employment in order to receive defined benefits upon retirement. It is a tax-deferred
savings vehicle that allows for the tax-free accumulation of a fund for later use as a retirement
income.

29. Marketplace of ideas – Is a rationale for freedom of expression based on an analogy to the
economic concept of a free market. The “marketplace of ideas” belief holds that the truth will
emerge out of the competition of ideas in free, transparent public discourse. This concept is
often applied to discussions of patent law as well as freedom of press and the responsibilities of
the media in a liberal democracy.

30. Norm of reciprocity – Is the social expectation that people will respond to each other in kind
– returning benefits for benefits, and responding with either indifference or hostility to harm.

31. The difference principle – regulates inequalities: it only permits inequalities that work to the
advantage of the worst-off. Wealth “diffuses up”. By guaranteeing the worst-off in society a fair
deal, compensates for naturally-occurring inequalities (talents that one is born with, such as a
capacity for sport).

32. Accident of birth – is a phrase pointing out that no one has any control of or responsibility
for, the circumstances of their birth or parentage. With a modern scientific understanding of
genetics, one can reasonably call any human being’s entire genome an accident of birth. The
place of birth of a baby has an effect in immigration law of many nations, so that an “accidental”
birth in an airport lounge may entitle a person to a passport in later life. More broadly, gender,
family circumstances, cultural background, access to education, inheritance rights, are all
examples of accidents of birth. Individual responsibility, from the age of majority certainly, is
supposed to cut across all these matters.

33. Social solidarity – is the integration, and degree and type of integration, shown by a society
or group with people and their neighbours. It refers to the ties in a society that bind people to
one another. What forms the basis of solidarity varies between societies. In simple societies, it
may be mainly based around kinship and shared values. In more complex societies there are
various theories as to what contributes to a sense of social solidarity.

34. Individualism – is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that
stresses “the moral worth of an individual”. Individualists promote the exercise of one’s goals
and desires and so value independence and self-reliance while opposing external interference
upon one’s own interests by society or other institutions such as the government.

35. Self-ownership (sovereignty of the individual, individual sovereignty or individual autonomy)

– is the concept of property in one’s own person, expressed as the moral or natural right of a
person to be the exclusive controller of his own body and life. The concept self-ownership is that
“each person enjoys, over himself and his powers, full and exclusive rights of control and use,
and therefore owes no service or product to anyone else that he has not contracted to supply.

36. Veil of ignorance – is a method of determining the morality of a certain issue (e.g.: slavery)
based upon the following thought experiment: parties to the original position know nothing about
their particular abilities, tastes, and position within the social order of society. The veil of
ignorance blocks off this knowledge, such that one does not know what burdens and benefits of
social co-operation might fail to him/her once the veil is lifted. With this knowledge blocked,
parties to the original position must decide on principles for the distribution of rights, positions
and resources in their society.

37. Social security – is a concept which states that everyone, as a member of society, has the
right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international
co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each state, the
economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his
personality. In simple terms, this means that the signatories agree that society in which a person
lives should help them to develop and to make the most of all the advantages (culture, work,
social welfare) which are offered to them in the country.

38. Glass ceiling – In economics, the term glass ceiling refers to “the unseen, yet unbreakable
barrier that keeps minorities and women from rising to the upper rungs of the corporate ladder,
regardless of their qualifications or achievements.

39. Feminist movement (a.k.a. the Women’s movement, Women’s Liberation, or Women’s Lib)
– refers to a series of campaigns for reforms on issues such as reproduction rights, domestic
violence, maternity leave, equal pay, women’s suffrage, sexual harassment and sexual
violence. The movement’s priorities vary among nations and communities and range from
opposition to female genital mutilation in one country or to the glass ceiling in another.

40. Free migration – Free migration or open immigration is the position that people should be
able to migrate to whatever the country they choose, free of substantial barriers.

41. Mainstream – is the common current thought of the majority. However, the mainstream is
far from cohesive; rather the concept is often considered a cultural construct. As such, the
mainstream includes all popular culture, typically disseminated by mass media. The opposite of
the mainstream are subcultures, countercultures, cult following and (in fiction) genre.
Additionally, mainstream is sometimes a codeword used for an actual ethnocentric or
hegemonic subculture point of view, especially when delivered in a culture war speech. It is
often used as a pejorative term by subcultures who view ostensibly mainstream culture as not
only exclusive but artistically and aesthetically inferior.

