human rights and values essay

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Essay on Human Rights: Samples in 500 and 1500

Updated on
Jun 20, 2024

Essay writing is an integral part of the school curriculum and various academic and competitive exams like IELTS , TOEFL , SAT , UPSC , etc. It is designed to test your command of the English language and how well you can gather your thoughts and present them in a structure with a flow. To master your ability to write an essay, you must read as much as possible and practise on any given topic. This blog brings you a detailed guide on how to write an essay on Human Rights , with useful essay samples on Human rights.

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Human rights mark everyone as free and equal, irrespective of age, gender, caste, creed, religion and nationality. The United Nations adopted human rights in light of the atrocities people faced during the Second World War. On the 10th of December 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Its adoption led to the recognition of human rights as the foundation for freedom, justice and peace for every individual. Although it’s not legally binding, most nations have incorporated these human rights into their constitutions and domestic legal frameworks. Human rights safeguard us from discrimination and guarantee that our most basic needs are protected.

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Human Rights

Human rights are norms that aspire to protect all people everywhere from severe political, legal, and social abuses. Examples of human rights are the right to freedom of religion, the right to a fair trial when charged with a crime, the right not to be tortured, and the right to education. The philosophy of human rights addresses questions about the existence, content, nature, universality, justification, and legal status of human rights. The strong claims often made on behalf of human rights (for example, that they are universal, inalienable, or exist independently of legal enactment as justified moral norms) have frequently provoked skeptical doubts and countering philosophical defenses (on these doubts see Lacroix & Pranchère 2016; Mutua 2002; and Waldron 1987). Reflection on these doubts and the responses that can be made to them has become a sub-field of political and legal philosophy with a very substantial literature (see the extensive Bibliography below). This entry addresses the concept of human rights, the existence and grounds of human rights, the question of which rights are human rights, and relativism about human rights.

1. The General Idea of Human Rights

2.1 how can human rights exist, 2.2 justifications for human rights, 3.1 civil and political rights, 3.2 economic and social rights, 3.3 human rights of women, minorities, and groups, 3.4 new human rights, 4. universal human rights in a world of diverse beliefs and practices, a. books and articles in the philosophy of human rights, b. legal declarations, other internet resources, related entries.

This section attempts to explain the general idea of human rights by identifying four defining features. The goal is to answer the question of what human rights are with a description of the concept rather than with a list of specific rights. Two people can have the same general idea of human rights even though they disagree about which rights are really human rights and even about whether universal human rights are a good idea. The four-part explanation just below attempts to cover all kinds of human rights including both moral and legal human rights as well as old and new human rights (e.g., both Lockean natural rights and contemporary human rights). The explanation anticipates, however, that particular kinds of human rights will have additional features. Starting with this general concept does not commit us to treating all kinds of human rights in a single unified theory (see Buchanan 2013 for an argument that we should not attempt to theorize together universal moral rights and international legal human rights).

Human rights are rights . Lest we miss the obvious, human rights are rights (see Cruft 2012 and the entry on rights ). Rights focus on a freedom, protection, status, immunity, or benefit for the rightholders. Most human rights are claim rights that impose duties or responsibilities on their addressees or dutybearers. The duties associated with human rights often require actions involving respect, protection, facilitation, and provision. Although human rights are usually mandatory in the sense of imposing duties on specified parties, some legal human rights seem to do little more than declare high-priority goals and assign responsibility for their progressive realization. One can argue, of course, that goalish rights are not real rights, but it may be better to recognize that they comprise a weak but useful notion of a right. (See Beitz 2009 for a defense of the view that not all human rights are rights in a strong sense. Also, see Feinberg 1973 for the idea of “manifesto rights” and Nickel 2013 for a discussion of “rightslike goals”.)

Human rights are plural and come in lists . If someone accepted that there are human rights but held that there is only one of them, this might make sense if she meant that there is one abstract underlying right that generates a list of specific rights (see Dworkin 2011 for a view of this sort). But if this person meant that there is just one specific right such as the right to peaceful assembly this would be a highly revisionary view. Some philosophers advocate very short lists of human rights but nevertheless accept plurality (see Ignatieff 2004).

Human rights are universal . All living humans—or perhaps we should say all living persons —have human rights. One does not have to be a particular kind of person or a member of some specific nation or religion to have human rights. Included in the idea of universality is some conception of independent existence. People have human rights independently of whether such rights are present in the practices, morality, or law of their country or culture. This idea of universality needs several qualifications, however. First, some rights, such as the right to vote, are held only by adult citizens or residents and apply only to voting in one’s own country. Second, some rights can be suspended. For example, the human right to freedom of movement may be suspended temporarily during a riot or a wildfire. And third, some human rights treaties focus not on the rights of everyone but rather on the rights of specific groups such as minorities, women, indigenous peoples, and children.

Human rights have high-priority . Maurice Cranston held that human rights are matters of “paramount importance” and their violation “a grave affront to justice” (Cranston 1967: 51, 52). If human rights were not very important norms they would not have the ability to compete with other powerful considerations such as national stability and security, individual and national self-determination, and national and global prosperity. High priority does not mean, however, that human rights are absolute. As James Griffin says, human rights should be understood as “resistant to trade-offs, but not too resistant” (Griffin 2008: 77). Further, there seems to be priority variation among human rights. For example, the right to life is generally thought to have greater importance than the right to privacy; when the two conflict the right to privacy will generally be outweighed.

Let’s now consider four other features or functions that might be added to these four.

Should human rights be defined as inalienable? Inalienability does not mean that rights are absolute or can never be overridden by other considerations. Rather it means that its holder cannot lose it temporarily or permanently by bad conduct or by voluntarily giving it up. It is doubtful that all human rights are inalienable in this sense. One who endorses both human rights and imprisonment as punishment for serious crimes must hold that people’s rights to freedom of movement can be forfeited temporarily or permanently by just convictions of serious crimes. Perhaps it is sufficient to say that human rights are very hard to lose. (For a stronger view of inalienability, see Donnelly 1989 [2020] and Meyers 1985.)

Should human rights be defined as minimal rights? A number of philosophers have proposed the view that human rights are minimal in the sense of not being too numerous (a few dozen rights rather than hundreds or thousands), and not too demanding (see Joshua Cohen 2004 and Ignatieff 2004). Their views suggest that human rights are—or should be—more concerned with avoiding the worst than with achieving the best. Henry Shue suggests that human rights concern the “lower limits on tolerable human conduct” rather than “great aspirations and exalted ideals” (Shue 1996: ix). When human rights are modest standards they leave most legal and policy matters open to democratic decision-making at the national and local levels. This allows human rights to have high priority, to accommodate a great deal of cultural and institutional variation among countries, and to leave open a large space for democratic decision-making at the national level. Still, there is no contradiction in the idea of an extremely expansive list of human rights and hence minimalism is not a defining feature of human rights (for criticism of the view that human rights are minimal standards see Brems 2009; Etinson forthcoming; and Raz 2010). Minimalism is best seen as a normative prescription for what international human rights should be. Moderate forms of minimalism have considerable appeal as recommendations, but not as part of the definition of human rights.

Should human rights be defined as always being or “mirroring” moral rights? Philosophers coming to human rights theory from moral philosophy sometimes assume that human rights must be, at bottom, moral rather than legal rights. There is no contradiction, however, in people saying that they believe in human rights, but only when they are legal rights at the national or international levels. As Louis Henkin observed,

Political forces have mooted the principal philosophical objections, bridging the chasm between natural and positive law by converting natural human rights into positive legal rights. (Henkin 1978: 19)

It has also been suggested that legal human rights can be justified without directly appealing to any corresponding moral human right (see Buchanan 2013).

Should human rights be defined in terms of serving some sort of political function? Instead of seeing human rights as grounded in some sort of independently existing moral reality, a theorist might see them as the norms of a highly useful political practice that humans have constructed. Such a view would see the idea of human rights as playing various political roles at the national and international levels and as serving thereby to protect urgent human and national interests. These political roles might include providing standards for international evaluations of how governments treat their people and specifying when use of economic sanctions or military intervention is permissible. This kind of view may be plausible for the very salient international human rights that have emerged in international law and politics in the last fifty years. But human rights can exist and function in contexts not involving international scrutiny and intervention such as a world with only one state. Imagine, for example, that a massive asteroid strike makes New Zealand the only remaining state in existence. Surely the idea of human rights along with many dimensions of human rights practice could continue in New Zealand, even though there would be no international relations, law, or politics (for an argument of this sort see Tasioulas 2012a). And if in the same scenario a few people were discovered to have survived in Iceland and were living without a government or state, New Zealanders would know that human rights governed how these people should be treated even though they were stateless. How deeply the idea of human rights must be rooted in international law and practice should not be settled by definitional fiat. We can allow, however, that the sorts of political functions that Rawls and Beitz describe are typically served by international human rights today.

2 The Existence and Grounds of Human Rights

The most obvious way in which human rights exist is as norms of national and international law. At the international level, human rights norms exist because of treaties that have turned them into international law. For example, the human right not to be held in slavery or servitude in Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights and in Article 8 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights exists because these treaties establish it. At the national level, human rights norms exist because they have—through legislative enactment, judicial decision, or custom—become part of a country’s law. For example, the right against slavery exists in the United States because the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits slavery and servitude. When rights are embedded in international law, we are apt to speak of them as human rights; but when they are enacted in national law we more frequently describe them as civil or constitutional rights.

Although enactment in national and international law is one of the ways in which human rights exist, many have suggested that this is not the only way. If human rights exist only because of enactment, their availability is contingent on domestic and international political developments. Many people have looked for a way to support the idea that human rights have roots that are deeper and less subject to human decisions than legal enactment. One version of this idea is that people are born with rights, that human rights are somehow innate or inherent in human beings (see Morsink 2009). One way that a normative status could be inherent in humans is by being god-given. The American Declaration of Independence claims that people are “endowed by their Creator” with natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. On this view, god, the supreme lawmaker, enacted some basic human rights.

Rights plausibly attributed to divine decree must be very general and abstract (life, liberty, etc.) so that they can apply across thousands of years of human history, not just to recent centuries. But contemporary human rights are specific and many of them presuppose contemporary institutions (e.g., the right to a fair trial, the right to social security, and the right to education). Even if people are born with god-given natural rights, we need to explain how to get from those general and abstract rights to the specific rights found in contemporary declarations and treaties.

Attributing human rights to god’s commands may give them a secure status at the metaphysical level, but in a very diverse world it does not make them practically secure. Billions of people today do not believe in the god of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. If people do not believe in god, or in the sort of god that prescribes rights, then if you want to base human rights on theological beliefs you must persuade these people to accept a rights-supporting theological view. This is likely to be even harder than persuading them of human rights. Legal enactment at the national and international levels provides a far more secure status for practical purposes.

Human rights could also exist independently of legal enactment by being part of actual human moralities. All human groups seem to have moralities, that is, imperative norms of behavior backed by reasons and values. These moralities contain specific norms (for example, a prohibition on the intentional murder of innocent persons) and specific values (for example, valuing human life). One way in which human rights could exist apart from divine or human enactment is as norms accepted in almost all actual human moralities. If almost all human groups have moralities containing norms that prohibit murder, for example, these norms could constitute the human right to life.

This view is attractive but has serious difficulties. Although worldwide acceptance of human rights has increased in recent decades (see below section 4. Universal Human Rights in a World of Diverse Beliefs and Practices ), worldwide moral unanimity about human rights does not exist. Human rights declarations and treaties are intended to change existing norms, not just describe an existing moral consensus.

Yet another way of explaining the existence of human rights is to say that they exist most basically in true or justified ethical outlooks. On this account, to say that there is a human right against torture is mainly to assert that there are strong reasons for believing that it is always morally wrong to engage in torture and that protections should be provided against its practice. This approach would view the Universal Declaration as attempting to formulate a justified political morality: that is, as not merely trying to identify a preexisting moral consensus, but trying to create a consensus that could be supported by very plausible moral and practical reasons. This approach requires commitment to the objectivity of such reasons. It holds that just as there are reliable ways of finding out how the physical world works, or what makes buildings sturdy and durable, there are reliable ways of finding out what individuals may justifiably demand of each other and of governments. Even if unanimity about human rights is currently lacking, rational agreement is available to humans if they will commit themselves to open-minded and serious moral and political inquiry. If moral reasons exist independently of human construction, they can—when combined with premises about current institutions, problems, and resources—generate moral norms different from those currently accepted or enacted. The Universal Declaration seems to proceed on exactly this assumption (see Morsink 2009).

One problem with this view is that an existence based on good reasons seems a rather thin form of existence for human rights. But perhaps we can view this thinness as a practical rather than a theoretical problem—that is, as something to be remedied by the formulation and enactment of legal norms. The best form of existence for human rights would combine robust legal existence with the sort of moral existence that comes from being supported by strong moral and practical reasons.

Justifications for human rights should identify plausible starting points for defending the key features of human rights and offer an account of the transition from those starting points to a list of specific rights (see Nickel 2007). Further, justifying international human rights is likely to require additional steps (see Buchanan 2013). These requirements make the construction of a good justification a daunting task.

Recent attempts to justify human rights offer a dizzying variety of grounds. These include prudential reasons; linkage arguments (Shue 1996); agency and autonomy (Gewirth 1996; Griffin 2008); basic needs (D. Miller 2012); capabilities and positive freedom (Gould 2004; Nussbaum 2000; and Sen 2004) dignity (Gilabert 2018b; Kateb 2011, Tasioulas 2015); and fairness, status equality, and equal respect (Dworkin 2011; Buchanan 2013).

There is a lot of overlap between these approaches, but also important differences that are likely to make them yield different results. For example, an approach framed in terms of agency and autonomy will be more strongly and directly supportive of fundamental freedoms than one framed in terms of basic human needs. Justifications can be based on just one of these types of reasons or be pluralistic and appeal to several. Seeing so much diversity in philosophical approaches to justification may be discouraging (although great disagreement in approaches is common in philosophy) but its good side is that it suggests that there are at least several plausible ways of justifying human rights.

Philosophical justifications for human rights differ in how much credibility they attribute to contemporary lists of human rights, such as the one found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). Some take fidelity to contemporary human rights practice as nearly imperative while others prioritize particular normative frameworks even if they can only justify some of the rights in contemporary lists.

Attempting to discuss all of these approaches would be a task for a large book, not an encyclopedic entry. The discussion here is limited to two approaches: agency/autonomy and dignity.

2.2.1 Agency and Autonomy

Grounding human rights in human agency and autonomy has had strong advocates in recent decades (Griffin 2008; Gould 2004). An important forerunner in this area was Alan Gewirth. In Human Rights: Essays on Justification and Application (1982), Gewirth argued that human rights are indispensable conditions of a life as an agent who survives and acts. Abstractly described, the conditions of such a life are basic freedom and well-being. A prudent rational agent who must have freedom and well-being will assert a “prudential right claim” (1982: 31)to them. But, having demanded that others must respect her freedom and well-being, consistency requires her to recognize and respect the freedom and well-being of all other persons, too. She “logically must accept” (1982: 20) that other people as agents have equal rights to freedom and well-being. These two abstract rights work alone and together to generate a list of more determinate human rights of familiar sorts (Gewirth 1978, 1982, 1996). Gewirth’s argument generated a large critical literature (see Beyleveld 1991 and Boylan 1999).

A more recent attempt to base human rights on agency and autonomy is found in James Griffin’s book, On Human Rights (2008). Griffin does not share Gewirth’s goal of providing a logically inescapable argument for human rights, but his overall view shares key structural features with Gewirth’s. These include basing the justification on the unique value of agency and autonomy, postulating some abstract rights, and making place for a right to well-being within an agency-based approach.

In the current dispute between “moral” (or “orthodox”) and “political” conceptions of human rights, Griffin strongly sides with those who see human rights as fundamentally moral rights (on this debate see Liao & Etinson 2012). Their defining role, in Griffin’s view, is protecting people’s ability to form and pursue conceptions of a worthwhile life—a capacity that Griffin variously refers to as “autonomy”, “normative agency”, and “personhood”. This ability to form, revise, and pursue conceptions of a worthwhile life is taken to be of paramount value, the exclusive source of human dignity, and thereby the basis of human rights. Griffin holds that people value this capacity “especially highly, often more highly than even our happiness” (2008: 32 [§2.3])

“Practicalities” also shape human rights in Griffin’s view. He describes practicalities as “a second ground” (2008: 37–39 [§2.5]) of human rights. They prescribe making the boundaries of rights clear by avoiding “too many complicated bends” (2008: 37 [§2.5]), enlarging rights a little to give them safety margins, and consulting facts about human nature and the nature of society. Accordingly, the justifying generic function that Griffin assigns to human rights is protecting normative agency while taking account of practicalities.

Griffin thinks that he can explain the universality of human rights by recognizing that normative agency is a threshold concept—once one is above the threshold one has the same rights as everyone else. One’s degree of agency above the threshold does not matter. There are no “degrees of being a person” (2008: 67 [§3.5]) among competent adults. Treating agency in this way, however, is a normative policy, not just a fact about concepts. An alternative policy is possible, namely proportioning people’s rights to their level of normative agency. This is what we do with children; their rights grow as they develop greater agency and responsibility. To exclude proportional rights, and to explain the egalitarian dimensions of human rights, including their character as universal and equal rights to be enjoyed without discrimination, some additional ground pertaining to fairness and equality seems to be needed.

This last point raises the question of whether agency-based approaches in general can adequately account for the universality, equality, and anti-discriminatory character of human rights. The idea that human rights are to be respected and protected without discrimination seems to be most centrally a matter of fairness rather than one of agency, freedom, or welfare. Discrimination often harms and hinders its victims, but even when it doesn’t it is still deeply unfair. For example, human rights that explicitly refer to fair wages and equal pay for equal work (ICESCR Articles 3 and 7.i) seem to be much more about fairness than about agency, freedom, or welfare—particularly since human rights to a wage that ensures a decent standard of living are often mentioned separately (ICESCR Article 7.ii).

2.2.2 Dignity

Many human rights declarations and treaties invoke human dignity as the ground of human rights. In recent decades numerous books and articles have been published that advocate dignitarian approaches to justifying human rights (for example, Gilabert 2018b; Kateb 2014; McCrudden 2013 and the many essays therein; Tasioulas 2015; Waldron 2012 and 2015). There have also been many critics, including Den Hartogh 2014; Etinson 2020; Green 2010; Macklin 2003; Rosen 2012; and Sangiovanni 2017.

A well-worked out conception of human dignity is likely to have at least three parts. The first describes the nature of human dignity, specifying for example whether it is a kind of value, status, or virtue (see Rosen 2012). The second explains the grounds of human dignity—that is, why, or in virtue of which shared capacities or features we all have the sort of dignity described in the first step. Finally, and third, there is the question of human dignity’s practical requirements, or what is concretely involved in “respecting” it. (See the entry on dignity for a broader discussion.)

Human dignity is often understood as a special worth or status which all human beings share in contrast to other animals (e.g., Kateb 2011). We can call this the “Special Worth Thesis”. Attempts to provide good explanatory grounds for the Special Worth Thesis identify one or more valuable features that all human persons share and that non-human animals mostly do not possess or have at much lower levels. The valuable features identified will presumably once again need to be “threshold concepts”, so that people can vary in how much of the feature or capacity they have without thereby losing, lessening, or increasing their human dignity in comparison to other persons. Human dignity is, after all, supposed to be a strongly egalitarian idea. Plausible candidates for such grounds might include moral abilities (to understand and follow moral values and norms and to reason and act in terms of them); thought, imagination, and rationality; self-consciousness and reflective capacities; and the use of complicated language and technologies, among others.

One worry about the Special Worth Thesis is its self-glorifying character. In claiming special worth we humans seem to excuse our many faults—including a terrible capacity for evil, routinely evidenced in our behavior towards other humans and towards non-human animals (Rosen 2013). Another closely associated and increasingly prominent worry is that the Special Worth Thesis is speciesist, arbitrarily ranking the interests, status, and/or value of human beings above that/those of non-human animals (Kymlicka 2018; Meyer 2001). In the context of these reasonable concerns, it is worth noting that support for, or a belief in, human dignity need not be prejudicial towards non-human animals; one can affirm the dignity of homo sapiens while also affirming the equal dignity of other species and forms of life (Etinson 2020; Gilabert 2018b). The Special Worth Thesis is optional and only defended by some theorists.

What attitudes, actions, policies, and rights follow from the duty or reason to respect human dignity? And are human rights among them? The answer will at least in part depend on what we think human dignity is. If it is a kind of virtue shared or shareable by all persons then its practical requirements will include things like praising and/or admiring those who possess it, and perhaps developing or cultivating “dignitarian” dispositions in one’s own character. If human dignity is, by contrast, a kind of value or worth (as in Immanuel Kant’s famous understanding of dignity as a worth “beyond all price” Kant 1785/1996: 43), then it is something we have reason to protect, promote, preserve, cherish, restore and perhaps even maximize, if possible. The human right to life, and its material conditions, is an intuitive product of human dignity understood in this way. If, on the other hand, we think of human dignity as a kind of legal (Waldron 2012 and 2015), moral (Gilabert 2018b; Lee & George 2008), or social status (Etinson 2020; Killmister 2020), then duties of “respect” more naturally follow.

These options are not mutually exclusive. In principle, human dignity can refer to all of these things: value, status, and virtue. If human dignity yields human rights, however, this is going to depend on exactly how we understand its practical requirements in light of its nature and grounds. This practical elaboration is the workhorse of a conception of human dignity. It normally results in one or more general maxims or guidelines: e.g., not to humiliate or degrade, never to treat persons merely as a means, to treat others in justifiable ways, to avoid severe cruelty, to respect autonomy, etc. The prospect of grounding human rights in human dignity faces critical challenges at this juncture. As we saw in the preceding discussion of agency-based approaches, the more specific and singular one’s dignitarian maxim is, the less plausible it will be as an exhaustive ground for standard lists of human rights in all their variety. On the other hand, a pluralistic set of grounding maxims will make human dignity a better source of human rights, but it is unclear whether in doing so we are simply explaining its implicit content or bringing in other values and norms to fill in its indeterminate scope. This raises the possibility that values and norms such as promoting human welfare; agency/autonomy; and fairness partially constitute the idea of human dignity rather than being derived from it (see Macklin 2003).

3. Which Rights are Human Rights?

This section discusses the question of which rights belong on lists of human rights. The Universal Declaration’s list, which has been very influential, consists of six families:

Security rights that protect people against murder, torture, and genocide;
Due process rights that protect people against arbitrary and excessively harsh punishments and require fair and public trials for those accused of crimes;
Liberty rights that protect people’s fundamental freedoms in areas such as belief, expression, association, and movement;
Political rights that protect people’s liberty to participate in politics by assembling, protesting, voting, and serving in public office;
Equality rights that guarantee equal citizenship, equality before the law, and freedom from discrimination; and
Economic and social rights that require that governments to forbid slavery and forced labor, enforce safe working conditions, ensure to all the availability of work, education, health services, and a standard of living that is adequate.

A seventh category, minority and group rights, has been created by subsequent treaties. These rights protect women, racial and ethnic minorities, indigenous peoples, children, migrant workers, and the disabled. This list of human rights seems normatively diverse: the issues addressed cover include security, liberty, fairness, equality before the law, access to work and good working conditions, unduly cruel treatment, and political participation.

In spite of the ample list above, not every question of social justice or wise governance is a human rights issue. For example, a country could have too many lawyers or inadequate provision for graduate-level education without violating any human rights. Deciding which norms should be counted as human rights is a matter of considerable difficulty. And there is continuing pressure to expand lists of human rights to include new areas. Many political movements would like to see their main concerns categorized as matters of human rights, since this would publicize, promote, and legitimize their concerns at the international level. A possible result of this is “human rights inflation”, the devaluation of human rights caused by producing too much bad human rights currency (see Cranston 1973; Orend 2002; Wellman 1995; Griffin 2008).

One way to avoid rights inflation is to follow Cranston in insisting that human rights only deal with extremely important goods, protections, and freedoms. A supplementary approach is to impose several justificatory tests for specific human rights. For example, it could be required that a proposed human right not only protect some very important good but also respond to one or more common and serious threats to that good (Dershowitz 2004; Donnelly 1989 [2003]; Shue 1996; Talbott 2005), impose burdens on the addressees that are justifiable and no larger than necessary, and be feasible in most of the world’s countries (on feasibility see Gheaus 2022; Gilabert 2009; Nickel 2007; and Richards 2023). This approach restrains rights inflation with several tests, not just one master test.

In deciding which norms should be considered human rights it is possible to make either too little or too much of international documents such as the Universal Declaration and the European Convention. One makes too little of them by proceeding as if drawing up a list of important rights were a new question, never before addressed, and as if there were no practical wisdom to be found in the choices of rights that went into the historic documents. And one makes too much of them by presuming that those documents tell us everything we need to know about human rights. This approach involves a kind of fundamentalism: it holds that when a right is on the official lists of human rights that settles its status as a human right (“If it’s in the book that’s all I need to know”.) But the process of identifying human rights in the United Nations and elsewhere was a political process with plenty of imperfections. There is little reason to take international diplomats as the most authoritative guides to which human rights there are. Further, even if a treaty’s ratification by most countries can settle the question of whether a certain right is a human right within international law, such a treaty cannot settle its weight. The treaty may suggest that the right is supported by weighty considerations, but it cannot make this so. If an international treaty enacted a right to visit national parks without charge as a human right, the ratification of that treaty would make free access to national parks a human right within international law, but it may well fail to persuade us that national park access is important enough to be a genuine human right.

The least controversial family of human rights is civil and political rights. These rights are familiar from historic bills of rights such as the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (1789) and the U.S. Bill of Rights (1791, with subsequent amendments). Contemporary sources include the first 21 Articles of the Universal Declaration , and treaties such as the European Convention , the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights , the American Convention on Human Rights , and the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights . Some representative formulations follow:

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought and expression. This right includes freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing, in print, in the form of art, or through any other medium of one’s choice. ( American Convention on Human Rights , Article 13.1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and to freedom of association with others, including the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests. ( European Convention , Article 11) No one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks. (ICCPR Article 17)

Most civil and political rights are not absolute—they can sometimes be overridden by other considerations. For example, the right to freedom of movement can be restricted by public and private property rights, by restraining orders related to domestic violence, and by legal punishments. Further, after a disaster such as a hurricane or earthquake free movement is often appropriately suspended to keep out the curious, permit access of emergency vehicles and equipment, and prevent looting. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights permits most rights to be suspended during times “of public emergency which threatens the life of the nation” (ICCPR Article 4). But it excludes some rights from suspension including the right to life, the prohibition of torture, the prohibition of slavery, the prohibition of ex post facto criminal laws, and freedom of thought and religion.

The Universal Declaration included economic and social rights (“ESRs”) that address matters such as education, food, health services, and employment. Their inclusion has been the source of much controversy (see Beetham 1995). The European Convention did not include them (although it was later amended to include the right to education). Instead ESRs were put into a separate treaty, the European Social Charter . When the United Nations began the process of putting the rights of the Universal Declaration into international law, it followed the same pattern by placing ESRs in a treaty separate from the one dealing with civil and political rights. This treaty, the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR, 1966), treated these standards as rights—albeit rights to be progressively realized.

The ICESCR includes rights to: freedom from slavery and forced labor; adequate income or services to cover food, water, clothing, and shelter; basic health conditions and services; free public education; freedom to work, choose one's occupation, and have adequate opportunities for remunerative employment; fair pay and safe conditions of work; social security; equality for women in the workplace, including equal pay for equal work; freedom to form trade unions and to strike; special protections for mothers and children; adequate rest and leisure; and nondiscrimination in respecting, protecting, and fulfilling these rights. In terms of underlying values and norms, some of these rights are welfare-oriented, others are fairness-oriented, and still others are freedom-oriented (Nickel 2022b).

Article 2.1 of the ICESCR sets out what each of the parties commits itself to do about this list, namely to

take steps, individually and through international assistance and co-operation…to the maximum of its available resources, with a view to achieving progressively the full realization of the rights recognized in the present Covenant.

In contrast, the Civil and Political Covenant commits its signatories to immediate compliance, to

respect and to ensure to all individuals within its territory the rights recognized in the present Covenant. (ICCPR Article 2.1)

The contrast between these two levels of commitment has led some people to suspect that ESRs are really just valuable goals. For many countries, noncompliance due to inability would have been certain if these standards had been treated as immediately binding.

ESRs have often been defended with linkage arguments which claim that ESRs provide indispensable support to the realization of civil and political rights. This approach was first developed philosophically by Henry Shue. He argued that security and subsistence are so indispensable to the full realization of other rights that anyone who endorses the realization of any other right must also endorse ESRs (Shue 1980; for analysis and critical assessments of linkage arguments see Nickel 2007, 2016, and 2022a).

Do ESRs protect sufficiently important human interests? Maurice Cranston opposed ESRs by suggesting that they are mainly concerned with matters such as holidays with pay which are not of deep and universal human interest (Cranston 1967, 1973; treatments of objections to ESRs include Beetham 1995; Howard 1983; and Nickel 2007). It is far from the case, however, that most ESRs pertain only to superficial interests. Consider two examples: the right to an adequate standard of living and the right to free public education. The former requires governments to work hard at remedying widespread and serious evils such as severe poverty, starvation and malnutrition, and ignorance. The importance of food and other basic material conditions of life is easy to show. These goods are essential to people’s ability to live, function, and flourish. Without adequate access to these goods, interests in life, health, and liberty are endangered and serious illness and death are probable. The unavailability of educational opportunities typically limits (both absolutely and comparatively) people’s abilities to participate fully and effectively in the political and economic life of their county

Are ESRs too burdensome? Another objection to ESRs is that they are too burdensome on their dutybearers. It is very expensive to guarantee everyone basic education and minimal material conditions. Frequently the claim that ESRs are too burdensome suggests that ESRs are substantially more burdensome or expensive than liberty rights. Suppose, however, that we use as a basis of comparison liberty rights such as freedom of communication, association, and movement. These rights require both respect and protection from governments. And people cannot be adequately protected in their enjoyment of liberties such as these unless they also have security and due process rights. The costs of liberty, as it were, include the costs of law and criminal justice. Once we see this, liberty rights start to look a lot more costly.

Further, we need not generally think of ESRs as simply giving everyone a free supply of the goods they protect. Guarantees of things like food and housing may be intolerably expensive and undermine productivity if everyone simply receives a free supply. A viable system of ESRs can require most people to provide these goods for themselves and their families through work, as long as they are given the necessary opportunities, education, and infrastructure. Government-implemented ESRs provide guarantees of availability (or “secure access”), but under many conditions governments should only have to supply the requisite goods in a small fraction of cases.

Countries that do not accept and implement ESRs must still somehow bear the costs of providing for the needy since these countries are unlikely to find it tolerable to allow sizable parts of the population to starve and be homeless. If government does not supply food, clothing, and shelter to those unable to provide for themselves, then families, friends, and communities will have to shoulder this burden. It is only in the last hundred or so years that government-sponsored ESRs have taken over a substantial part of the burden of providing for the needy. The taxes associated with ESRs are partial replacements for other burdensome duties, namely the duties of families and communities to provide adequate care for the unemployed, sick, disabled, and aged. Deciding whether to implement ESRs is not a matter of deciding whether to bear such burdens, but rather of deciding whether to continue with total reliance on systems of informal provision that distribute assistance in a very spotty way and whose costs fall very unevenly on families, friends, and communities.

Are ESRs feasible worldwide? Another objection to ESRs alleges that they are not feasible in many countries (on feasibility see Gheaus 2013, Gilabert 2009, and Nickel 2007). It is very expensive to provide guarantees of subsistence, measures to protect and restore people’s health, and education. Many governments will be unable to provide these guarantees while meeting other important responsibilities. Rights are not magical sources of supply (Holmes & Sunstein 1999). As we saw earlier, the ESR Covenant dealt with the issue of feasibility by calling for progressive implementation, that is, implementation as financial and other resources permit. Does this view of implementation turn ESRs into high-priority goals? And if so, is that a bad thing?

Standards that outrun the abilities of many of their addressees are good candidates for treatment as goals. Viewing them as largely aspirational rather than as imposing immediate duties avoids problems of inability-based noncompliance. One may worry, however, that this is too much of a demotion for ESRs because goals seem much weaker than rights (see O’Neill 2005 and Tomalty 2014). But goals can be formulated in ways that make them more like rights. They can be assigned addressees (the parties who are to pursue the goal), beneficiaries, scopes that define the objective to be pursued, and a high level of priority (see Langford, Sumner, & Yamin 2013 and Nickel 2013; see also OHCHR and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, UN ). Strong reasons for the importance of these goals can be provided. And supervisory bodies can monitor levels of progress and pressure low-performing addressees to attend to and work on realizing their goals.

Treating very demanding rights as goals has some advantages. Goals coexist easily with low levels of ability to achieve them. And goals are flexible: addressees with different levels of ability can choose ways of pursuing the goals that suit their circumstances and means. Because of these attractions it may be worth exploring sophisticated ways to transform very demanding human rights into goals. The transformation may be full or partial. It is possible to create right-goal mixtures that contain some mandatory elements (see Brems 2009). A right-goal mixture might include some rights-like goals, some mandatory steps to be taken immediately, and duties to realize the rights-like goals as quickly as possible.

Do ESRs yield a sufficient commitment to equality? Objections to ESRs as human rights have come from both the political right and the political left. A common objection from the left, including liberal egalitarians and socialists, is that ESRs as enumerated in human rights documents and treaties provide too weak of a commitment to material equality (Gilabert 2018a and Moyn 2018). Realizing ESRs requires governments to ensure everyone an adequate minimum of resources in some key areas but does not require strong commitments to equality of opportunity, redistributive taxation, or wealth ceilings (see the entries on equality , distributive justice , and liberal feminism ).

The egalitarian objection cannot be that human rights documents and treaties show no concern for people living in poverty and misery. One of the main purposes of including ESRs in human rights documents and treaties was to promote serious efforts to combat poverty, lack of education, and unhealthy living conditions in countries all around the world (see also Langford, Sumner, & Yamin 2013 on the UN Millennium Development Goals). The objection also cannot be that human rights facilitated the hollowing out of systems of welfare rights in many developed countries that occurred after 1980 (for criticism of this view see Song 2019). Those cuts in welfare programs were often in violation of the requirements of realizing ESRs.

Perhaps it should be conceded that human rights documents and treaties have not said enough about positive measures to promote equal opportunity in education and work. A positive right to equal opportunity, like the one Rawls proposed, would require countries to take serious measures to reduce disparities between the opportunities effectively available to children of high-income and low-income parents (see Rawls 1971 and the entry on equality of opportunity ).

A strongly egalitarian political program is probably best pursued partially within but mostly beyond the human rights framework. One reason for this is that the human rights movement will have better prospects for ongoing acceptance and support if it has widespread political acceptance. To achieve this, the rights it endorses must appeal to people with a variety of political views, ranging from center-left to center-right. Support from the broad political center is less likely to emerge and survive if the human rights platform is perceived as mostly a leftist program.

Equality of rights for historically disadvantaged or subordinated groups is a longstanding concern of the human rights movement. Human rights documents repeatedly emphasize that all people, including women and members of minority ethnic and religious groups, have equal human rights and should be able to enjoy them without discrimination. The right to freedom from discrimination figures prominently in the Universal Declaration and subsequent treaties. The Civil and Political Covenant, for example, commits participating states to respect and protect their people’s rights without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth, or social status (ICCPR Article 2.1). On minority and group rights see Kymlicka 1995.

A number of standard civil and political rights are especially important to ethnic and religious minorities, including rights to freedom of association, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, and freedom from discrimination. Human rights documents also include rights that refer to minorities explicitly and give them special protections. For example, the Civil and Political Covenant in Article 27 says that persons belonging to ethnic, religious, or linguistic minorities

shall not be denied the right, in community with other members of their group, to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practice their own religion, or to use their own language. (ICCPR Article 27)

Feminists have often protested that standard lists of human rights do not sufficiently take into account the unique risks faced by women. For example, issues like domestic violence, reproductive choice, and the trafficking of women and girls for sex work did not have a prominent place in early human rights documents and treaties. Lists of human rights have had to be expanded “to include the degradation and violation of women” (Bunch 2006; see also Okin 1998). Violations of women’s human rights often occur in the “private” sphere, i.e., in the home at the hands of other family members. This suggests that governments cannot be seen as the only addressees of human rights and that the right to privacy of home and family needs qualification to allow police to protect women within the home.

The issue of how formulations of human rights should respond to variations in the sorts of risks and dangers that different people face is difficult and arises not just in relation to gender but also in relation to age, race, sexual orientation, profession, political affiliation, religion, and personal interests. Due process rights, for example, are much more useful to young people (and particularly young men) than they are to older people since the latter are far less likely to run afoul of the criminal law.

Since 1964 the United Nations has mainly dealt with the rights of women and minorities through specialized treaties such as the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965); the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979); the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2007). See also the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007). Specialized treaties allow international norms to address unique problems of particular groups such as assistance and care during pregnancy and childbearing in the case of women, custody issues in the case of children, and the loss of historic territories by indigenous peoples.

Minority groups are often targets of violence. Human rights norms call upon governments to refrain from such violence and to provide protections against it. This work is partly done by the right to life, which is a standard individual right. It is also done by the right against genocide which protects groups from attempts to destroy or decimate them. The Genocide Convention was one of the first human rights treaties after World War II. The right against genocide is clearly a group right. It is held by both individuals and groups and provides protection to groups as groups. It is largely negative in the sense that it requires governments and other agencies to refrain from destroying groups; but it also requires that legal and other protections against genocide be created at the national level.

As a group right, can the right against genocide be a human right? More generally, can a group right fit the general idea of human rights as rights of individual persons proposed earlier? Perhaps it can if we broaden our conception of who can hold human rights to include important groups that people form and cherish (see the entry on group rights ). This can be made more palatable, perhaps, by recognizing that the beneficiaries of the right against genocide are individual humans who enjoy greater security against attempts to destroy the group to which they belong (Kymlicka 1989).

Although contemporary lists of human rights are already long, there are doubtless norms that should be counted as human rights but are not generally recognized as such. After all, there are lots of areas in which people’s basic welfare, dignity, and fundamental interests are threatened by the actions and omissions of individuals and governments. New technologies create new problems and require us to rethink old solutions. And new political movements emerge and create demands for their goals and norms as human rights.

Prominent recent proposals of new human rights include Kimberley Brownlee’s advocacy of a right against social deprivation that would address severe unwanted loneliness (Brownlee 2020 and 2022), the proposal of a universal right to internet access that was endorsed by the UN General Assembly in 2016 (UN Resolution 32/13), and the similar endorsement in 2022 of a right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment (UN Resolution 76/300; see also the entry on environmental ethics ).

The right to a healthy environment provides a good example of how new human rights can slowly emerge. After a right of this sort was added to many national bills of rights, environmental NGOs began to promote it within international organizations. In 2000 the European Union’s Bill of Rights, the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union , included in Article 37 an environmental protection norm:

A high level of environmental protection and the improvement of the quality of the environment must be integrated into the policies of the Union and ensured in accordance with the principle of sustainable development.

In 2012 the UN Human Rights Council created a Special Rapporteur (independent expert) on the Environment, eventually approved the right to “a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment”, and forwarded it to the General Assembly—where 80 percent of the world’s countries voted for it (UN Resolution 76/300). Human rights approaches to climate change have also been developed in recent decades (see Bodansky 2009; Caney 2009; Gardiner 2013; and Vanderheiden 2008).

Worries about the proliferation of human rights have not disappeared. Lawyers and international organizations have proposed standards to limit the introduction of new human rights (for example, Alston 1984 and the UN General Assembly 1986). And human rights treaty-making has slowed. After the approval of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in 1999, the only human rights treaty approved by the UN is the 2006 Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. In 2007 a declaration (not a treaty) on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was approved by the General Assembly. Prominent philosophers have also advocated smaller lists of human rights (see, for example, Cranston 1967 and 1973; Rawls 1999; and Griffin 2008). Griffin also opposed squeezing new content into existing human rights—which he described as the “ballooning” of rights.

Two familiar philosophical worries about human rights are that they are based on beliefs and attitudes that are culturally relative and that their creation and advocacy involves ethnocentrism. Human rights prescribe universal standards in areas such as security, law enforcement, equality, political participation, and education. The peoples and countries of planet Earth are, however, enormously varied in their practices, traditions, religions, and levels of economic and political development. Putting these two propositions together may be enough to justify the worry that universal human rights do not sufficiently accommodate the diversity of Earth’s peoples. A theoretical expression of this worry is “relativism”, the idea that ethical, political, and legal standards are only true or justified relative to the traditions, beliefs, and conditions of a particular country, culture or region (see the entry on moral relativism ).

During the drafting in 1947 of the Universal Declaration, the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association (“AAA”) warned of the danger that the Declaration would be “a statement of rights conceived only in terms of the values prevalent in Western Europe and America”. A central concern of the AAA Board in the period right after World War II was to condemn intolerant colonialist attitudes of the day and to advocate cultural and political self-determination. But the Board also made the stronger assertion that “standards and values are relative to the culture from which they derive” and thus “what is held to be a human right in one society may be regarded as anti-social by another people” (AAA 1947).

Such assertions have continued to fuel accusations that human rights are instruments of ethnocentrism, arrogance, and cultural imperialism (Renteln 1990). Ethnocentrism is the assumption, usually unconscious, that “one’s own group is the center of everything” and that its beliefs, practices, and norms provide the standards by which other groups are “scaled and rated” (Sumner 1906; see also Etinson 2018a who argues that ethnocentrism is best understood as a kind of cultural bias rather than a belief in cultural superiority). Ethnocentrism can lead to arrogance and intolerance in dealings with other countries, ethical systems, and religions. Finally, cultural imperialism occurs when the economically, technologically, and militarily strongest countries impose their beliefs, values, and institutions on the rest of the world (for a useful discussion of several power-related concerns about human rights, see Gilabert 2018a).