42. Counterculture – is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behaviour
of a cultural group, or subculture, that run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day;
the cultural equivalent of political opposition. Counterculture can also be described as a group
whose behaviour deviates from the social norm.

43. Microfinance – is usually understood to entail the provision of financial services to

micro-entrepreneurs and small businesses, which lack access to banking and related services
due to the high transaction costs associated with serving these client categories. The two main
mechanisms for the delivery of financial services to such clients are (1) relationship-based
banking for individual entrepreneurs and small businesses; and (2) group-based models, where
several entrepreneurs come together to apply for loans and other services as a group. In some
regions, for example Southern Africa, microfinance is used to describe the supply of financial
services to low income employees, which however is closer to the retail finance model prevalent
in mainstream banking. For some, microfinance is a movement whose object is “a world in
which as many poor and near-poor households as possible have permanent access to an
appropriate range of high quality financial services, including not just credit but also savings,
insurance, and fund transfers.” Many of those who promote microfinance generally believe that
such access will help poor people out of poverty. For others, microfinance is a way to promote
economic development, employment and growth through the support of micro-entrepreneurs
and small businesses.

44. ASEAN – Motto: “one vision, one identity, one community” The Association of Southeast
Asian Nations is a geo-political and economic organization of ten countries located in Southeast
Asia which was formed on 8th August 1967 by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore
and Thailand. Since then membership has expanded to include Brunei, Burma (Myanmar),
Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. Its aims include accelerating economic growth, social progress,
and cultural development among its members, protection of regional peace, and stability, and
opportunities for member countries to discuss differences peacefully. ASEAN covers a land
area of 4.46 million km2, which is 3% of the total land area of earth, and has a population of
approximately 600 million people, which is 8.8% of the world’s population. In 2010, its combined
nominal GDP had grown to US $1.8 trillion. Is ASEAN were a single entity, it would rank as the
ninth largest economy in the world, behind the US, China, Japan, Germany, France, Brazil, the
UK, and Italy.

45. IHL – International Humanitarian Law or the Law of Armed Conflict is the law that regulates
the conduct of armed conflicts (jus in bello.) It comprises “the Geneva conventions and the
Hague conventions as well as subsequent treaties, case law, and customary international law. It
defines the conduct and responsibilities of belligerent nations, neutral nations and individuals
engaged in warfare, in relation to each other and to protect persons, usually meaning civilians.
Serious violations of IHL are called war crimes.

46. International Criminal Court – The ICC is a permanent tribunal to prosecute individuals for
genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression.

47. The Arab Spring – is a revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests occurring in the
Arab world that began on 18th December 2010. To date, rulers have been forced from power in
Tunisia (Ben Ali), Egypt (Hosni Mubarak), Libya (Muammar Gadaffi), and Yemen (Ali Abdullah
Saleh), civil uprisings have erupted in Bahrain and Syria, major protest have broken out in
Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, and Morocco, and minor protests have occurred in Lebanon,
Oman, Saudi Arabia, Sudan as well as clashes at the borders of Israel in May 2011, and
protests by Arab minority in Iranian Khuzestan. Weapons from the Libyan civil war stroked a
simmering rebellion in Mali. The secretarial clashes in Lebanon were described as a direct result
of the Syrian uprising and hence the regional Arab Spring. The protests have shared techniques
of mostly civil resistance in sustained campaigns, involving strikes, demonstrations, marches,
and rallies, as well as the use of social media to organize, communicate, and raise awareness
in the face of state attempts at repression and Internet censorship. Many demonstrators have
met violent responses from authorities as well as from pro-government militias and
counter-demonstrators. These attacks have been answered with violence from protestors in
some cases. A major slogan of the demonstrators in the Arab world says “the people want to

45.Gross domestic product (GDP) is a monetary measure of the value of all final goods and
services produced in a period (quarterly or yearly). Nominal GDP estimates are commonly used
to determine the economic performance of a whole country or region, and to make international
comparisons. Nominal GDP, however, does not reflect differences in the cost of living and the
inflation rates of the countries; therefore using a GDP PPP per capita basis is arguably more
useful when comparing differences in living standards between nations.

46.Per capita income or average income measures the average income earned per person in a
given area (city, region, country, etc.) in a specified year. It is calculated by dividing the area's
total income by its total population