As in the AAA Board’s case, relativists often combine these charges with a prescription, namely that tolerance of varied practices and traditions ought to be instilled and practiced through measures that include extended learning about other cultures. The idea that relativism and exposure to other cultures promote tolerance may be correct from a psychological perspective. People who are sensitive to differences in beliefs, practices, and traditions, and who are suspicious of the grounds for extending norms across borders, may be more inclined to be tolerant of other countries and peoples than those who believe in an objective universal morality. Still, philosophers have been generally critical of attempts to argue from relativism to a prescription of tolerance (see Williams 1972 [1993] and Talbott 2005). If the culture and religion of one country has long fostered intolerant attitudes and practices, and if its citizens and officials act intolerantly towards people from other countries, they are simply following their own traditions and cultural norms. Accordingly, a relativist from a tolerant country will be hard-pressed to find a basis for criticizing the citizens and officials of the intolerant country. To do so the relativist will have to endorse a transcultural principle of tolerance and to advocate as an outsider cultural change in the direction of greater tolerance. Because of this, relativists who are deeply committed to tolerance may find themselves attracted to a qualified commitment to human rights.

Perhaps for these reasons, relativism is not the stance of most anthropologists today. Currently the AAA has a central Committee whose objectives include promoting, protecting, and developing an anthropological perspective on human rights. While still emphasizing the importance of cultural differences, anthropologists now often support the protection of vulnerable cultures, non-discrimination, and the rights and land claims of indigenous peoples (see the AAA’s 2020 Statement on Anthropology and Human Rights).

The conflict between relativists and human rights advocates may be partially based on differences in their underlying philosophical beliefs, particularly in metaethics. Relativists are often subjectivists or noncognitivists and think of morality as entirely socially constructed and transmitted. In contrast, philosophically-inclined human rights advocates are more likely to adhere to or presuppose cognitivism, moral realism, and intuitionism.

As the AAA’s 1947 Statement shows, the accommodation of diversity has been a concern facing the contemporary human rights regime since its inception. As part of a 1946–47 UNESCO inquiry into the theoretical basis of human rights, the French philosopher, Jacques Maritain, famously suggested that universal agreement on human rights was possible so long as questions of underlying justification were ignored: “Yes… we agree about the rights but on condition no one asks us why” (Maritain 1949: 9). The International Bill of Human Rights appears to violate this embargo when it asserts, in the Preamble to both major Covenants, that “these rights derive from the inherent dignity of the human person”. Nonetheless, Maritain’s idea has strong echoes in contemporary philosophical work (see Taylor 1999), including John Rawls’ idea that human rights can have a minimal public or “political” justification which may be accepted from various “comprehensive” religious, moral, and philosophical points of view (Rawls 1999; Beitz 2009). Indeed, some have argued that international human rights law’s justificatory appeal to human dignity should be understood in precisely this ecumenical way (McCrudden 2008).

Other important methods of accommodating diversity include the abstract formulation of human rights norms, which allows for diverse, context-sensitive modes of social and institutional implementation (see Etinson 2013). As discussed in section 1 , a modest understanding of the aims of human rights would leave more room for democratic decision-making at the domestic level, and for cultural and political variation across countries (see also the European Court of Human Rights’ notion of a “margin of appreciation”, discussed in Letsas 2006). And it is worth noting that, within limits, state parties to international human rights treaties are entitled to submit “reservations” that alter the legal effect of treaty provisions as they pertain to that state. This provides a further avenue for legal variation and accommodation.

In the 1990s, Singapore’s Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew and others argued that international human rights as found in United Nations declarations and treaties were insensitive to distinctive “Asian values”, such as prizing families and community (in contrast to strong individualism); putting social harmony over personal freedom; respect for political leaders and institutions; and emphasizing responsibility, hard work, and thriftiness as means of social progress (on the Asian Values debate see Bauer & Bell [eds] 1999; Bell 2000; and Sen 1997). Proponents of the Asian values idea did not wish to abolish all human rights; they rather wanted to deemphasize some families of human rights, particularly the fundamental freedoms and rights of democratic participation (and in some cases the rights of women). They also wanted Western governments and NGOs to stop criticizing them for human rights violations in these areas.

At the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, countries including Singapore, Malaysia, China, and Iran advocated accommodations within human rights practice for cultural and economic differences. Western representatives tended to view the position of these countries as excuses for repression and authoritarianism. The Conference responded by approving the Vienna Declaration . It included in Article 5 the assertion that countries should not pick and choose among human rights:

All human rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent and interrelated. The international community must treat human rights globally in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing, and with the same emphasis. While the significance of national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds must be borne in mind, it is the duty of States, regardless of their political, economic and cultural systems, to promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms.

In recent decades widespread acceptance of human rights has occurred in most parts of the world. Three quarters of the world’s countries have ratified the major human rights treaties, and many countries in Africa, the Americas, and Europe participate in regional human rights regimes that have international courts (see the Georgetown University Human Rights Law Research Guide in the Other Internet Resources below). Ratification does not, of course, guarantee compliance. Further, all of the world’s countries now use similar political institutions (law, courts, legislatures, executives, militaries, bureaucracies, police, prisons, taxation, and public schools) and these institutions carry with them characteristic problems and abuses (Donnelly 1989 [2020]). Finally, globalization has diminished the differences among peoples. Today’s world is not the one that early anthropologists and missionaries found. National and cultural boundaries are breached not just by international trade but also by millions of travelers and migrants, electronic communications, international law covering many areas, and the efforts of international governmental and non-governmental organizations. International influences and organizations are everywhere and countries borrow freely and regularly from each other’s inventions and practices.

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How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

The International (UN) Human Rights System , Georgetown Law Library Human Rights Law Research Guide
International Human Rights Law , United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
Human Rights entry in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy .

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Essay on Human Values

Students are often asked to write an essay on Human Values in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

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100 Words Essay on Human Values

Introduction.

Human values are the principles that guide us to distinguish between right and wrong. They are the foundation of our character and personality.

Types of Human Values

Values like honesty, kindness, respect, and responsibility are crucial. They shape our behavior and decisions, influencing how we interact with others.

Importance of Human Values

Human values are important as they help maintain harmony in society. They promote good behavior and understanding, fostering positive relationships.

In conclusion, human values are essential for personal growth and societal harmony. They guide us in leading a fulfilling and respectful life.

250 Words Essay on Human Values

The importance of human values.

Human values play a crucial role in the development of an individual’s character and the society they inhabit. They act as a guiding light, helping us make decisions that are not only beneficial to us but also to others around us. Values such as honesty, integrity, and compassion promote cooperation, trust, and social cohesion.

Values are generally classified into two categories: intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic values are those we consider important because they contribute to our inner self, such as wisdom and knowledge. Extrinsic values, on the other hand, are those that are valued for their outcomes, like money or power.

Human Values in the Modern World

In today’s fast-paced world, the significance of human values is often overlooked. The relentless pursuit of materialistic gains often leads to a disregard for these fundamental values, causing societal discord and personal dissatisfaction.

A society that upholds human values fosters a sense of unity, peace, and satisfaction among its members. Therefore, it is essential to cultivate and uphold these values for the betterment of ourselves and our society. In the end, human values are the bedrock upon which a harmonious society is built.

500 Words Essay on Human Values

Introduction to human values.

Human values are the principles, standards, or qualities considered worthwhile or desirable. They are the essence of our personality, shaping our character and behavior. They are the fundamental beliefs that dictate what is right and wrong, guiding our actions and interactions.

Classification of Human Values

Human values are essential in maintaining societal harmony. They foster understanding, tolerance, and mutual respect among individuals. They are the cornerstones of ethical behavior, promoting fairness, justice, and equality. Additionally, they encourage personal growth, self-discipline, and responsibility.

Human Values and Morality

There is a strong correlation between human values and morality. Values serve as the foundation for moral codes, influencing our judgment of what is morally acceptable or unacceptable. They shape our conscience, influencing our decisions and actions. Therefore, a strong value system is crucial for moral development and ethical conduct.

Human Values and Education

Challenges to human values in the modern world.

In the modern world, human values face several challenges. Materialistic pursuits often overshadow moral values, leading to unethical practices. Technological advancements, while beneficial, can also breed isolation and selfishness, undermining social values. Therefore, it is crucial to balance material progress with moral progress to uphold human values.

Conclusion: Upholding Human Values

Human values are integral to our existence and co-existence. They are the guiding principles that shape our actions, decisions, and interactions. Despite the challenges, it is imperative to uphold and promote human values. In doing so, we can foster a society that values integrity, respect, and compassion, paving the way for a harmonious and just world.

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The Four Values Framework: Fairness, Respect, Care and Honesty

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First Online: 29 May 2019

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Doris Schroeder 8 ,
Kate Chatfield 8 ,
Michelle Singh 9 ,
Roger Chennells 10 &
Peter Herissone-Kelly 11

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Values inspire, motivate and engage people to discharge obligations or duties. This chapter defends the values approach in the context of guarding against ethics dumping, the practice of exporting unethical research from higher-income to lower-income settings. A number of essential questions will be answered: What are values? What is the meaning of the word “value”? Why does it make sense to choose values as an instrument to guide ethical action in preference to other possibilities? And what is meant by fairness, respect, care and honesty? It is concluded that values can provide excellent guidance and aspiration in the fight against ethics dumping, and are therefore a well-chosen structure for the Global Code of Conduct for Research in Resource-Poor Settings.

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Introduction

Many celebrated documents which advocate for a better world include a preamble that mentions values. For instance, at the international level, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UN 1948 ) lists four values in the first sentence: dignity, freedom, justice and peace in the world. The first sentence of the Convention on Biological Diversity (UN 1992 ) refers to “the intrinsic value of biological diversity and of the ecological, genetic , social, economic, scientific, educational, cultural, recreational and aesthetic values of biological diversity” (emphasis added).

Other national or professional codes have incorporated values prominently into individual articles. For instance, at the national level in the UK, the first item of The Code: Professional Standards of Practice and Behaviour for Nurses, Midwives and Nursing Associates , reads: “Treat people with kindness, respect and compassion” (NMC 2018 ).

In some codes one has to search to find obvious references to values as they are often incorporated in a more implicit manner, such as in the Declaration of Helsinki (WMA 2013 ), which speaks of “safety , effectiveness, efficiency, accessibility and quality” in article 6.

When developing the Global Code of Conduct for Research in Resource-Poor Settings (GCC), a unique approach emerged naturally from the process employed. Its underpinning values materialized ahead of its final articles through an investigation into the risks of exploitation in international collaborative research (Chapter 5 ), and from a global engagement and fact-finding mission (Chapter 6 ).

It soon became clear that fairness, respect, care and honesty are all lacking, or deficient, whenever ethics dumping Footnote 1 occurs, and that a loss of trust in researchers and research itself can result. What also emerged is that these values are shared across the range of cultures that were represented in the TRUST Footnote 2 consortium. It was therefore possible to surmise that these shared values are vital for equitable research partnerships and to prevent ethics dumping . In other words, these values are necessary to foster an ethical culture in research, and are therefore values to which all researchers should aspire.

This chapter will answer some essential questions: What are values? What is the meaning of the word “value”? Why does it make sense to choose values as an instrument to guide ethical action in preference to other possibilities? And finally, what is meant by “fairness”, “respect”, “care” and “honesty”?

The Meaning of “Value”

Values pervade human experience (Ogletree 2004 ), and references to “values” are ubiquitous. With vast numbers of articles, books and internet sites offering advice on matters such as values we should live by , discovering our own values , changing our core values and achieving success through values , it is obvious that values are important to people.

The term “value” can be used in many different ways. Footnote 3 With reference to the way in which people use the term, three primary meanings of “value” can be distinguished (see Fig. 3.1 ).

The meaning of value

First, value can refer to measurability. Mathematics operates with values, which can, for example, be discrete or continuous. Artists might speak of colours having values, meaning the relative lightness or darkness of a colour. In music, a note value determines the duration of a musical note. Economists or art dealers might measure value in monetary terms; a particular company or a particular painting might be valued at a certain amount of money. Value, in this sense of the word, has no relationship to values such as admiration, approval or motivation.

Secondly, people can value certain features or entities. For instance, somebody might value money, fame or glory. For value to exist, there must be an agent (a person) who is doing the valuing, and the feature or entity must be worth something to this agent (Klein 2017 ). The values of one individual can be very different from those of another person. For instance, a regular income is worth a lot to a person who values routine and security ; it can contribute to their wellbeing and happiness. Others, who value personal freedom more than routine and security, might be just as happy with occasional income, as long as they are not bound to a nine-to-five job. If most humans around the world value a particular thing, it can be described as a universal value.

Thirdly, values can refer to goals and ambitions, with a moral connotation. In business literature, for example, one often finds reference to value-led management or organizational values, and many institutions make a point of establishing, promoting and broadcasting their values. For instance, the stated values of the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan), at which several of the authors of this book are based, are: common sense, compassion, teamwork, attention to detail and trust (UCLan nd ). These values are all morally positive and they are intended to guide the actions of students, staff and the institution itself. In this third sense of the word, moral values “will enable us to determine what is morally right or what is valuable in particular circumstances” (Raz 2001 : 208). If most humans around the world share a particular moral value, it can be described as a universal moral value.

There are numerous advantages to having credible moral values at the level of organizations. Such values influence the culture of an organization (Martins and Coetzee 2011 ), which in turn has a positive impact upon corporate performance (Ofori and Sokro 2010 ), and job stress and satisfaction (Mansor and Tayib 2010 ), as well as business performance and competitive advantage (Crabb 2011 ). Furthermore, when employees’ values are aligned with organizational values, this benefits both the wellbeing of individuals and the success of the organization (Posner 2010 ).

There are many internet sites that offer lists of core values. One of them (Threads Culture nd ) includes 500 values, from “above and beyond” to “work life balance”. Not all of these are moral values. For instance, this particular list includes values such as clean, exuberant, hygienic, neat, poised and winning (Threads Culture nd ). Another site lists 50 values, including authenticity, loyalty and wisdom, and advises that fewer than five should be selected for leadership purposes (Clear nd ).

The GCC is structured around four moral values: fairness, respect, care and honesty. These four values were not chosen from any existing lists; they emerged through in-depth consultation efforts around the globe (chapter 6 ). But why did the TRUST team choose moral values rather than other action-guiding moral modes for the GCC?

What Can Guide Moral Action?

The GCC is based on moral values, but the code authors could have opted to frame the code and guide action in other ways, including the following:

Standards is a technical term used to achieve desired action. Standards are precise and give exact specifications, which are in many cases measurable, as in the maximum vehicle emissions allowed for cars. Standards can also be used in ethics. For instance, a well-known voluntary standard to guide ethical action is ISO 26000 (ISO not dated), developed by the International Organization for Standardization. ISO 26000 assesses the social responsibility of companies. Its guidance includes prohibitions against bribery , and the requirement to be accountable for any environmental damage caused.

Principles are behavioural rules for concrete action. When you know the principle, you know what to do. For instance, in dubio pro reo has saved many innocent people from going to jail as it gives the courts very concrete advice. Literally translated, it means, “when in doubt, then for the accused” (a person remains innocent until proven guilty). This principle goes back to both Aristotle and Roman law.

Virtues are beneficial character traits that human beings need to flourish (Foot 1978 : 2f). One can observe them in real people or in fictional characters. England’s semimythical Robin Hood, for instance, is seen as courageous and benevolent. He fights a David-and-Goliath battle against the Sheriff of Nottingham (courage) so that the poor have food (benevolence). Like values, for virtues to exist, there must be an agent (a person) who is being virtuous; virtues focus on the moral agent rather than on the standard or principle that underlies a decision.

Ideals drive towards perfection and are highly aspirational. Some people will say “in an ideal world” to denote that something is unrealistic from the start. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle argued that we should strive towards perfection of character and that ideals can be guiding lights in character building. “Good character is an ideal outside of oneself that all strive for” (Mitchell 2015 ).

So why were values chosen as the foundation for the GCC rather than standards , principles , virtues or ideals ?

Ideals are the most aspirational of the concepts available to guide ethical action. However, hardly anybody can live up to all of their ideals. If one phrased an ethics code around ideals, those who should be led by the code might suggest that not reaching the ideals on every occasion would be acceptable. This is not the case. The 23 articles of the GCC (chapter 2 ) are not aspirational. They are mandatory.

Virtues are found both historically and internationally in many important documents of learning and wisdom. Famously, Aristotle (384–322 BC) linked human “happiness and wellbeing” to “leading an ethical life”, guided by the cardinal values of courage, justice, modesty and wisdom (Aristotle 2004 ). According to Confucianism, the most important traditional virtues are said to be benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, trustworthiness, filial piety, loyalty and reciprocity (Wang et al. 2018 ). Virtues are a good way to drive ethical action, in particular global ethical action, but the TRUST team had good reason not to use virtues as the foundation of the GCC.

Virtues can be regarded as embodied ethical values because they are manifested in persons. One can learn a lot by observing real people (such as Mother Theresa or Nelson Mandela) and following their example. This makes virtue approaches very useful in leadership and mentoring (Resnik 2012 ). But not every researcher has access to mentors and learning via example. Besides, early career researchers are said to benefit more from rule-based approaches (Resnik 2012 ). Hence, while virtues were considered as a possibility for the foundation of the GCC, they were excluded because of their strong reliance upon the availability of role models.

Principles have a long-standing tradition in practical moral frameworks, especially principlism , the moral framework relating to bioethics developed by Beauchamp and Childress ( 2013 ). As argued in Chapter 4 , we believe that the four principles of Beauchamp and Childress – autonomy, non-maleficence (do no harm ), beneficence and justice – should instead be called values. Principles, as we understand them, are more concrete than values. Principles can provide almost immediate and very straightforward answers to ethical questions.

A famous principle in political philosophy is Rawls’s difference principle . The principle holds that divergence from an egalitarian distribution of social goods (e.g. income, wealth, power ) is only allowed when this non-egalitarian distribution favours the least advantaged in society (Rawls 1999 : 65–70). In other words, if a particularly talented wealth creator increases the overall wealth pie so that the least advantaged in society are better off, she can receive a bigger share of the pie than others. Knowing about this principle gives answers to social philosophy questions, which the value of fairness or justice would not. Rawls applied the value of fairness to derive the more concrete difference principle . Principles are therefore too concrete and too prescriptive to form the foundation of the GCC. They would not leave enough room for local agreements between partners from high- and lower-income settings as envisaged by various GCC articles, such as article 1: “Local relevance of research … should be determined in collaboration with local partners.”

Standards are even more specific than principles and have an even stronger action-guiding function. They prescribe very concrete activities in given settings. To formulate standards for ethical interaction between partners from different settings would certainly be too prescriptive. A standard cannot be diverged from (for example, a limit to vehicle emissions). For instance, if article 10 Footnote 4 were a standard, no exception to double ethics review would be possible. But there may be good reason to allow such an exception in certain circumstances. For instance, if ethics approval has been given in a high-income setting and community approval obtained in a host setting where no ethics committee operates, then it may be perfectly ethical to proceed.

The San community in South Africa , for instance, has no facility for providing ethics committee approval , but the South African San Council can provide community approval for research projects in the community (Chapter 7 ). A standard of double ethics review would forbid any research in the San community until an ethics committee were established, which might even undermine the San people’s self-determined research governance structures. For this reason, it is clear that standards are too prescriptive to be applied to every setting, and might hinder valuable research.

This leaves ethical values , which operate as guides on the route to doing the right thing and are not overly prescriptive. They do not undermine the need to develop bespoke agreements across cultures via discussions between research teams and communities. At the same time, there is another, positive reason to choose values as the foundation for the GCC. Values inspire and motivate people to take action – and that is exactly what is needed to guard against ethics dumping .

Values and Their Motivating Power

Research stakeholders who are guided by values will hopefully be inspired and motivated by the GCC and not just follow its rules reluctantly or grudgingly. Why is that? Values can serve as motivating factors in promoting or inhibiting human action (Marcum 2008 , Locke 1991 , Ogletree 2004 ). The influence of personal values upon behaviour has become a subject of extensive research in the social sciences and in psychology, particularly over the past forty years, with just about every area of life being examined through the lens of personal values – for example, consumer practices (Pinto et al. 2011 ), political voting habits (Kaufmann 2016 ), employee creativity (Sousa and Coelho 2011 ), healthcare decisions (Huijer and Van Leeuwen 2000 ), investment decisions (Pasewark and Riley 2010 ), and sexuality and disability (Wolfe 1997 ), to name but a few.

Arguably the most prominent theory of the motivational power of human values was developed by social psychologist Shalom Schwartz, back in 1992. Schwartz’s theory of basic values is distinctive because, unlike most other theories, it has been tested via extensive empirical investigation. Studies undertaken since the early 1990s have generated large data sets from 82 countries, including highly diverse geographic, cultural, religious, age and occupational groups (Schwartz 2012 ). Findings from Schwartz’s global studies indicate that values are inextricably linked to affect. He claims that when values are activated, they become infused with feeling (Schwartz 2012 ). For example, people for whom routine and security are important values will become disturbed when their employment is threatened and may fall into despair if they actually lose their jobs. Correspondingly, when moral values like fairness or respect are important, people will react when they witness instances of unfairness or disrespect; they will feel motivated to respond in some way.

Schwartz’s research investigated motivational values in general (combining our second and third meanings of “value”), and not just moral values. As noted earlier, people can be motivated by many different values, but interestingly, when asked to rank values in order of importance, the participants in Schwartz’s studies consistently rated those with explicit moral connotations as the most important values (Schwartz 2012 ). This suggests that people hold their moral values in high esteem and can be strongly influenced by them.

From Values to Action

Ethical values give us direction but are not sufficient to make us ethical researchers who avoid ethics dumping . One can hold the value of honesty and yet fail to be an honest person. One can hold the value of respect and yet cause harm when disrespecting local customs . Values can motivate and they can help to establish moral goals, but they do not explain how to achieve them. A means of operationalizing values is needed.

One method would be to cultivate virtues that are aligned with the values. As noted above, virtues are positive character traits individuals build over time which are needed for human flourishing. Once a value such as honesty becomes second nature, one can say that honesty is a virtue of that person. If all researchers developed the virtues of fairness, respect, care and honesty, then being an ethical researcher would come naturally to them. However, this is far from easy, and the development of virtues takes time. It is perhaps possible for researchers who have worked in the field for many years, and have a wealth of knowledge and experience, but certainly not for young researchers who need training , guidance and practice.

Daniel Russell ( 2015 : 37f) illustrates the challenge for virtue ethics in guiding specific action when he asks us to think about generosity:

Sometimes helping means giving a little, sometimes it means giving a lot; sometimes it means giving money, sometimes it means giving time, or just a sympathetic ear; sometimes it means offering advice, sometimes it means minding one’s own business; and which of these it might mean in this case will depend on such different things as my relationship with my friend, what I am actually able to offer, why and how often my friend has problems of this kind, and so on.

For all those who are still developing their virtues , a code such as the GCC can help to guide action. As noted at the outset, people are much more contented and productive when their own values are aligned with company or institutional values and rules. It therefore made sense to align the articles of the GCC with those values that are necessary for ethical research and to which researchers must aspire. The values of fairness, respect, care and honesty provide the ethos, the motivation and the goals for ethical research. The 23 articles making up the GCC therefore enable operationalization of the values.

This leaves the task of outlining what is meant by each of the four values of fairness, respect, care and honesty, keeping in mind the following important points. First, precise specifications of values might be affected by customs and preferences, so that different cultures have different views on the exact content of the values. Second, the importance of process cannot be underestimated. The reason why articles 2 Footnote 5 and 4 Footnote 6 of the GCC emphasize inclusion is that the specification of what each value requires in a given setting needs to be determined collaboratively. As a result, this sketch of the content of the four values is brief and leaves room for regional variations.

The Four Values

The terms “fairness”, “justice” and “equity” are often used interchangeably. The TRUST consortium chose the term “fairness” in the belief that it would be the most widely understood globally. Philosophers commonly distinguish between four types of fairness (Pogge 2006 ) (see Fig. 3.2 ).

Types of fairness

The most relevant fairness concepts in global research ethics are fairness in exchange and corrective fairness. In global collaborations, at least two parties are involved in a range of transactions. Typical fairness issues between partners from high-income countries (HICs) and those from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are:

Is the research relevant to local research needs?

Will benefit sharing take place?

Are authors from LMICs involved in publications?

These are questions about fairness in exchange . For instance, LMIC research participants contribute to the progress of science, but this is only fair if the research is relevant to their own community or if other benefits are received where this is not possible. For instance, to carry the burden of a clinical study is only worthwhile for a community if the disease under investigation occurs locally and the end product will become available locally.

Corrective fairness , which presupposes the availability of legal instruments and access to mechanisms to right a wrong (e.g. a complaints procedure , a court, an ethics committee ) is also important in global research collaborations. For instance, if no host country research ethics structure exists, corrective fairness is limited to the research ethics structure in the HIC , which may not have the capacity to make culturally sensitive decisions.

The broader question of what HICs owe LMICs falls under distributive fairness . One can illustrate the difference between fairness in exchange and distributive fairness using the example of post-study access to successfully tested drugs. In the first case (fairness in exchange) one could argue that research participants have contributed to the marketing of a particular drug and are therefore owed post-study access to it (should they need the drug to promote their health and wellbeing, and should they not otherwise have access to it). In the second case (distributive fairness) one could provide a range of arguments, for instance being a signatory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UN 1948 ) , to maintain that all human beings who need the drug should have access to it, and not just the research participants . These wider fairness issues cannot be resolved by researchers and are therefore not directly included in the GCC. Likewise, retributive fairness is less relevant as few ethics violations fall under the punitive and criminal law, and if they do, it is indeed criminal law that should be used to deal with a fairness violation.

The term “respect” is used in many ethics frameworks. For instance, the Declaration of Helsinki (WMA 2013 ) notes in article 7:

Medical research is subject to ethical standards that promote and ensure respect for all human subjects and protect their health and rights. (emphasis added)

Its ubiquitous use does not, however, mean that “respect” is a clear term. In everyday life, it is used in the sense of deep admiration. For instance, somebody could say, “I respect the achievements of Nelson Mandela”. However, that is not what is meant by respect in research ethics . The statement from the Declaration of Helsinki does not mean that research participants must be admired. To be respected in research ethics is almost the opposite. It means that one must accept a decision or a way of approaching a matter, even if one disagrees strongly. A case in point would be respecting the decision of a competent adult Jehovah’s Witness to refuse a blood transfusion for reasons of religious belief, even if this means certain death.

Respect is therefore a difficult value, as there will be cases where one cannot accept another’s decision. For instance, if a researcher learns about female genital mutilation being used as a “cure” for diarrhoea in female babies (Luc and Altare 2018 ), respecting this approach to health care is likely to be the wrong decision – particularly as the practice is probably illegal . But the fact that respect may be difficult to operationalize in global research collaborations does not mean that it is a value one can dispense with.

There are many possible ways of showing respect that do not create conflicts of conscience. For instance, illiterate San community members should not be enrolled in research studies unless San leaders have been contacted first, in accordance with community systems. And researchers from HICs should not insist that LMIC ethics committees accept the format of the researchers’ preferred ethics approval submission; instead the HIC researchers should submit the study for approval in the format required by the LMIC committee. This shows respect in international collaborative research.

While it may be difficult to imagine a situation where an HIC researcher is accused of being too fair, too honest or too caring, it is possible to be accused of being “too respectful” – for instance, if one tolerates major violations of human rights. It is indeed sometimes difficult to strike a balance between dogmatically imposing one’s own approach and carelessly accepting human rights violations, but that is the balance researchers should strive for.

Sometimes one word describes different concepts. This is the case with “care”. The statement, “I care for my grandfather,” can mean two diametrically opposed things. First, it could mean that the person is very attached to her grandfather even though she hardly ever sees him. Second, it could mean that she is the person who injects her grandfather with insulin, cooks his meals, and makes sure that his needs are taken care of every day, even if there is antipathy between them.

The meaning of the value of care in the context of global research ethics links more to the second use of the term; to look after or take care of somebody or something. As a main priority, one should take care of the interests of those enrolled in research studies to the extent that one always prioritizes their welfare over any other goals – for example, accepting the decisions of those who choose to withdraw from an ongoing study, even if this impairs the project’s results. In line with article 8 of the Declaration of Helsinki (WMA 2013 ) that means:

While the primary purpose of medical research is to generate new knowledge, this goal can never take precedence over the rights and interests of individual research subjects.

This care applies across disciplines, not only in medical research , and it is not restricted to human research participants . Article 21 of the Declaration of Helsinki (WMA 2013 ) extends the care for research subjects’ welfare to research animals. Likewise, care for environmental protection is increasingly included in research ethics processes and frameworks for responsible research. For instance, the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 ethics review process addresses potentially negative impacts on the environment (Directorate General for Research 2019 : section 7). Richard Owen et al. ( 2013 ) define responsible research and innovation as “a collective commitment of care for the future through responsive stewardship of science and innovation in the present”, a statement that has clear relevance to environmental protection.

Researchers who take care to avoid negative impacts in their work will not “helicopter ” in and out of a research area they are not familiar with, but will use systems of due diligence to ensure that risks are assessed and mitigated . For instance, an HIC research team that strips a local area of all doctors and nurses by attracting them into their high-tech research facility is not acting carefully and ethically.

Ideally, researchers who take good care will combine the two concepts mentioned above: they care about research participants , in the sense that the participants are important to them, and they feel responsible for the welfare and interests of those who contribute to their research, or might suffer as a result of it (including animals and the environment).

Honesty is a value that does not need complicated explanations or definitions. In all cultures and nations, “Do not lie” is a basic prerequisite for ethical human interaction. It is so basic a value that its synonyms are often broad ethics terms. For instance, according to Google ( 2018 ), synonyms for “honesty” are:

moral correctness, uprightness, honourableness, honour, integrity , morals, morality, ethics, principle, (high) principles , nobility, righteousness, rectitude, right-mindedness, upstandingness

What does need explaining, however, is the scope of the value of honesty in the context of global research ethics . Telling lies is only one possible wrongdoing in the context of a broad understanding of honesty. For instance, in research ethics it is equally unacceptable to leave out salient features from an informed consent process. While this might, strictly speaking, not involve a lie, concealing important information that might make a difference to someone’s consent violates the value of honesty as much as lying. For this reason, research ethicists often use the terms “transparency ” and “open communication ” to ensure that all relevant information is provided so that research participants can make an informed choice about whether to participate or not.

In addition to lying and withholding information, there are other ways of being dishonest, in the sense of not communicating openly and transparently. For instance, in a vulnerable population with high levels of illiteracy, it can be predicted that a printed information sheet about research will not achieve informed consent . The same can be said for a conscious failure to overcome language barriers in a meaningful way: leaving highly technical English terms untranslated in information sheets can easily lead to misunderstandings.

Honesty is also related to research conduct other than interaction with research participants . Most prominently, the duties of honesty are described in research integrity frameworks: do not manipulate your data , do not put your name onto publications to which you have not contributed, do not waste research funds, to give only three examples. However, while the latter prescriptions for conduct with integrity in research are important, they are not directly linked to exploitation in global research collaboration and are not covered in the GCC. In this context, the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity (ALLEA, 2017 ) is very helpful.

Standards , principles , values, virtues and ideals can guide moral action. At the foundation of the GCC are values. Why? For three main reasons:

Values inspire action; they motivate people to do things. For instance, when the value of fairness is threatened, people normally respond with action.

Values provide the golden middle way between being overly prescriptive and overly aspirational. Standards and principles require too much precision in their formulation and are too prescriptive in international collaborative research, while virtues and ideals are too aspirational in their demands of researchers.

Values emerged naturally from the major engagement activities undertaken prior to developing the GCC.

The eradication of ethics dumping requires not only moral guidance but also moral action to counter violations of fairness, respect, care and honesty. The 23 short, accessible articles of the GCC are intended to both guide and inspire researchers to act with fairness, respect, care and honesty.

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Human Rights Essay for Students and Children

500+ words essay on human rights.

Human rights are a set of rights which every human is entitled to. Every human being is inherited with these rights no matter what caste, creed, gender, the economic status they belong to. Human rights are very important for making sure that all humans get treated equally. They are in fact essential for a good standard of living in the world.

Moreover, human rights safeguard the interests of the citizens of a country. You are liable to have human rights if you’re a human being. They will help in giving you a good life full of happiness and prosperity.

Human Rights Categories

Human rights are essentially divided into two categories of civil and political rights, and social rights. This classification is important because it clears the concept of human rights further. Plus, they also make humans realize their role in different spheres.

When we talk about civil and political rights , we refer to the classic rights of humans. These rights are responsible for limiting the government’s authority that may affect any individual’s independence. Furthermore, these rights allow humans to contribute to the involvement of the government. In addition to the determination of laws as well.

Next up, the social rights of people guide the government to encourage ways to plan various ways which will help in improving the life quality of citizens. All the governments of countries are responsible for ensuring the well-being of their citizens. Human rights help countries in doing so efficiently.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Importance of Human Rights

Human rights are extremely important for the overall development of a country and individuals on a personal level. If we take a look at the basic human rights, we see how there are right to life, the right to practice any religion, freedom of movement , freedom from movement and more. Each right plays a major role in the well-being of any human.

Right to life protects the lives of human beings. It ensures no one can kill you and thus safeguards your peace of mind. Subsequently, the freedom of thought and religion allows citizens to follow any religion they wish to. Moreover, it also means anyone can think freely.

Further, freedom of movement is helpful in people’s mobilization. It ensures no one is restricted from traveling and residing in any state of their choice. It allows you to grab opportunities wherever you wish to.

Next up, human rights also give you the right to a fair trial. Every human being has the right to move to the court where there will be impartial decision making . They can trust the court to give them justice when everything else fails.

Most importantly, humans are now free from any form of slavery. No other human being can indulge in slavery and make them their slaves. Further, humans are also free to speak and express their opinion.

In short, human rights are very essential for a happy living of human beings. However, these days they are violated endlessly and we need to come together to tackle this issue. The governments and citizens must take efforts to protect each other and progress for the better. In other words, this will ensure happiness and prosperity all over the world.

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The Universal Declaration of Human Rights Essay

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Before discussing any phenomenon or event, it is of crucial importance to identify the major factors, which contributed to it. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights should be analyzed within the context of the political, cultural, and religious situation, emerging in the middle of the twentieth century. As it is widely known, this act was adopted in 1948. According to this document, every person (or it would be better to say human beings) must be entitled to certain rights, which cannot take away from him or her (Weiss, 14).

At first glance, it may seem that this act should have been readily accepted by every nation; however, one should take into account that the Declaration of Human Rights was not received unanimously by all nations. For instance, representatives of some Islamic countries subjected it to heavy criticism. They stated that religious and cultural traditions were overlooked in this document (Ramcharan, 43).

The question arises of what prompted the United Nations Organization to develop and adopt this act. It stands to reason that first of all this declaration was the natural response to the events of World War II (genocide, violations of Genève convention, atomic explosion), which had proved that human rights could be easily violated even in the most developed countries. In addition to that, it became apparent that the international community did not come to a consensus about such a concept as “human rights”. As it has been pointed out earlier, Western and Eastern interpretations did not exactly coincide; therefore, some unification had to be achieved.

In this respect, we should explore the political situation in the Post-War period. Humankind was on the verge of a new conflict, the Cold War, but at that moment, the contradictions between the United States and the Soviets were not so aggravated, and both sides of the argument supported the idea of such declaration.

Regarding the religious environment, we should first say that the twentieth century is marked by a religious crisis, which means that to some extent, religion ceased to act as guidelines for people (the events of World War II eloquently substantiated this statement). Consequently, it was necessary to lay legal foundations, which were to ensure that at least basic human rights were preserved and protected (Asbeck,88). Naturally, we should not make generalizations because the religious crisis did not strongly affect Islamic countries but it was very tangible in Europe.

The events of World War II also showed that many people were not able to practice their religion. They were officially (or unofficially) prohibited to do it. In theory, the Declaration of Hunan guarantees that every person has religious freedom but it could not eradicate certain tacit laws, which still acted against some religious groups (Weiss, 134).

Furthermore, while analyzing the history of the twentieth century, scholars often attach primary importance to the so-called clash of cultures. At that moment, Easter and Western Worlds were only beginning to interact with each other but it was obvious that such notion as “human rights” was perceived in different ways. Partly, this declaration was aimed at strengthening the ties between the two most basic cultures or at least ensuring that they could efficiently cooperate (Ramcharan, 65).

New social developments also contributed to the adoption of this document. For instance, the growth of the feminist movement indicated that the roles of men and women should be reconsidered especially in terms of employment policies, and education. The adoption of the Declaration aroused a storm of protest in some Islamic countries because social equality of both sexes contradicted some tenants of the Muslim religion, especially regarding the role of women in the family and their dependence on their husbands.

In her book “A World Made New” Mary Glendon gives the reader insights into the atmosphere of that time. The author focuses on the role of Eleanor Roosevelt in developing this document. She was a member of the Human Rights Commission along with representatives of other countries. People, who were designated to draft this document, had to fight against insuperable odds, namely cultural-political, religious, and social controversies. It should be mentioned that even now this document is viewed as pro-Western and pro-American, though it seems its basic principles are universally applicable (Glendon, 33).

Nevertheless, the most important problem that Human Rights Commission had to resolve is how to make this doctrine applicable, in other words, whether this document had any legal force. Johannes Morsink in his book “The Declaration of Human Rights” argues that this legislative act was fully implemented only in the West; however, it did not become applicable in some other countries for example, in the USSR (Morsink, 8).

Thus, having analyzed political, religious, cultural, and cultural environment in the post-War Period we can arrive at the following conclusions: first Human rights commission had to resolve cross-cultural contradictions while drafting the declaration, especially different perceptions of human rights in the Western and Eastern cultures. However, the main problem that had to be resolved was the applicability of this legislative act. It seems that even now this issue remains very stressful because some countries only officially accepted the Declaration of Human Rights but even they do not follow its basic principles.

Bibliography

B. G. Ramcharan.Thirty Years After the Universal Declaration. BRILL, 1979.

Frederik Mari Asbeck. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Its Johannes Predecessors (1679-1948): And Its Predecessors (1679-1948). Brill Archive, 1949.

Morsink. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Origins, Drafting, and Intent. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000.

Mary Ann Glendon. “A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights” Random House, 2002.

Thomas George Weiss. “The United Nations and Changing World Politics” Westview Press, 2004.

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"Why Human Rights?": Reflection by Eleni Christou

This post is the first installment from UChicago Law's International Human Rights Law Clinic in a series titled — The Matter of Human Rights. In this 16-part series, law students examine, question and reflect on the historical, ideological, and normative roots of the human rights system, how the system has evolved, its present challenges and future possibilities. Eleni Christou is a third year in the Law School at the University of Chicago.

Why Human Rights?

By: Eleni Christou University of Chicago Law School Class of 2019

When the term “human rights” is used, it conjures up, for some, powerful images of the righteous fight for the inalienable rights that people have just by virtue of being human. It is Martin Luther King Jr. before the Washington monument as hundreds of thousands gather and look on; it is Nelson Mandela’s long walk to freedom; or a 16-year-old Malala telling her story, so others like her may be heard. But what is beyond these archetypes? Does the system work? Can we make it work better? Is it even the right system for our times? In other words, why human rights?

Human rights are rights that every person has from the moment they are born to the moment they die. They are things that everyone is entitled to, such as life, liberty, freedom of expression, and the right to education, just by virtue of being human. People can never lose these rights on the basis of age, sex, nationality, race, or disability. Human rights offer us a principled framework, rooted in normative values meant for all nations and legal orders. In a world order in which states/governments set the rules, the human rights regime is the counterweight, one concerned with and focused on the individual. In other words, we need human rights because it provides us a way of evaluating and challenging national laws and practices as to the treatment of individuals.

The foundational human right text for our modern-day system is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights . Adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in December, 1948, this document lays out 30 articles which define the rights each human is entitled to. These rights are designed to protect core human values and prohibit institutions and practices that are contrary to the enjoyment of the rights. Rights often complement each other, and at times, can be combined to form new rights. For example, humans have a right to liberty, and also a right to be free from slavery, two rights which complement and reinforce each other. Other times, rights can be in tension, like when a person’s right to freedom of expression infringes upon another’s right to freedom from discrimination.

In this post, I’ll provide an example of how the human rights system has been used to do important work. The international communities’ work to develop the law and organize around human rights principles to challenge and sanction the apartheid regime in South Africa provides a valuable illustration of how the human rights system can be used successfully to alleviate state human rights violations that previously would have been written off as a domestic matter.

From 1948 to 1994, South Africa had a system of racial segregation called ‘ apartheid ,’ literally meaning ‘separateness.’ The minority white population was committing blatant human rights violations to maintain their control over the majority black population, and smaller multiethnic and South Asian communities. This system of apartheid was codified in laws at every level of the country, restricting where non-whites could live, work, and simply be. Non-whites were stripped of voting rights , evicted from their homes and forced into segregated neighborhoods, and not allowed to travel out of these neighborhoods without passes . Interracial marriage was forbidden, and transport and civil facilities were all segregated, leading to extremely inferior services for the majority of South Africans. The horrific conditions imposed on non-whites led to internal resistance movements , which the white ruling class responded to with extreme violence , leaving thousands dead or imprisoned by the government.

While certain global leaders expressed concern about the Apartheid regime in South Africa, at first, most (including the newly-formed UN) considered it a domestic affair. However, that view changed in 1960 following the Sharpeville Massacre , where 69 protesters of the travel pass requirement were murdered by South African police. In 1963, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 181 , which called for a voluntary arms embargo against South Africa, which was later made mandatory. The Security Council condemned South Africa’s apartheid regime and encouraged states not to “indirectly [provide] encouragement . . . [of] South Africa to perpetuate, by force, its policy of apartheid,” by participating in the embargo. During this time, many countries, including the United States, ended their arms trade with South Africa. Additionally, the UN urged an oil embargo, and eventually suspended South Africa from the General Assembly in 1974.

In 1973, the UN General Assembly passed the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid , and it came into force in 1976. This convention made apartheid a crime against humanity. It expanded the prohibition of apartheid and similar policies outside of the South African context, and laid the groundwork for international actions to be taken against any state that engaged in these policies. This also served to further legitimize the international response to South Africa’s apartheid regime.

As the state-sanctioned violence in South Africa intensified, and the global community came to understand the human rights violation being carried out on a massive scale, countries worked domestically to place trade sanctions on South Africa, and many divestment movements gained popular support. International sports teams refused to play in South Africa and cut ties with their sports federations, and many actors engaged in cultural boycotts. These domestic actions worked in tandem with the actions taken by the United Nations, mirroring the increasingly widespread ideology that human rights violations are a global issue that transcend national boundaries, but are an international concern of all peoples.

After years of domestic and international pressure, South African leadership released the resistance leader Nelson Mandela in 1990 and began negotiations for the dismantling of apartheid. In 1994, South Africa’s apartheid officially ended with the first general elections. With universal suffrage, Nelson Mandela was elected president.

In a speech to the UN General Assembly , newly elected Nelson Mandela recognized the role that the UN and individual countries played in the ending of apartheid, noting these interventions were a success story of the human rights system. The human rights values embodied in the UDHR, the ICSPCA, and numerous UN Security Council resolutions, provided an external normative and legal framework by which the global community could identify unlawful state action and hold South Africa accountable for its system of apartheid. The international pressure applied via the human rights system has been considered a major contributing factor to the end of apartheid. While the country has not fully recovered from the trauma that decades of the apartheid regime had left on its people, the end of the apartheid formal legal system has allowed the country to begin to heal and move towards a government that works for all people, one that has openly embraced international human rights law and principles in its constitutional and legislative framework.

This is what a human rights system can do. When state governments and legal orders fail to protect people within their control, the international system can challenge the national order and demand it uphold a basic standard of good governance. Since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the human rights system has grown, tackled new challenges, developed institutions for review and enforcement, and built a significant body of law. Numerous tools have been established to help states, groups, and individuals defend and protect human rights.

So why human rights? Because the human rights system has been a powerful force for good in this world, often the only recourse for marginalized and minority populations. We, as the global community, should work to identify shortcomings in the system, and work together to improve and fix them. We should not — as the US has been doing under the current administration — selectively withdraw, defund, and disparage one of the only tools available to the world’s most vulnerable peoples. The human rights system is an arena, a language, and a source of power to many around the world fighting for a worthwhile future built on our shared human values.

Pozen center 2022-23 director's report, interracial marriage under attack: thinking the unthinkable, read: "the politics of torture" by kathleen cavanaugh, read "democracies and international law" by tom ginsburg, read "agents of change: political philosophy in practice" by ben laurence.

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Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a milestone document in the history of human rights. Drafted by representatives with different legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world, the Declaration was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 ( General Assembly resolution 217 A ) as a common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations. It sets out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected and it has been translated into over 500 languages . The UDHR is widely recognized as having inspired, and paved the way for, the adoption of more than seventy human rights treaties, applied today on a permanent basis at global and regional levels (all containing references to it in their preambles).

Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,

Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,

Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,

Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,

Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,

Now, therefore,

The General Assembly,

Proclaims this Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this 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. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.

Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.
No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.
This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
Everyone has the right to a nationality.
No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.
Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
No one may be compelled to belong to an association.
Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.
Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.
The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

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, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.
Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.
Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.
In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.
These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)

Text of the Declaration
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2023: UDHR turns 75

What is the Declaration of Human Rights? Narrated by Morgan Freeman.

UN digital ambassador Elyx animates the UDHR

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To mark the 75th anniversary of the UDHR in December 2023, the United Nations has partnered once again with French digital artist YAK (Yacine Ait Kaci) – whose illustrated character Elyx is the first digital ambassador of the United Nations – on an animated version of the 30 Articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

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Watch and listen to people around the world reading articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in more than 80 languages.

Women Who Shaped the Declaration

Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, seated at right speaking with Mrs. Hansa Mehta who stands next to her.

Women delegates from various countries played a key role in getting women’s rights included in the Declaration. Hansa Mehta of India (standing above Eleanor Roosevelt) is widely credited with changing the phrase "All men are born free and equal" to "All human beings are born free and equal" in Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

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Home — Essay Samples — Philosophy — Ethics — Ethics and Values: The Moral Compass of Humanity

Ethics and Values: The Moral Compass of Humanity

Categories: Ethics Values of Life

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Words: 698 |

Published: Sep 12, 2023

Words: 698 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

The significance of ethics and values, the role of ethics and values in society, challenges and dilemmas in ethical decision-making, striving for ethical excellence, 1. personal development:, 2. relationships:, 3. decision-making:, 4. accountability:, 5. society:, 1. law and justice:, 2. medicine and healthcare:, 3. business and economics:, 4. politics and governance:, 5. education and academia:, 1. moral relativism:, 2. conflicting values:, 3. ethical grey areas:, 4. peer pressure and groupthink:, 5. ethical fatigue:, 1. ethical education:, 2. ethical frameworks:, 3. ethical leaders:, 4. open dialogue:, 5. ethical decision-making models:.

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An Introduction to Human Rights

Human rights are a set of principles concerned with equality and fairness.

They are not a recent invention - ideas about rights and responsibilities have been an important part of all societies throughout history. Since the end of World War II, there has been a united effort by the nations of the world to decide what rights belong to all people and how they can best be promoted and protected.

Animation, crowd of people composing a world map, aerial view

What are Human Rights?

Every person has dignity and value . One of the ways that we recognise the fundamental worth of every person is by acknowledging and respecting their human rights.

Human rights are a set of principles concerned with equality and fairness . They recognise our freedom to make choices about our lives and to develop our potential as human beings. They are about living a life free from fear, harassment or discrimination.

Human rights can broadly be defined as a number of basic rights that people from around the world have agreed are essential. These include the right to life, the right to a fair trial, freedom from torture and other cruel and inhuman treatment, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the rights to health, education and an adequate standard of living.

These human rights are the same for all people everywhere – men and women, young and old, rich and poor, regardless of our background, where we live, what we think or what we believe. This is what makes human rights ‘ universa l’.

Who has a responsibility to protect human rights?

Human rights connect us to each other through a shared set of rights and responsibilities .

A person’s ability to enjoy their human rights depends on other people respecting those rights. This means that human rights involve responsibility and duties towards other people and the community. Individuals have a responsibility to ensure that they exercise their rights with consideration for the rights of others. For example, when someone uses their right to freedom of speech, they should do so without interfering with someone else’s right to privacy.

Governments have a particular responsibility to ensure that people are able to enjoy their rights. They are required to establish and maintain laws and services that enable people to enjoy a life in which their rights are respected and protected.

For example, the right to education says that everyone is entitled to a good education. This means that governments have an obligation to provide good quality education facilities and services to their people. Whether or not governments actually do this, it is generally accepted that this is the government's responsibility and people can call them to account if they fail to respect or protect their basic human rights.

What do human rights cover?

Human rights cover virtually every area of human activity.

They include civil and political rights , which refer to a person’s rights to take part in the civil and political life of their community without discrimination or oppression. These include rights and freedoms such as the right to vote, the right to privacy, freedom of speech and freedom from torture.

Cartoon hand putting ballot paper into ballot box

The right to vote and take part in choosing a government is a civil and political right.

They also include economic, social and cultural rights , which relate to a person’s rights to prosper and grow and to take part in social and cultural activities. This group includes rights such as the right to health, the right to education and the right to work.

Cartoon figure of teacher writing on chalkboard with 3 students watching

The right to education is an example of an economic, social and cultural right.

One of the main differences between these two groups of rights is that, in the case of civil and political rights, governments must make sure that they, or any other group, are not denying people access to their rights, whereas in relation to economic, social and cultural rights, governments must take active steps to ensure rights are being fulfilled.

As well as belonging to every individual, there are some rights that also belong to groups of people. This is often in recognition of the fact that these groups have been disadvantaged and marginalised throughout history and consequently need greater protection of their rights. These rights are called collective rights . For example, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples possess collective rights to their ancestral lands, which are known as native title rights.

Rights that can only apply to individuals, for example the right to a fair trial, are called individual rights .

Where do human rights come from?

The origins of human rights.

Human rights are not a recent invention. This page offers a brief human rights timeline .

Throughout history, concepts of ethical behaviour, justice and human dignity have been important in the development of human societies. These ideas can be traced back to the ancient civilisations of Babylon, China and India. They contributed to the laws of Greek and Roman society and are central to Buddhist, Christian, Confucian, Hindu, Islamic and Jewish teachings. Concepts of ethics, justice and dignity were also important in societies which have not left written records, but consist of oral histories such as those of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia and other indigenous societies elsewhere.

Ideas about justice were prominent in the thinking of philosophers in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. An important strand in this thinking was that there was a 'natural law' that stood above the law of rulers. This meant that individuals had certain rights simply because they were human beings.

In 1215, the English barons forced the King of England to sign Magna Carta (which is Latin for ‘the Great Charter’). Magna Carta was the first document to place limits on the absolute power of the king and make him accountable to his subjects. It also laid out some basic rights for the protection of citizens, such as the right to a trial.

Significant development in thinking about human rights took place in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, during a time of revolution and emerging national identities.

The American Declaration of Independence (1776) was based on the understanding that certain rights, such as ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness', were fundamental to all people. Similarly, t he French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (1789) challenged the authority of the aristocracy and recognised the ‘liberty, equality and fraternity' of individuals. These values were also echoed in the United States’ Bill of Rights (1791), which recognised freedom of speech, religion and the press, as well as the right to ‘peaceable' assembly, private property and a fair trial.

The development of modern human rights

The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw continuing advances in social progress, for example, in the abolition of slavery, the widespread provision of education and the extension of political rights. Despite these advances, international activity on human rights remained weak. The general attitude was that nations could do what they liked within their borders and that other countries and the broader international community had no basis for intervening or even raising concerns when rights were violated.

This is expressed in the term ‘ state sovereignty ’, which refers to the idea that whoever has the political authority within a country has the power to rule and pass laws over that territory. Importantly, countries agree to mutually recognise this sovereignty. In doing so, they agree to refrain from interfering in the internal or external affairs of other sovereign states.

However, the atrocities and human rights violations that occurred during World War II galvanised worldwide opinion and made human rights a universal concern.

Word War II onwards

During World War II millions of soldiers and civilians were killed or maimed. The Nazi regime in Germany created concentration camps for certain groups - including Jews, communists, homosexuals and political opponents. Some of these people were used as slave labour, others were exterminated in mass executions. The Japanese occupation of China and other Asian countries was marked by frequent and large-scale brutality toward local populations. Japanese forces took thousands of prisoners of war who were used as slave labour, with no medical treatment and inadequate food.

A group of prisoners at a concentration camp during WWII in Ebensee, Austria

The promotion and protection of human rights became a fundamental objective of the Allied powers. In 1941, U.S. President Roosevelt proclaimed the ' Four Freedoms ' that people everywhere in the world ought to enjoy - freedom of speech and belief, and freedom from want and fear.

The war ended in 1945, but only after the destruction of millions of lives, including through the first and only use of atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Many countries were devastated by the war, and millions of people died or became homeless refugees.

The United Nations

A new organisation, the United Nations , known as the UN, came into existence in 1945. A s the war drew to a close, the victorious powers decided to establish a world organisation that would prevent further conflict and help build a better world.

The UN was created to fulfil four key aims:

to ensure peace and security
to promote economic development
t o promote the development of international law
to ensure the observance of human rights.

In the UN Charter – the UN’s founding document – the countries of the United Nations stated that they were determined:

"to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small … and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom."

The UN's strong emphasis on human rights made it different from previous international organisations. UN member countries believed that the protection of human rights would help ensure freedom, justice and peace for all in the future.

Read more about the work of United Nations on The International Human Rights System page .

Why are human rights important?

Values of tolerance, equality and respect can help reduce friction within society. Putting human rights ideas into practice can helps us create the kind of society we want to live in.

In recent decades, there has been a tremendous growth in how we think about and apply human rights ideas. This has had many positive results - knowledge about human rights can empower individuals and offer solutions for specific problems .

Human rights are an important part of how people interact with others at all levels in society - in the family, the community, schools, the workplace, in politics and in international relations. It is vital therefore that people everywhere should strive to understand what human rights are. When people better understand human rights, it is easier for them to promote justice and the well-being of society.

Can my human rights be taken away from me?

A person's human rights cannot be taken away. In its final Article, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that no State, group or person

[has] any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

This doesn't mean that abuses and violations of human rights don't occur. On television and in newspapers every day we hear tragic stories of murder, violence, racism, hunger, unemployment, poverty, abuse, homelessness and discrimination.

However, the Universal Declaration and other human rights treaties are more than just noble aspirations. They are essential legal principles. To meet their international human rights obligations, many nations have incorporated these principles into their own laws. This provides an opportunity for individuals to have a complaint settled by a court in their own country.

Individuals from some countries may also be able to take a complaint of human rights violations to a United Nations committee of experts, which would then give its opinion.

In addition, education about human rights is just as important as having laws to protect people. Long term progress can really only be made when people are aware of what human rights are and what standards exist.

Human Rights-Based Approach

Universal values principle one: human rights-based approach.

Human Rights has been central pillar of the United Nation’s work from its inception in 1945 with the adoption of the Charter of the United Nations. We can proudly celebrate having given birth to a normative era in which the international community, inspired by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, has produced an outstanding corpus of international norms and standards for a life of dignity and well-being for all. You can read more about these achievements here . The human rights-based approach (HRBA) is a conceptual framework for the process of human development that is normatively based on international human rights standards and operationally directed to promoting and protecting human rights. It seeks to analyse inequalities which lie at the heart of development problems and redress discriminatory practices and unjust distributions of power that impede development progress and often result in groups of people being left behind. Under the HRBA, the plans, policies and processes of development are anchored in a system of rights and corresponding obligations established by international law , including all civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights, and the right to development. HRBA requires human rights principles (universality, indivisibility, equality and non-discrimination, participation, accountability) to guide United Nations development cooperation, and focus on developing the capacities of both ‘duty-bearers’ to meet their obligations, and ‘rights-holders’ to claim their rights.

While there’s no universal recipe for a human rights-based approach, United Nations agencies have nonetheless agreed a number of essential attributes in the 2003 Common Understanding on HRBA to Development Cooperation , which indicates that:

All programmes of development co-operation, policies and technical assistance should further the realisation of human rights as laid down in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights instruments.
Human rights standards contained in, and principles derived from, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights instruments guide all development cooperation and programming in all sectors and in all phases of the programming process.
Development cooperation contributes to the development of the capacities of ‘duty-bearers’ to meet their obligations and/or of ‘rights-holders’ to claim their rights.

The Universal Human Rights Index is a tool designed to facilitate access to human rights recommendations issued by the United Nations’ human rights mechanisms, including the nine treaty bodies established under the international human rights treaties , the special procedures and the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the Human Rights Council. The UNSDG has produced guidance on strengthening strategic engagement with the human rights machinery . HRBA is one of the six Guiding Principles of the United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework . The Companion Piece on the Guiding Principles provides guidance to United Nations country teams on application of the HRBA in the context of the Cooperation Framework, and other UNSDG operational and training materials on the HRBA can be found under Resources .

Related Resources

COMPASS Manual for Human Rights Education with Young people

Introducing human rights education.

"Every individual and every organ of society … shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms." Preamble to The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948.

"Teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms" is the foundation of human rights education (HRE). However, before looking at what human rights education is and how it is practised, it is necessary to clarify what "these rights and freedoms" are that HRE is concerned with. We begin, therefore, with a short introduction to human rights.

What are human rights?

How can people use and defend human rights if they have never learned about them?

Throughout history every society has developed systems to ensure social cohesion by codifying the rights and responsibilities of its citizens. It was finally in 1948 that the international community came together to agree on a code of rights that would be binding on all states; this was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Since 1948 other human rights documents have been agreed, including for instance the European Convention on Human Rights in 1950 and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in 1990.

Human rights reflect basic human needs; they establish the basic standards without which people cannot live in dignity. Human rights are about equality, dignity, respect, freedom and justice. Examples of rights include freedom from discrimination, the right to life, freedom of speech, the right to marriage and family and the right to education. (There is a summary and the full text of the UDHR in the appendices).

Human rights are held by all persons equally, universally and for ever. Human rights are universal, that is, they are the same for all human beings in every country. They are inalienable, indivisible and interdependent, that is, they cannot be taken away – ever; all rights are equally important and they are complementary, for instance the right to participate in government and in free elections depends on freedom of speech.

How can people use and defend human rights, and use and defend them if they have never learned about them? The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) acknowledges this in its preamble, and in Article 26 it gives everyone the right to education that should "strengthen respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms". The aim of human rights education is to create a world with a culture of human rights. This is a culture where everyone's rights are respected and rights themselves are respected; a culture where people understand their rights and responsibilities, recognise human rights violations and take action to protect the rights of others. It is a culture where human rights are as much a part of the lives of individuals as language, customs, the arts and ties to place are.

Defining human rights education

Since 1948 a huge quantity and variety of work has been – and is being – done in the interests of human rights education. That there are many ways of doing HRE is as it should be because individuals view the world differently, educators work in different situations and different organisations and public bodies have differing concerns; thus, while the principles are the same, the practice may vary. In order to get a picture of the variety of teaching and activities that are being delivered, it is instructive to look at the roles and interests of the various "individuals and organs of society" in order to see how these inform the focus and scope of their interest in HRE.

In 1993 the World Conference on Human Rights declared human rights education as "essential for the promotion and achievement of stable and harmonious relations among communities and for fostering mutual understanding, tolerance and peace". In 1994 the General Assembly of the United Nations declared the UN Decade of Human Rights Education (1995-2004) and urged all UN member states to promote "training dissemination and information aimed at the building of a universal culture of human rights". As a result, governments have been putting more efforts into promoting HRE, mainly through state education programmes. Because governments have concern for international relations, maintaining law and order and the general functioning of society, they tend to see HRE as a means to promote peace, democracy and social order.

Educational programmes and activities that focus on promoting equality in human dignity

The purpose of the Council of Europe is to create a common democratic and legal area throughout the whole of the European continent, ensuring respect for its fundamental values: human rights, democracy and the rule of law. This focus on values is reflected in all its definitions of HRE. For example, with reference to its commitment to securing the active participation of young people in decisions and actions at local and regional level, the Human Rights Education Youth Programme of the Council of Europe defines HRE as "...educational programmes and activities that focus on promoting equality in human dignity 1 , in conjunction with other programmes such as those promoting intercultural learning, participation and empowerment of minorities."

The Council of Europe Charter on Education for Democratic Citizenship and Human Rights Education (2010) 2 defines HRE as education, training, awareness raising, information, practices and activities which aim, by equipping learners with knowledge, skills and understanding and developing their attitudes and behaviour, to empower learners to contribute to the building and defence of a universal culture of human rights in society, with a view to the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms.

There are other definitions of human rights education, such as the one of Amnesty International: HRE is a process whereby people learn about their rights and the rights of others, within a framework of participatory and interactive learning.

The Asia-Pacific Regional Resource Centre for Human Rights Education makes particular reference to the relation between human rights and the lives of the people involved in HRE: HRE is a participative process which contains deliberately designed sets of learning activities using human rights knowledge, values, and skills as content aimed at the general public to enable them to understand their experiences and take control of their lives.

The United Nations World Programme for Human Rights Education defines HRE as: Education, training and information aimed at building a universal culture of human rights. A comprehensive education in human rights not only provides knowledge about human rights and the mechanisms that protect them, but also imparts the skills needed to promote, defend and apply human rights in daily life. Human rights education fosters the attitudes and behaviours needed to uphold human rights for all members of society.

A culture where human rights are learned, lived and “acted” for.

The People's Movement for Human Rights Learning prefers human rights learning to human rights education and places a special focus on human rights as way of life . The emphasis on learning, instead of education, is also meant to draw on the individual process of discovery of human rights and apply them to the person's everyday life.

Other organs of society include NGOs and grassroots organisations which generally work to support vulnerable groups, to protect the environment, monitor governments, businesses and institutions and promote social change. Each NGO brings its own perspective to HRE. Thus, for example, Amnesty International believes that "human rights education is fundamental for addressing the underlying causes of human rights violations, preventing human rights abuses, combating discrimination, promoting equality, and enhancing people's participation in democratic decision-making processes". 3

HRE must mainstream gender awareness and include an intercultural learning dimension.

At the Forum on Human Rights Education with and by Young People, Living, Learning, Acting for Human Rights, held in Budapest in October 2009, the situation of young people in Europe was presented today as one of "precariousness and instability, which seriously hampers equality of opportunities for many young people to play a meaningful part in society [...] human rights, especially social rights and freedom from discrimination, sound like empty words, if not false promises. Persisting situations of discrimination and social exclusion are not acceptable and cannot be tolerated". Thus, the forum participants, concerned with equality of opportunity and discrimination, agreed that, "Human rights education must systematically mainstream gender awareness and gender equality perspectives. Additionally, it must include an intercultural learning dimension; [...] We expect the Council of Europe to […] mainstream minority issues throughout its human rights education programmes, including gender, ethnicity, religion or belief, ability and sexual-orientation issues".

Governments and NGOs tend to view HRE in terms of outcomes in the form of desired rights and freedoms, whereas educational academics, in comparison, tend to focus on values, principles and moral choices. Betty Reardon in Educating for Human Dignity, 1995 states that, "The human rights education framework is intended as social education based on principles and standards [...] to cultivate the capacities to make moral choices, take principled positions on issues – in other words, to develop moral and intellectual integrity". 4 Trainers, facilitators, teachers and other HRE practitioners who work directly with young people tend to think in terms of competences and methodology.

Human rights education is about learning human rights

We hope we have made it clear that different organisations, educational providers and actors in human rights education use different definitions according to their philosophy, purpose, target groups or membership. There is, nonetheless, an obvious consensus that human rights education involves three dimensions:

Learning about human rights, knowledge about human rights, what they are, and how they are safeguarded or protected;
Learning through human rights, recognising that the context and the way human rights learning is organised and imparted has to be consistent with human rights values (e.g. participation, freedom of thought and expression, etc.) and that in human rights education the process of learning is as important as the content of the learning;
Learning for human rights, by developing skills, attitudes and values for the learners to apply human rights values in their lives and to take action, alone or with others, for promoting and defending human rights.

It follows that when we come to think about how to deliver HRE, about how to help people acquire the necessary knowledge, skills and attitudes so they can play their parts within a culture of human rights, we see that we cannot "teach" HRE, but that it has to be learned through experience. Thus HRE is also education through being exposed to human rights in practice. This means that the how and the where HRE is taking place must reflect human rights values (learning in human rights); the context and the activities have to be such that dignity and equality are an inherent part of practice.

In Compass, we have taken special care to make sure that no matter how interesting and playful the methods and activities may be, a reference to human rights is essential for learning about human rights to be credible. There are also various suggestions for taking action.

Human rights education is a fundamental human right

Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights. UDHR, article 26

Human rights are important because no individual can survive alone and injustices diminish the quality of life at a personal, local and global level. What we do in Europe has an effect on what happens elsewhere in the world. For example, the clothes we wear may be made by means of child labour in Asia, while the legacies of European colonial history contribute to the political and religious turmoil in Iraq, Somalia and Afghanistan, which send desperate asylum seekers knocking on our doors. Similarly, millions of people in Africa and Asia are being displaced due to the consequences of climate change caused largely by the activities of the industrialised nations. However, it is not just because human rights violations in other parts of the world rebound on us; the duty to care for others is a fundamental morality found across all cultures and religions. Human rights violations happen everywhere, not only in other countries but also at home, which is why HRE is important. Only with full awareness, understanding and respect for human rights can we hope to develop a culture where they are respected rather than violated. The right to human rights education is therefore increasingly recognised as a human right in itself.

HRE is not only a moral right, but also a legal right under international law. Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that everyone has a right to education and that "Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace". Furthermore, Article 28 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child states that, "School discipline shall be administered in a manner consistent with the child's dignity. Education should be directed to the development of the child's personality, talents and abilities, the respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, responsible life in a free society, understanding, tolerance and equality, the development of respect for the natural environment".

Human rights are more than just inspiration.

HRE is also a legitimate political demand. The message of the Forum Living, learning, Acting for Human Rights recognises that the "values that guide the action of the Council of Europe are universal values for all of us and are centred on the inalienable dignity of every human being". The message goes further in recalling that human rights are more than just inspiration: they are also moral and political commands that apply to the relations between states and people, as much as within states and amongst people.

Human rights education in the United Nations

The United Nations has an irreplaceable role to play with regard to human rights education in the world. The World Conference on Human Rights, held in Vienna in 1993, reaffirmed the essential role of human rights education, training and public information in the promotion of human rights. In 1994, the United Nations Decade for Human Rights Education was proclaimed by the General Assembly, spanning the period 1 January 1995 to 31 December 2004.

The World Programme on HRE was established in 2004 to promote the development of a culture of human rights.

As a result of the evaluation of the decade, a World Programme for Human Rights Education was established in 2004. The first phase of the programme focused on human rights education in the primary and secondary school systems. All states were expected and encouraged to develop initiatives within the framework of the World Programme and its Plan of Action. The Human Rights Council decided to focus the second phase (2010-2014) on human rights education for higher education and on human rights training programmes for teachers and educators, civil servants, law enforcement officials and military personnel at all levels. Accordingly, in September 2010 it adopted the Plan of Action for the second phase, prepared by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. It also encouraged member states to continue the implementation of human rights education in primary and secondary school systems. The open-ended World Programme remains a common collective framework for action as well as a platform for co-operation between Governments and all other stakeholders.

“every individual and every organ of society shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms” Preamble of the UN Declaration on Human Rights Education and Training

In December 2011 the General Assembly adopted the UN Declaration on Human Rights Education and Training. The declaration is considered ground-breaking because it is the first instrument devoted specifically to HRE and, therefore, is a very valuable tool for advocacy and raising awareness of the importance of HRE. The declaration recognises that "Everyone has the right to know, seek and receive information about all human rights and fundamental freedoms and should have access to human rights education and training" and that "Human rights education and training is essential for the promotion of universal respect for and observance of all human rights and fundamental freedoms for all, in accordance with the principles of the universality, indivisibility and interdependence of human rights." The declaration also contains a broad definition of human rights education and training which encompasses education about, through and for human rights. The Declaration places on states the main responsibility "to promote and ensure human rights education and training" (Article 7).

Within the UN system, human rights education is co-ordinated by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, based in Geneva, under the authority of the Human Rights Council.

Human rights education in Europe

The Council of Europe

Commitments to human rights are also commitments to human rights education. Investments in human rights education secure everyone’s future; short-term cuts in education result in long-term losses. Message of the forum Living, Learning, Acting for Human Rights 2009

For the Member States of the Council of Europe, human rights are meant to be more than just assertions: human rights are part of their legal framework, and should therefore be an integral part of young people's education. The European nations made a strong contribution to the twentieth century's most important proclamation of human rights, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948. The European Convention on Human Rights, which has legal force for all member states of the Council of Europe, drew its principles and inspiration from the UN document, and was adopted two years later. The emergence of human rights as we know them today owes much to the massive human rights violations during World War II in Europe and beyond.

Back in 1985 the Committee of Ministers issued Recommendation R (85) 7 to the Member States of the Council of Europe about teaching and learning about human rights in schools. The recommendation emphasised that all young people should learn about human rights as part of their preparation for life in a pluralistic democracy.

The recommendation was reinforced by the Second Summit of the Council of Europe (1997), when the Heads of State and Government of the member States decided to "launch an initiative for education for democratic citizenship with a view to promoting citizens' awareness of their rights and responsibilities in a democratic society". The project on Education for Democratic Citizenship that ensued has played a major role in promoting and supporting the inclusion of education for democratic citizenship and human rights education in school systems. The setting up of the Human Rights Education Youth Programme, and the publication and translations of Compass and, later on, of Compasito, contributed further to the recognition of education to human rights, in particular through non-formal education and youth work.

Member states should aim to provide “every person within their territory with the opportunity of education for democratic citizenship and human rights education”. Council of Europe Charter on Education for Democratic Citizenship and Human Rights Education

In 2010, the Council of Europe Charter on Education for Democratic Citizenship and Human Rights Education was adopted by the Committee of Ministers within the framework of Recommendation CM/Rec (2010) 7. The charter calls on member states to include education for democratic citizenship and human rights education in the curricula for formal education at pre-primary, primary and secondary school level, in general, and for vocational education and training. The charter also calls on the member states to "foster the role of non-governmental organisations and youth organisations in education for democratic citizenship and human rights education, especially in non-formal education. They should recognise them and their activities as a valued part of the educational system, provide them where possible with the support they need and make full use of the expertise they can contribute to all forms of education". "Providing every person within their territory with the opportunity of education for democratic citizenship and human rights education" should be the aim of state policies and legislation dealing with HRE according to the charter. The charter sets out objectives and principles for human rights education and recommends action in the fields of monitoring, evaluation and research. The charter is accompanied by an explanatory memorandum which provides details and examples on the content and practical use of the charter.

The role of human rights education in relation to the protection and promotion of human rights in the Council of Europe was further reinforced with the creation, in 1999, of the post of Commissioner for Human Rights. The Commissioner is entrusted with "promoting education in and awareness of human rights" alongside assisting member states in the implementation of human rights standards, identifying possible shortcomings in the law and practice and providing advice regarding the protection of human rights across Europe. Fulfilling his mandate, the Commissioner gives particular attention to human rights education and considers that human rights can only be achieved if people are informed about their rights and know how to use them. Human rights education is therefore central to the effective implementation of European standards. In a number of reports, he called upon national authorities to reinforce human rights education. School children and youth, but also teachers and government officials must be educated to promote the values of tolerance and respect for others. In a viewpoint entitled "Human rights education is a priority – more concrete action is needed" 5 , he stated that, "more emphasis has been placed on preparing the pupils for the labour market rather than developing life skills which would incorporate human rights values". There should be both "human rights through education" and "human rights in education".

The promotion of the right to human rights education in the Council of Europe is thus cross-sectorial and multi-disciplinary. The Council of Europe liaises and co-ordinates its work on HRE with other international organisations, including UNESCO, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the OSCE (Organisation for Co-operation and Security in Europe) and the Fundamental Rights Agency of the European Union. It has also acted as regional co-ordinator for the UN World Programme on Human Rights Education.

The European Wergeland Centre

The European Wergeland Centre , located in Oslo, Norway, is a Resource Centre working on Education for Intercultural Understanding, Human Rights and Democratic Citizenship. The Centre was established in 2008 as a co-operative project between Norway and the Council of Europe. The main target groups are education professionals, researchers, decision makers and other multipliers. The activities of the Wergeland Centre include:

training for teacher trainers, teachers and other educators
research and development activities
conferences and networking services, including an online expert database
an electronic platform for disseminating information, educational materials and good practices.

The European Union

In 2007 the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) was established as an advisory body to help ensure that fundamental rights of people living in the EU are protected. The FRA, based in Vienna, Austria, is an independent body of the European Union (EU), established to provide assistance and expertise to the European Union and its Member States when they are implementing Community law, on fundamental rights matters. The FRA also has a mission to raise public awareness about fundamental rights, which include human rights as defined by the European Convention on Human Rights and those of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.

The youth programmes of the European Union have, over the years, dedicated particular attention to equality, active citizenship and human rights education.

Many youth projects carried out within the framework of the Youth and Erasmus programmes are based on non-formal learning and provide important opportunities for young people to discover human rights values and human rights education.

Youth policy and human rights education

The Council of Europe has a longstanding record of associating young people with the process of European construction, and of considering youth policy as an integral part of its work. The first activities for youth leaders were held in 1967 and in 1972 the European Youth Centre and the European Youth Foundation were set up. The relationship between the Council of Europe and youth has developed consistently since then, with young people and youth organisations being important actors and partners at key defining moments for for the organisation and for Europe. Whether in the democratisation processes of the former communist countries, in peace building and conflict transformation in conflict areas or in the fight against racism, antisemitism, xenophobia and intolerance, young people and their organisations have always counted on the Council of Europe and reciprocally the Council has been able to rely on them. Soft and deep security on the European continent cannot be envisaged without the contribution of human rights education and democratic participation.

The stated aim of the youth policy of the Council of Europe is to "provide young people, i.e. girls and boys, young women and young men with equal opportunities and experience which enable them to develop the knowledge, skills and competences to play a full part in all aspects of society" 6 .

Providing young people with equal opportunities and experiences enabling them to play a full part in society.

The role of young people, youth organisations and youth policy in promoting the right to human rights education is also clearly spelt out in the priorities for the youth policy of the Council of Europe, one of which is Human Rights and Democracy, implemented with a special emphasis on:

ensuring young people's full enjoyment of human rights and human dignity, and encouraging their commitment in this regard
promoting young people's active participation in democratic processes and structures
promoting equal opportunities for the participation of all young people in all aspects of their everyday lives
effectively implementing gender equality and preventing all forms of gender-based violence
promoting awareness education and action among young people on environment and sustainable development
facilitating access for all young people to information and counselling services.

The youth policy of the Council of Europe also foresees close co-operation between child and youth policies, as the two groups, children and young people, overlap to a large extent.

In 2000, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary for the European Convention on Human Rights, the Directorate of Youth and Sport launched its Human Rights Education Youth Programme . The programme has ensured the mainstreaming of HRE in the Council's work with young people and in youth policy and youth work. Young people and youth organisations have taken a central role in the programme as educators and advocates for human rights and have made significant contributions to the Council of Europe's work.

A further dimension to the programme was the publication of Compass in 2002 and its subsequent translation in more than 30 languages. A programme of European and national training courses for trainers and multipliers has contributed to the emergence of formal and informal networks of educators and advocates for HRE which is producing visible results, although these differ profoundly from one country to another. The success of the Human Rights Education Youth Programme has also been built on:

The support for key regional and national training activities for trainers of teachers and youth workers in the member states, organised in co-operation with national organisations and institutions
The development of formal and informal networks of organisations and educators for human rights education through non-formal learning approaches at European and national levels
The mainstreaming of human rights education approaches and methods in the overall programme of activities of the youth sector of the Council of Europe
The development of innovative training and learning approaches and quality standards for human rights education and non-formal learning, such as the introduction of e-learning by the Advanced Compass Training in Human Rights Education
Providing the educational approaches and resources for the All Different – All Equal European youth campaign for Diversity, Human Rights and Participation
The dissemination of the Living Library as a methodology for intercultural learning, combating stereotypes and prejudices
The provision of the political and educational framework for intercultural dialogue activities

The programme has also mobilised thousands of young people across Europe through the support of pilot projects on human rights education by the European Youth Foundation.

In 2009, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Council of Europe, a youth forum on human rights education – Learning, Living, Acting for Human Rights – brought together more than 250 participants at the European youth centres in Budapest and Strasbourg. The participants in the forum issued a message to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. The message stresses the principles and needs for HRE in Europe through:

securing adequate levels of multiplication and relaying through projects and partners at national and local levels, and through developing optimal communication between the European, the national and the local levels of action;
seeking alliances between formal and non-formal education actors and with human rights institutions for the setting up of national human rights education programmes;
developing the capacity of non-governmental partners while seeking greater involvement of governmental youth partners;
supporting trans-national co-operation and networks for human rights education;
deepening awareness about specific human rights issues affecting young people (e.g. violence, and exclusion);
including a gender awareness perspective and an intercultural dimension as inherent to the concept of equality in human dignity;
closely linking human rights education activities with the realities of young people, youth work, youth policy and non-formal learning;
considering the necessary overlapping and the complementary nature of human rights education with children and with youth;
recognising and promoting human rights education as a human right, and raising awareness about this;
taking into account the protection of the freedom and security of human rights activists and educators;
mainstreaming minority issues, including gender, ethnicity, religion or belief, ability and sexual-orientation issues;
supporting the active participation and ownership of young people and children in educational processes;
raising awareness of the responsibility of states and public authorities in promoting and supporting human rights education in the formal and non-formal education fields.
HRE with young people

It seems obvious that young people should be concerned with human rights education, but the reality is that most young people in Europe have little access to human rights education. Compass was developed to change this.

Human rights education with young people benefits not only society, but also the young people themselves. In contemporary societies young people are increasingly confronted by processes of social exclusion, of religious, ethnic and national differences, and by the disadvantages – and advantages – of globalisation. Human rights education addresses these issues and can help people to make sense of the different beliefs, attitudes and values, and the apparent contradictions of the modern multi-cultural societies that they live in.

The special Eurobarometer report of March 2008, "Attitudes of European citizens towards the environment", states that Europeans attach an overwhelming importance to protecting the environment and that 96% say that it is either very or fairly important to them. Young people in particular are very willing to commit their energy and enthusiasm to issues that concern them. One example are the 100,000 who demonstrated for action to be taken to combat climate change in Copenhagen in December 2009. As human rights educators, we need to harness that energy. That they will take up ideas and act on them is evident from the many programmes that already exist for young people – from the small scale activities carried out on a relatively ad hoc basis in individual youth clubs or schools to the major international programmes conducted by the Council of Europe and the European Union.

One example of the contribution made by human rights educated young people in Europe is in the preparation of country reports for the Minorities Rights Group. These reports, used by governments, NGOs, journalists and academics, offer analysis of minority issues, include the voices of those communities and give practical guidance and recommendations on ways to move forward. In this way human rights education can be seen as complementary to the work of the European Court of Human Rights in sending clear messages that violations will not be tolerated. However, HRE offers more: it is also a positive way to prevent violations in the first place and thus to secure better functioning and more effective prevention and sanction mechanisms. People who have acquired values of respect and equality, attitudes of empathy and responsibility and who have developed skills to work co-operatively and think critically will be less ready to violate the human rights of others in the first place. Young people also act as educators and facilitators of human rights education processes and therefore are an important support and resource for developing plans for HRE at national and local level.

Towards a culture of human rights

You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming. Pablo Neruda

"All roads lead to Rome" is a common idiom meaning that there are many ways of getting to your goal. Just as all roads lead to Rome, so there are many different ways to delivering HRE. Thus, human rights education is perhaps best described in terms of what it sets out to achieve: the establishment of a culture where human rights are understood, defended and respected, or to paraphrase the participants of the 2009 Forum on Human Rights Education with Young People, "a culture where human rights are learned, lived and ‘acted' for".

A human rights culture is not merely a culture where everyone knows their rights, because knowledge does not necessarily equal respect, and without respect we shall always have violations. So how can we describe a human rights culture and what qualities would its adherents have? The authors of this manual worked on these questions and have formulated some (but not exclusive) answers. A human rights culture is one where people:

Have knowledge about and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms
Have a sense of individual self-respect and respect for others; they value human dignity
Demonstrate attitudes and behaviours that show respect for the rights of others
Practise genuine gender equality in all spheres
Show respect, understanding and appreciation of cultural diversity, particularly towards different national, ethnic, religious, linguistic and other minorities and communities
Are empowered and active citizens
Promote democracy, social justice, communal harmony, solidarity and friendship between people and nations
Are active in furthering the activities of international institutions aimed at the creation of a culture of peace, based upon universal values of human rights, international understanding, tolerance and non-violence.

These ideals will be manifested differently in different societies because of differing social, economic, historical and political experiences and realities. It follows that there will also be different approaches to HRE. There may be different views about the best or most appropriate way to move towards a culture of human rights, but that is as it should be. Individuals, groups of individuals, communities and cultures have different starting points and concerns. A culture of human rights ought to take into account and respect those differences.

1 Words emphasised by the editors 2 Committee of Ministers Recommendation CM/Rec(2010)7 on the Council of Europe Charter on Education for Democratic Citizenship and Human Rights Education 3 http://www.amnesty.org/en/human-rights-education 4 Betty A. Reardon: Educating for Human Dignity – Learning about rights and responsibilities, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995 5 www.fra.europa.eu (accessed on 13 October 2010) 6 Resolution of the Committee of Minister on the youth policy of the Council of Europe, CM/Res(2008)23 United Nations, Plan of Action of the World Programme for Human Rights Education – First phase, Geneva, 2006

Download Compass

Human rights education is a fundamental human right
Chapter 1 - Human Rights Education and Compass: an introduction
Chapter 2 - Practical Activities and Methods for Human Rights Education
Chapter 3 - Taking Action for Human Rights
Chapter 4 - Understanding Human Rights
Chapter 5 - Background Information on Global Human Rights Themes

10 Reasons Why Human Rights Are Important

Interest and awareness of human rights has grown in recent decades. In 1948, the United Nations released the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which has become the most important document of what should be considered the standard for basic equality and human dignity. Why do human rights matter? Here are ten specific reasons:

#1: Human rights ensure people have basic needs met

Everyone needs access to medicine, food and water, clothes, and shelter. By including these in a person’s basic human rights, everyone has a baseline level of dignity. Unfortunately, there are still millions of people out there who don’t have these necessities, but saying it’s a matter of human rights allows activists and others to work towards getting those for everyone.

#2: Human rights protect vulnerable groups from abuse

The Declaration of Human Rights was created largely because of the Holocaust and the horrors of WII. During that time in history, the most vulnerable in society were targeted along with the Jewish population, including those with disabilities and LGBT. Organizations concerned with human rights focus on members of society most vulnerable to abuse from powerholders, instead of ignoring them.

#3: Human rights allow people to stand up to societal corruption

The concept of human rights allows people to speak up when they experience abuse and corruption. This is why specific rights like the right to assemble are so crucial because no society is perfect. The concept of human rights empowers people and tells them that they deserve dignity from society, whether it’s the government or their work environment. When they don’t receive it, they can stand up.

#4: Human rights encourage freedom of speech and expression

While similar to what you just read above, being able to speak freely without fear of brutal reprisal is more expansive. It encompasses ideas and forms of expression that not everybody will like or agree with, but no one should ever feel like they are going to be in danger from their government because of what they think. It goes both ways, too, and protects people who want to debate or argue with certain ideas expressed in their society.

#5: Human rights give people the freedom to practice their religion (or not practice any)

Religious violence and oppression occur over and over again all across history, from the Crusades to the Holocaust to modern terrorism in the name of religion. Human rights acknowledges the importance of a person’s religion and spiritual beliefs, and lets them practice in peace. The freedom to not hold to a religion is also a human right.

#6: Human rights allows people to love who they choose

The importance of freedom to love cannot be understated. Being able to choose what one’s romantic life looks like is an essential human right. The consequences of not protecting this right are clear when you look at countries where LGBT people are oppressed and abused, or where women are forced into marriages they don’t want.

#7: Human rights encourage equal work opportunities

The right to work and make a living allows people to flourish in their society. Without acknowledging that the work environment can be biased or downright oppressive, people find themselves enduring abuse or insufficient opportunities. The concept of human rights provides a guide for how workers should be treated and encourages equality.

#8: Human rights give people access to education

Education is important for so many reasons and is crucial for societies where poverty is common. Organizations and governments concerned with human rights provide access to schooling, supplies, and more in order to halt the cycle of poverty. Seeing education as a right means everyone can get access, not just the elite.

#9: Human rights protect the environment

The marriage between human rights and environmentalism is becoming stronger due to climate change and the effects it has on people. We live in the world, we need the land, so it makes sense that what happens to the environment impacts humanity. The right to clean air, clean soil, and clean water are all as important as the other rights included in this list.

#10: Human rights provide a universal standard that holds governments accountable

When the UDHR was released, it had a two-fold purpose: provide a guideline for the future and force the world to acknowledge that during WWII, human rights had been violated on a massive scale. With a standard for what is a human right, governments can be held accountable for their actions. There’s power in naming an injustice and pointing to a precedent, which makes the UDHR and other human right documents so important.

Do you want to learn more about why human rights are important? Take a free online course on human rights offered by top universities.

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About the author, emmaline soken-huberty.

Emmaline Soken-Huberty is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon. She started to become interested in human rights while attending college, eventually getting a concentration in human rights and humanitarianism. LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights, and climate change are of special concern to her. In her spare time, she can be found reading or enjoying Oregon’s natural beauty with her husband and dog.

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Nymia Pimentel Simbulan

June 1st, 2020, human rights as the foundation of good governance: the ironies of the philippine experience.

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Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

“Confronted by these challenges and difficulties, human rights defenders in the Philippines have taken steps to muster all possible support targeting various sectors in Philippine society”, writes Dr Nymia Pimentel Simbulan , Professor and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, the University of the Philippines Manila and Executive Director of Philippines Human Rights Information Centre (PhilRights).

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The Rise of Populist, Autocratic, Strongman Regimes

To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity. – Nelson Mandela

The intersection of good governance and human rights is critical in the building of a robust democracy and the realization of sustainable development. While human rights provides the contents, norms and standards of good governance, good governance guided by human rights norms and principles, creates the conducive environment necessary for the State to respect, protect and fulfill human rights in a sustainable manner¹.

Human rights determines the behavior of governments as primary duty bearers — on how to conduct political affairs, processes and institutions, including what programs, plans and policies to prioritize, what laws to enact, how to allocate resources, and what structures to establish and/or strengthen. Good governance ensures opportunities, spaces and mechanisms that enhance peoples’ participation in decision-making, contribute to their empowerment, and strengthen transparency, accountability and the rule of law.

In recent years, the global community has witnessed the rise of populist, autocratic, strongman politics the likes of Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, Donald Trump of the United States, Narendra Modi of India, and Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil.² ³

Their governance styles and approaches have seriously affected the state of democratic institutions and processes, undermining fundamental freedoms and violating the human rights of the population.

This ruling style is not by any means new; what is new is the way in which this style of governance has taken advantage of the benefits of information technology, particularly social media, in order to promote simplistic narratives that bolster their popularity.

These leaders share similar characteristics when it comes to how they project themselves, the narratives that they spread, governance strategies, and approaches to rule of law and human rights. Among these shared features are:

Projection of the head of government as a decisive leader who is strong-willed, nationalistic , i.e. putting the nation above all else, and relentless in solving the country’s problems particularly poverty, crime, and corruption, and thereby creating a “cult of personality”. According to the narrative, this leader is different from the political elite who came before him, and is therefore closer to the people. Following the assertion that the country is in crisis and confronted by problems that require urgent and decisive actions because the political elite failed to address these problems, he presents himself as someone who is determined to “do whatever it takes” to get the job done, even in ways which are “unorthodox and verge on the illegal.”⁴ His popularity is based on the use of simplistic narratives having the ability to deliver a straightforward solution to complex problems based on an approach of “shooting from the hip”.
Laying out and overemphasizing one particular problem, usually having to do with criminality, to heighten people’s sense of insecurity and fear . This then lays the foundation for the need of the decisive leader to employ state violence and legitimizes the use of deadly force to deal with criminality and terrorism. (e.g. In the US, it was the criminal hordes of migrants; in India, it was Muslims who threatened the vision of a Hindu Indian nation; in the Philippines, it is people involved in the illegal drug trade, etc.) The populist leader takes advantage of state institutions that are legally authorized to use force — law enforcement institutions and the military — and employing the narrative of a “state of emergency” to carry out campaigns of violence that require authorities to be given the license to kill in order for government to proceed with least resistance in realizing its political agenda.

According to the narrative, violence is the most effective and efficient way to produce results when it comes to addressing the country’s serious problems like illegal drugs, crimes and terrorism. But the use of state violence also has the effect of producing a shocking and chilling effect on people. By establishing an atmosphere of fear, the violence discourages citizens from going against the State and its laws; it urges people to toe the line.

Taking advantage of the discontent of citizens with the “traditional political elite” who are seen as corrupt, using their government positions to consolidate political and economic power for themselves, and failing to address poverty and inequality. The populist leader has presented himself as “different” and has capitalized on the frustration and impatience of the population over the inability of the political elite and democratic institutions to curb the growing economic inequalities in these countries.⁵ This has translated to disillusionment with democracy and the promise of democratic institutions and practices to deliver.
Promoting the narrative that human rights norms, standards and principles get in the way of real progress on these serious problems. Human rights have been viewed as obstacles in the implementation and realization of State policies, plans and programs because according to these State leaders, human rights have served to weaken the State’s “war efforts”. Since human rights have been conveniently used to attack the State while at the same time used as shields or armors to protect “enemies of the State”, “destabilizers of government”, and “terrorists”, human rights to these leaders have no place in society. Even human rights organizations have been tagged as acting as “enemies from within” because they are hampering the government’s legitimate war efforts by choosing to defend “drug addicts”, “drug lords”, “criminals”, “rapists” who have been projected as evil, and deserving to be treated in a cruel and inhumane manner befitting animals. The universality of human rights has likewise been distorted by asserting that “criminals”, “drug users”, “drug pushers”, “drug lords” are not part of humanity ⁶, while at the same time distorting what human rights are about by accusing human rights defenders as not caring about the victims of crimes.

These leaders have resorted to capitalizing on their popularity to misuse state institutions to mount attacks against critics. They have also taken steps to systematically weaken democratic institutions that are meant to act as institutional constraints on the Executive power, under the guise of “doing whatever it takes” and taking a no-nonsense approach to getting the job done.

Take the example of President Duterte who used the Department of Justice (DOJ) to go after Senator Leila De Lima and former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Ma. Lourdes Sereno, or President Trump in the US, allowing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) to misuse the criminal justice system to deter activists, lawyers, journalists, and humanitarian volunteers from challenging — or simply documenting — the systematic human rights violations that US authorities have committed against migrants and asylum seekers by subjecting human rights defenders to warrantless surveillance, interrogations, invasive searches, travel restrictions, and, in isolated cases, a false arrest and unlawful detention. In so doing, they have violated the Constitution, US and international law, and DHS policies — all of which prohibit discriminatory restrictions of freedom of speech and expression. In some cases, US and Mexican authorities have reportedly collaborated in the unlawful restrictions against human rights defenders on their shared border.”⁷

Undermining the ability of the press, the Fourth Estate, to act as a counterbalance or check on government power by questioning traditional media, particularly media that is critical of government actions, and claiming that these are sources of “fake news”. These leaders use social media to disseminate propaganda, or to spread allegations meant to discredit, vilify, neutralize and/or silence their critics and opponents through the mobilization of a well-financed army of social media trolls. The strategy of constantly bombarding and saturating social and mass media with misinformation presented as “truths” has made the general public accept without question State pronouncements and assertions, even if these lack factual basis to the point of bordering on absurdity.

Reliance on these beliefs and practices has had serious consequences on peoples’ lives, livelihood, and social relations. It has likewise placed democratic institutions and processes in a precarious and unstable state.

Consequences of the Strongman Autocratic Leadership: The Philippine Experience

After the overthrow of the Marcos dictatorship in 1986 and prior to the installation of Rodrigo R. Duterte as the 16th President of the Republic of the Philippines in June 2016, the country enjoyed the reputation of having a dynamic human rights track record in Southeast Asia. This is evident by the existence of a human rights-influenced 1987 Philippine Constitution cognizant of the atrocities and human rights violations perpetrated by the Marcos government during the Martial Law period, a vibrant human rights movement, free mass media, and open democratic space. The Philippines was among the first country in Southeast Asia to establish a national human rights institution (NHRI) which has consistently enjoyed a status A accreditation by the International Coordinating Committee of National Institutions for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights.⁸

The country has achieved major strides with the passage of numerous human rights enabling laws including the Human Rights Victims Reparation and Recognition Act of 2013 (Republic Act №10368), Anti-Torture Act of 2009 (Republic Act №9745), Anti-Enforced or Involuntary Disappearance Act of 2012 (Republic Act №10353), The Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act of 2012 (Republic Act №10354), Generics Act of 1988 (Republic Act 6675), Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act of 1997 (Republic Act 8371), and The Magna Carta of Women of 2009 (Republic Act №9710). Moreover, the Philippines is a State Party to all key international human rights laws/treaties. However, significant changes took place and continue to take place in the socio-political landscape of the country when Duterte came to power in June 2016.

Laying the foundation for the “War on Drugs”

Presenting himself as “Father of the Nation”, Duterte has claimed that the way to move forward is to be tough and decisive in dealing with the key problems besetting the Philippines. He has identified illegal drugs as among the root cause of crimes and corruption in Philippine society, an assertion that has been propagated and accepted by different sectors, even in the absence of scientific evidence and solid data. Constant reiteration and bombardment by government of the public, civil society and the international community through the use of the mass and social media, reinforced by educational and government agencies/institutions, have transformed such narratives to be “real and true”.

Because he claims to know what will work best for the country, everyone is expected not to question and oppose his actions, not even by those in government. It is also because of this image and his chauvinist posturing that women’s groups have been attacked and insulted for openly criticizing his misogynist policies, programs and approaches.

Prior to his installation into power, Duterte used a discourse of a corrupt elite coddling drug dealers and addicts, incompetent in addressing problems of poverty and inequality in society, and primarily preoccupied in further enriching themselves while in power.⁹

While distancing himself from one section of the ruling class/political elites to show how different he is, he has, at the same time, forged strategic alliances and ties with the most powerful sections of the ruling class/political elites to strengthen his control of government and pursue his political agenda.¹⁰

In this way, he has further isolated and rendered powerless any legitimate opposition. In return, he has allowed these political allies to realize their own agendas and consolidate their power within their own turfs. This can be seen in the nature of his relations with the traditional Philippine political dynastic families, the Macapagal-Arroyos, Marcoses, Villars, etc.¹¹

The “War on Drugs” and the use of state violence

Complementing the framework that the country is “in crisis” is the strategy of drawing the line between the supporters and critics of government, thereby polarizing the country . In a state of war, he has asserted either you are with us or you are against us . Those on the side of government are rewarded and protected, while those who oppose the administration are labeled “enemies of the State”, obstructionists in the “war efforts” against drugs and criminality, and are therefore deserving of experiencing the “full force of the law” and its consequences. Thus, the official policy of launching a “war on drugs and criminality”, mobilizing police and military forces, and conducting mass killings and arrest of those believed to be involved in illegal drugs, has been legitimized.¹²

The escalation of human rights violations emanating from the use of state violence in addressing the country’s problems particularly crime and terrorism, is another impact of the actions of populist, autocratic leaders, very evident in the case of the Philippines. Law enforcement institutions and the military, complemented by the use of non-state hired armed groups/individuals, have served as the principal machinery in the State-sponsored violent campaign against illegal drugs, crime and terrorism. To make this more acceptable to “polite society”, drug users and drug dealers have been cast as criminals who can no longer be redeemed and therefore no longer have human rights and should thus not be treated humanely. They are projected to be “dregs of society” that deserve to be physically eliminated in order to protect the law-abiding citizens of the country from the havoc that they otherwise would have been wreaking on society.

Operating under the instruction and protection of the Chief Executive, abuses and human rights violations in the form of killings, illegal arrest and detention, torture, and enforced disappearance, have become a normal/common occurrence, and oftentimes justified and condoned.¹³ State agents have not been made accountable for their actions in the conduct of police and/or military operations in communities, consequently, perpetuating a culture of impunity.

It is therefore not surprising that the administration continues to push for the restoration of the death penalty in the country, a priority legislative measure of the President despite the Philippines being a State Party to Optional Protocol 2 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which does not allow for the restoration of the death penalty once it has been abolished from the law of the country.¹⁴

The rule of law has been seriously eroded with a culture of impunity becoming deeply entrenched and institutionalized. Instead of holding State agents accountable for human rights violations perpetrated in the context of the “war on drugs”, the President has assured them protection and freedom from prosecution for their actions. He continues to condone and even encourage members of the police force in the excessive and indiscriminate use of violence resulting to torture and death of alleged drug users and/or pushers in urban poor communities.¹⁵

The President has even gone to the extent of increasing the salaries of the men and women of the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) as reward for a “job well done” in the government’s campaign against illegal drugs and terrorism.¹⁶ Meanwhile, victims of the “war on drugs”, particularly the victims of extrajudicial killings (EJKs), have been denied access to justice. To this day, families of EJK victims, children referred to as “collateral damage”, and even those admitted by law enforcement agents as killed because of mistaken identity, have not seen a single State agent prosecuted, all the more punished and made accountable for their actions. They continue to go scot free and enjoy the protection of government officials including the President.

Impact of the “War on Drugs” on democratic institutions

Democratic institutions like the legislative and judicial bodies have been weakened in a bid to bolster executive power. The principles of transparency, and check and balance, have been replaced by the avowed virtues of loyalty, obedience and subservience to ensure that the priority programs and policies of government, foremost of which is the “war on drugs and criminality” will be on track. The rhetoric propagated by government is since the “drug menace poses a clear and present danger”¹⁷ dictating the country to be on war footing, the President should be given the leeway or prerogative to determine the strategies that are considered best to address the problems to be in control or on top of the situation. There is no room for questioning and opposition, and everyone is expected to contribute to the war effort; everyone is expected to make sacrifices for the greater good. Any criticism is viewed as obstructing and taking away from the war effort which should be dealt with accordingly by the State.

Furthermore, the President’s political party and avid supporters enjoy a monopoly control over the Philippine Congress, both the House of Representatives and Senate. The principle of checks and balances has been undermined with the transformation of Congress particularly the House into a rubberstamp of the President ensuring that “what the President wants, the President gets”. The Supreme Court upheaval resulting to the ouster of Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno, and with 12 out of the 15 Justices of the Philippine Supreme Court (7 out of the 15 Justices, namely Associate Justices Andres Reyes Jr., Alexander Gesmundo, Jose Reyes Jr., Ramon Paul Hernando, Rosmari Carandang and Amy Lazaro-Javier and Henri Jean-Paul Inting with 5 more to be appointed this second half of 2019) appointed by the President before the end of 2019, is indicative of a disturbing development challenging the independence of the judiciary.¹⁸

Impact on human rights

The low tolerance for criticism and opposition has led to the shrinking of democratic space and the prevalence of an environment of fear and silence throughout the country. Freedoms of speech and expression are subtly being curtailed. Human rights defenders, mass media practitioners, and members of the political opposition who have consistently expressed contrary views, criticized government programs and policies, have not been spared from insults, embarrassment, and threats. They have been the targets of red-tagging and vilification campaigns. With the intention to malign and destroy their reputation and credibility, critics and/or opponents have likewise experienced harassment through the filing of trumped-up charges using fabricated evidences and hired witnesses.

The repulsion towards human rights and human rights defenders has led the Duterte government to virtually declare a “war against human rights”.¹⁹ It has distorted and bastardized human rights by asserting that “criminals, drug pushers, drug lords” are not humans;²⁰ threatened to kill and/or behead human rights advocates;²¹ ²²attacked and insulted international human rights bodies, officials and personalities like the UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Agnes Callamard, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra-ad al Hussein.²³ ²⁴ ²⁵ ²⁶

It has likewise led to the abandonment of State obligations to international human rights commitment. Last March 17, 2019, the Philippines withdrew from being a State Party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), an act openly defying the United Nations and international critics.²⁷ There are also plans to abrogate its international human rights commitments being a State Party to Optional Protocol 2 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, with the marching order of the President to Philippine Congress to reinstate the death penalty in the country.²⁸

The social cost of the “War on Drugs”

To date, close to 30,000 individuals²⁹ have been killed as a consequence of operations of police forces or unidentified assailants or men riding in tandem, or both, in the Philippines. The rights to life, due process, presumption of innocence, freedom from torture or cruel, inhuman treatment or punishment, freedom from arbitrary arrest or detention, are among the civil and political rights denied and violated by the State.³⁰ Meanwhile, families of victims of civil and political rights violations, particularly State-perpetrated mass killings and/or extrajudicial killings, have been further deprived of their economic and social rights like the rights to decent work and pay, rights to education, health, housing, and social security.

The poor, who have been the primary targets of the “war on drugs” of the Duterte government as evidenced by the socio-demographic profile of the close to 30,000 victims of mass killings, have experienced multiple burdens with the impact of civil and political rights violations on their economic and social rights. The death of the husband, father, son, usually the breadwinner of the family, has left behind not only stigmatized widows, traumatized children, and terrorized communities in the course of the drug campaign of the government in urban poor communities. A major consequence of the “war on drugs” on the poor is that it has exacerbated and deepened their impoverishment and marginalization. Wives and/or mothers, in addition to their being caretakers of the children and elderly, have been forced to assume the role of breadwinner formerly played by the dead family member to make both ends meet. Children, who oftentimes have witnessed the murder of their father, mother, sibling and/or relative, experience fear, shame and discrimination having its toll on family and community relations, health, and attendance and performance in school.³¹

There is no doubt that the families of the close to 30,000 victims of the “war on drugs” in the Philippines have experienced further deterioration in their poverty situation. Widows, mothers and loved ones of victims of the “war on drugs” have difficulty or are unable to find decent jobs or sources of livelihood; children are forced to drop out of school; the state of homelessness, hunger and sickness among urban poor has worsened; and possibly involvement in crimes, including the selling and/or use of illegal drugs, among the youth and young adults in urban poor communities, has deepened.³² Not to mention the impact on the state of mental health, particularly of the wives, parents, children because of the shock, disbelief, guilt, grief, of the sudden and violent death of a loved one.

Even families of victims of extrajudicial killings in the context of the “war on drugs and criminality” have decided to keep mum to injustices and repression within their midst. For fear of retribution and absence of resources to defend themselves and seek justice through the judicial system, they have chosen to leave their fate to God and/or move out of their places of residence for safer areas and to escape the punitive actions of unscrupulous law enforcement agents, many of whom are operating within the community. This attitude of passivity and resignation is dictated by their feeling of powerlessness and deprivation, a common characteristic of poor victims of State violence. Thus, in communities where there is seeming order and stability are residents engulfed and immobilized by terror, distrust and suspicion.

Ways Forward: Instituting Genuine Changes

Confronted by these challenges and difficulties, human rights defenders in the Philippines have taken steps to muster all possible support targeting various sectors in Philippine society. They have also reflected on the weaknesses and gaps of the human rights movement in the conduct of its advocacy work especially with the continuing support and popularity enjoyed by the Duterte administration from the people.

A priority course of action taken is raising peoples’ awareness and understanding of human rights and its principles through mass education and information campaigns. Human rights groups have realized the value of sustained, age-specific and creative ways of conducting human rights education and information work in order for it to be viewed as important and relevant to the lives of ordinary citizens from all walks of life.

Not only have human rights NGOs paid attention to improving and simplifying the contents and language of human rights education and information work. Methodologies in the conduct of education activities have likewise been improved or enhanced. Training on popular education techniques like the use of theater, street plays, arts, songs, games and community participation, have been incorporated in human rights education curriculum for people from all walks of life, i.e. urban poor residents, women, children, youth and students, artists, indigenous peoples, workers and peasants, church people, etc.

Human rights NGOs have also devoted much time and effort in the development and production of culturally-appropriate information, education and communication (IEC) materials for various audiences to ensure that these will complement educational activities conducted in urban poor communities, schools, workplaces, parishes, farms, etc. Details like type of materials, language, art works and designs, and lay-out are studied and adopted to suit the target audiences.

Organizing work is another measure recognized as valuable by HRDs in the Philippines. Efforts have been taken to set-up human rights task forces, ministries, committees and other types of formations in different areas and territories. These have been undertaken usually in partnership and collaboration with community organizers/coordinators, progressive church people, trade unionists, student leaders, peasant leaders, environmental activists, etc. Organizing people at various levels and scale is emphasized to contribute to peoples’ empowerment through collective actions in the defense of their rights.

Closely linked to organizing is mobilization. Peoples and communities are encouraged and assisted to prevent human rights violations and/or protect their rights. Participation in mass protest actions like rallies, demonstrations and pickets, joining lobby work in Congress, doing the rounds of schools and communities to conduct education and/or information activities, helping out in the production of IEC materials, or just simply convincing a family member, neighbor, friend to attend community forums or assemblies on social issues, are different forms of mobilization made available to peoples and communities.

A distinct form of mobilization which HRDS have provided particularly the families of victims of the “drug war” and alleged EJKs is their participation in the documentation of cases of human rights violations. This involves mobilization in the form of sharing their stories/experiences and allowing these to be documented by HRDs; convincing other victims to have their stories/experiences documented by HRDs; attending documentation training workshops conducted by HR NGOs; and/or engaging in actual documentation activities. There have also been families of victims of alleged EJKs who have gone to the extent of filing cases against known perpetrators of human rights violations through the assistance of human rights lawyers.

Concomitantly, human rights NGOs have collaborated with journalists, film makers and other media practitioners recognizing their role and contribution in disseminating the stories and experiences of the victims of human rights violations and ensuring that their narratives are not forgotten. All these in the hope of seeking justice and reparation in the future. Journalists and media practitioners have also been instrumental in humanizing victims of EJKs by being able to put names and faces behind the statistics.

Moreover, HR NGOs have taken efforts to maximize international solidarity work by participating in international conferences, forums to disseminate to the world the state of human rights of the Filipino people under the current administration. NGOs have become more active in sending delegations to U.N. activities to do lobby work and solicit support to address the human rights situation in the country. The recent resolution filed by Iceland and adopted by the UN Human Rights Council on the Philippines is an example of intensified efforts exerted by Philippine NGOs for the international community to take action on the human rights situation in the country.³³

Last but not the least is the defense and protection of HRDs against various forms of attacks from the State. HR NGOs have taken steps to enhance their capacities and competencies to defend themselves and protect their organizations through education, training, networking on personal and organizational safety and security, including digital security.

All these activities are interlinked, overlap and reinforce each other. These do not come in any order but are conducted simultaneously depending on the situation and needs of organizations, peoples and communities with the objective of eventually bringing about genuine change in Philippine society. After all, a government that thrives on state violence, lies and deception is a government founded on unstable grounds; it is a government that will eventually be discredited in history, if not rejected by the people.

1 United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner. Good Governance and Human Rights. https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Development/GoodGovernance/Pages/GoodGovernanceIndex.aspx (Accessed: 12 September 2019) 2 Kenneth Roth. World’s Autocrats Face Rising Resistance. Human Rights Watch World Report 2019. https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2019/keynote/autocrats-face-rising-resistance (Accessed: 8 Sept. 2019) 3 Joshua Kurlantzick. Southeast Asia’s Populism Is Different But Also Dangerous. Council on Foreign Relations. Nov. 1, 2018. https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/southeast-asias-populism-different-also-dangerous (Accessed: 8 Sept. 2019) 4 Inquirer.Net. Full Text: President Rodrigo Duterte inauguration speech. June 30, 2016. https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/793344/full-text-president-rodrigo-duterte-inauguration-speech (Accessed: 30 Sept. 2019) 5 Aries Arugay. The 2019 Philippine Elections: Consolidating Power in an Eroding Democracy. Heinrich Böll Stiftung Southeast Asia. 21 June 2019. https://th.boell.org/en/2019/06/21/2019-philippine-elections- consolidating-power-eroding-democracy (Accessed: 9 October 2019) 6 Inquirer.Net. Criminals are not human — Aguirre. Feb. 1, 2017. https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/867331/criminals-are-not-human-aguirre (Accessed: 30 Sept. 2019) 7 Amnesty International. USA: Authorities are misusing justice system to harass migrant human rights defenders. 2 July 2019. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/07/usa-authorities-misusing-justice- system-harass-migrant-human-rights-defenders/ (Accessed: 6 October 2019) 8 Commission on Human Rights. Republic of the Philippines. https://chr.gov.ph/about-chr/ (Accessed: 29 Sept. 2019) 9 Mark R. Thompson. Duterte’s illiberal democracy and perilous presidential system. East Asia Forum. 16 April 2018. https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2018/04/16/dutertes-illiberal-democracy-and-perilous-presidential- system/ (Accessed: 6 October 2019) 10 Mark R. Thompson. Duterte’s illiberal democracy and perilous presidential system. East Asia Forum. 11 Aries Arugay. The 2019 Philippine Elections: Consolidating Power in an Eroding Democracy. Heinrich Böll Stiftung Southeast Asia. 12 Mark R. Thompson. Duterte’s illiberal democracy and perilous presidential system. East Asia Forum. 13 Christina Mendez. Duterte to PNP: Kill 1,000, I’ll protect you. The Philippine Star. July 2, 2016. https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2016/07/02/1598740/duterte-pnp-kill-1000-ill-protect-you (Accessed: 30 Sept. 2019) 14 United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner. Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty. 15 Dec. 1989. https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/2ndopccpr.aspx (Accessed: 9 October 2019) 15 Christina Mendez. Duterte to PNP: Kill 1,000, I’ll protect you. The Philippine Star. 16 Pia Ranada. Duterte signs resolution on pay hike for soldiers, cops. Rappler. January 9, 2018. https://www.rappler.com/nation/193248-duterte-signs-joint-resolution-pay-hike-soldiers-cops (Accessed: 30 Sept. 2019) 17 Christina Mendez. Duterte to PNP: Kill 1,000, I’ll protect you. The Philippine Star. 18 Edu Punay. Duterte to appoint 5 more SC justices in 2019. The Philippine Star. May 29, 2019. https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2019/05/29/1921803/duterte-appoint-5-more-sc-justices-2019 (Accessed: 9 October 2019) 19 Associated Press. ‘I don’t care about human rights’: Philippines’ Duterte acknowledges abuses in drug war but refuses to back down. 6 Aug. 2016. https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/1999755/i- dont-care-about-human-rights-philippines-duterte (Accessed: 30 Sept. 2019) 20 Agence France-Presse. Criminals are not human — Aguirre. Feb. 1, 2017. https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/867331/criminals-are-not-human-aguirre (Accessed: 29 Sept. 2019) 21 Marlon Ramos. Duterte threatens to kill rights activists if drug problem worsens. Philippine Daily Inquirer. Nov. 29, 2016. https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/848933/duterte-threatens-to-kill-human-rights-activists-if-drug- problem-worsens (Accessed: 29 Sept. 2019) 22 Trisha Macas. Duterte threatens to behead human rights advocates. GMA News Online. May 18, 2017. https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/news/nation/611343/duterte-threatens-to-behead-human-rights- advocates/story/ (Accessed: 29 Sept. 2019) 23 Paterno Esmaquell II. Philippine President-elect Duterte curses UN. Rappler. June 3, 2016. https://www.rappler.com/nation/135179-philippines-president-duterte-curses-united-nations (Accessed: 29 Sept. 2019) 24 Nestor Corrales. Duterte hurls expletives at Callamard after her remark on Kian slay. Inquirer.net. August 28, 2017. https://globalnation.inquirer.net/160053/duterte-callamard-war-on-drugs-kian-delos-santos-killings- expletive (Accessed: 29 Sept. 2019) 25 Felipe Villamor. Rodrigo Duterte of Philippines Calls U.N. Human Rights Chief an ‘Idiot’. The New York Times. Dec. 22, 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/22/world/asia/rodrigo-duterte-philippines-zeid-raad-al- hussein.html (Accessed: 29 Sept. 2019) 26 Consuelo Marquez. UN expert asks Duterte admin: Stop maligning human rights advocates. Inquirer.net. Dec. 19, 2018. https://globalnation.inquirer.net/172096/un-expert-asks-duterte-admin-stop-maligning- human-rights-advocates (Accessed: 29 Sept. 2019) 27 Agence France-Presse. Philippines leaves International Criminal Court. Rappler. March 17, 2019. https://www.rappler.com/nation/225924-philippines-international-criminal-court-withdrawal-march-17-2019 (Accessed: 29 Sept. 2019) 28 Pia Ranada. Duterte pushes for the return of death penalty for drug crimes, plunder. Rappler. July 22, 2019. https://www.rappler.com/nation/236024-duterte-pushes-return-death-penalty-drug-crimes-plunder-sona- 2019 (Accessed: 29 Sept. 2019) 29 Emmanuel Tupas. 29,000 deaths probed since drug war launched. The Philippine Star. March 6, 2019 https://www.philstar.com/nation/2019/03/06/1898959/29000-deaths-probed-drug-war-launched 30 United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. 16 Dec. 1966. https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/ccpr.aspx (Accessed: 15 Sept. 2019) 31 Philippine Human Rights Information Center (PhilRights). The Killing State: The Unrelenting War Against Human Rights in the Philippines. Sept. 2019. 32 Philippine Human Rights Information Center (PhilRights)…… 33 Sofia Tomacruz. Why Iceland led UN resolution on PH drug war killings. Rappler. July 19, 2019. https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/iq/235775-why-iceland-led-un-resolution-drug-war-killings-philippines (Accessed: 19 Oct. 2019)

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Agence France-Presse. Criminals are not human — Aguirre. Feb. 1, 2017. https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/867331/criminals-are-not-human-aguirre

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*This blog is based on Prof Simbulan’s talk delivered at the 2019 LSE Southeast Asia Forum .

*The views expressed in the blog are those of the authors alone. They do not reflect the position of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, nor that of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

About the author

Professor Nymia Pimentel Simbulan is Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, University of the Philippines Manila, and Executive Director of Philippine Human Rights Information Center (PhilRights), a human rights institute which is part of Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates (PAHRA). PhilRights has played an important role in the abolition of the death penalty in the country in 2006. It has also played a leading role in the submission of alternative reports on economic, social and cultural rights to the UN.

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Human Rights and Democracy: An Incompatible or Complementary Relationship?

Introduction

The purpose of human rights is to allow for a transcendence of the nation state in terms of individual entitlement to an enjoyment of rights wherever individuals may find themselves (Landman 2013, 26). However, with respect to the varying philosophical and historical foundations of human rights, the supposed universality of human rights is debatable. States that reliably receive praise for their human rights records include most European countries, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. What these countries have in common is a democratic political system and independent judiciaries that protect citizen rights (Posner 2014, 5). This observable fact would lead us to believe that democratic institutions are necessary for a thorough protection of human rights. However, in a non-cosmopolitan context, the logic of democracy necessitates constructing a barrier between those who belong to the demos and those excluded (Mouffe 2000, 4). This creates the condition for the existence of democratic citizenship rights. It also challenges the supposed universality of human rights, since those excluded from the demos, such as refugees, stateless persons or the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, have no government to protect their supposedly natural rights.

The purpose of this essay is to traverse the tensions between human rights and democracy. It is argued that these tensions originate from the incompatible values upon which human rights and democracy were distinctly founded, the ways in which they are applied and the types of politics that they make possible. Following a short history of the emergence of human rights into the contemporary political consciousness, I explore the conflicts and paradoxes inherent to the human rights/liberalism/democracy nexus. Drawing on the work of political philosopher Chantal Mouffe, I show that there is a bifurcated mutual dependency to this relationship. One the one hand, the appeal to human rights is necessary in order to naturalise the notion of popular sovereignty for the democratic nation state. On the other hand, the democratic logic of constituting the people and bestowing rights is necessary to subvert the tendency towards the abstract universalism that is characteristic of liberal discourse (Mouffe 2000, 44). Finally, against a discussion of the taboo against torture, the notion that the most effective way to protect human rights is through democratic institutions is considered.

A (Brief) History of Human Rights

Some scholars have argued that human rights have a centuries-long history (Ishay 2004). Others perceive them to be a modern legal construction that emerged out of the institution of citizenship rights (Moyn 2012; Posner 2014). Following the Second World War these rights were universalised via a set of agreements that generated the contemporary international regime for the promotion and protection of human rights (Donnelly 2006). In The Last Utopia , legal history scholar Samuel Moyn (2012) argues that human rights only entered the global political consciousness in the 1970s. Moyn claims that at this point in time other kinds of utopianism, such as Communism and national liberation, began to weaken. Human rights suddenly became attractive because they provided a moral discourse and a set of ethical standards superficially above politics, as well as offered a minimalist utopianism that mitigated suffering without seeking to radically transform the world (McLoughlin 2016, 304). During the same decade the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights finally took effect, the Helsinki process began, Amnesty International was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, dissident movements across the world began to adopt the language of rights and President Carter proclaimed human rights to be central to US foreign policy (Posner 2014, 19). For the Left, revolutionary aspirations started to be replaced by a global morality that sought to alleviate signs of suffering (McNeilly 2016). Human rights abuses defined authoritarianism, so human rights protection became the logical antidote to such evils. Legal theorist Daniel McLoughlin (2016, 311) argues that in this environment anti-authoritarianism legitimated capitalist liberal democracies by opposing them to a political ‘Other’ that lacked respect for human rights. While some commentators argue that the moral discourse of human rights is “the most we can hope for” (Ignatieff 2001), there are others who challenge this paradigm by contending that we need to develop a radical critique of liberal democratic state power that abandons the ‘good versus evil’ dichotomy (McNeilly 2016; Whyte 2012). This is because human rights in their current liberal form operate to reinforce existing power relations, rather than enabling their takedown.

Human Rights and Citizenship Rights – Two Peas in a Pod?

The 1776 United States Declaration of Independence and the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen are widely cited as the provenance of human rights (Landman 2013, 28). For example, human rights scholar Agostinho Reis Monteiro (2014, 373) argues that since both these declarations made the respect for human rights directly connected to the principle of popular sovereignty, these two concepts are therefore “historically, conceptually and politically indissociable.” Indeed, the Rights of Man states that ‘men are born and remain free and equal of right’, which is also a claim echoed in the opening article of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights . Here, equality and liberty are decreed as “natural entitlements” (Douzinas 2013, 55). However, the Universal Declaration is clear about the basis of universal human rights by stating that “the aim of any political association is to preserve the natural and inalienable rights of man” and that “the principle of all Sovereignty lies essentially with the nation” (Articles 2 & 3 respectively, quoted in Douzinas 2013, 55). Thus, as McLoughlin (2016, 315) argues, the political history of modern liberal democracies is characterised by the gap between “the universalism of the rights of man” and the rift between “white propertied men with full citizenship rights” and “slaves, women, workers, and people of colour” who have been traditionally excluded from the political sphere. By virtue of being allowed to participate in the political, those with citizenship rights are thus able to reify their humanity (Shaap 2013, 4).

Political philosopher Hannah Arendt (1966) interrogates this dynamic between human rights and citizenship rights in her seminal book, The Origins of Totalitarianism . Arendt critiques post-1948 human rights developments for being based on an abstraction of humanity rather than on a viable opportunity for political participation. Arendt argues that human rights only become meaningful when they are recognised in a political society. Thus, for Arendt, more significant than the right to freedom or the right to equality is “the right to have rights.” Ultimately, the problem with the rights of man is that legal rights depend upon membership to a political community. Those excluded from political communities do not have citizenship rights to protect them, so are in reality left with no rights at all. This is premised on the notion that when man and citizen are separated, we recognise that “the world finds nothing sacred in the abstract nakedness of being human” (Arendt 1966, 299). While there has since been a massive growth of the international human rights regime, Arendt’s skepticism concerning the universality of human rights still carries weight. Excluded-citizens may enjoy some human rights, but they ultimately remain the most vulnerable to persecution and expulsion (Nash 2009, 89).

Similar to Arendt, political philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s (1998, 127) analysis of the Rights of Man criticizes its assertion that the rights it affirms are bestowed to both citizen and Man. For Agamben, the universal and abstract image of Man is a modern representation of “bare life.” This metaphor reflects the existence of a human prior to belonging to the political. In Ancient Greek society the conceptual opposition between Man and citizen was expressed in a distinction between citizens who made up the polis, and the slaves, women and children who were excluded (McLoughlin 2016, 312). The modern expression of this classical separation between life and politics manifests itself in a different way. These days, liberal democracies justify their sovereign power on the need to protect the life of their citizens. To do this, modern democratic states now produce more extreme forms of political exclusion that the abstract framework of human rights is unable to address (McLoughlin 2016, 312).

Contemporary democracies are therefore inherently paradoxical because “the territorial borders of a democracy cannot themselves be democratic” (DeGooyer 2014, 101). While nation states profess to grant rights to their citizens based on their common humanity, they also exclude all those located beyond their borders in the name of maintaining national sovereignty and demarcating national identity. In this context, the refugee logically becomes an anomaly of the international system of sovereign states. According to international migration scholar Emma Haddad (2008, 69), refugees are not an indication of this system “going wrong”. Rather, they are “an inherent if unanticipated part of the system.” Citizenship attempts to sort bare life into harmonised territories but in the process some individuals become stuck in between. In this way, the refugee demonstrates a failure of certain governments to protect their citizens and of the state system as a whole, which fails to protect all humans as citizens (Haddad 2008, 69). The refugee also becomes the necessary ‘Other’ so that national citizens of the modern state are able to forge an identity. According to Haddad (2008, 47), the rise of national identity, which attached itself to the system of international relations following the Declaration of Independence and the Rights of Man, has become “the new indicator of allegiance,” while the refugee is “the imagined outsider who allowed the concept of the nation-state to take hold.” Thus, the state and the stateless “are caught in a mutual embrace” (DeGooyer 2014, 101). In light of this analysis, even if the most effective way to protect human rights is through democratic institutions, it seems almost disingenuous if the same human rights cannot be enjoyed by individuals excluded from the demos.

Navigating the Tension between Liberalism, Democracy and Human Rights

Political philosopher Chantal Mouffe’s theorising on the impact that liberalism has on democratic institutions helps to deconstruct the compatibility of human rights and democracy. For Mouffe (2000, 2), democracy is both a form of rule upholding the principle of the sovereignty of the people, as well as a symbolic framework within which this democratic rule is employed. What makes modern Western democracy truly ‘modern’ and ‘Western’ is that this symbolic framework is now informed by the liberal tradition constituted by the rule of law, the respect for individual liberty, protection from oppressive state interference and the defence of human rights. These values form the key tenets of the contemporary Western worldview. Conversely, the democratic tradition emphasises the values of equality, popular sovereignty and a division between the governing and the governed. Indeed, as Amartya Sen (2003) has argued, democracy as manifested through liberalism and the ballot box is a Western construct, while democracy as expressed through ‘public reason’ (in other words, deliberation) is truly universal. Mouffe (2000, 3) claims that there is no necessary connection between liberalism and democracy, “only a contingent historical articulation,” which I have explored in the preceding paragraphs. Nevertheless, there is a widespread assumption that democracy and human rights are inherently compatible (Landman 2013, 7). For Mouffe (2000, 4), this assumption has had the effect of privileging excessive liberalism, whilst neglecting the fact that the legitimacy of liberal democracy remains premised on popular sovereignty.

It thus follows that hegemony of neoliberalism becomes a threat to democratic institutions. States are the main agents in the realisation of democracy and human rights. However, globalising forces have encroached on the state’s ability to freely implement policies, including policies concerning human rights. This phenomenon has been identified as a “democratic deficit” (Mouffe 2000, 15). Here, elected governments lack the power to control neoliberal economic processes and the follow-on effects of major world crises (Cedroni 2012, 261). Indeed, one only has to consider the history of decisions made by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organisation, which have overwhelmingly served the interests of the Global North without much concern for negative human rights consequences. Neoliberal creeds about the inviolable rights of property, the sweeping virtues of the market and the risks of interfering with its logic have become common sense in liberal-democratic societies. But as Mouffe (2000, 6) explains, the ensuing “democratic deficit” can severely threaten allegiance to democratic institutions by those citizens whose concerns have been excluded from the elite’s political and societal priorities. Indeed, the recent rise of right-wing demagogy in the West seems to eerily confirm Mouffe’s trepidations. Democracy is about compromise and negotiation between disparate opinions, “not zero-sum scorched earth attacks on anyone who does not follow the orthodoxy of one political group” (Shattuck 2016, 182). A commitment to democracy constitutes a never-ending task to ensure popular control and political equality (Charlesworth 2013, 280). Yet, since there is always the threat of “a tyranny of the majority,” liberal democratic institutions should never be taken for granted. As Mouffe (2000, 4) prescribes, this necessitates recognising the tension originating from the inner workings of democracy on the one hand, and liberalism on the other.

The Universal Violation of Human Rights

Through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights , states have committed themselves to respecting and safeguarding human rights. Nevertheless, states remain the greatest violators of human rights (Cedroni 2012, 257). However, the moralisation of human rights has led to a shift in attention away from the structural violence triggered by neoliberal capitalism towards more egregious acts of violence (Whyte 2012). In this way, human rights tend to prioritise the rights of individuals, which draws focus away from the rights claims of societies, communities and families (Donnelly 2006, 616). For example, political theorist Robert Meister (2011, 66) has observed the phenomenon of “the humanitarian melodrama,” which is the enjoyment of the moral feeling we get through witnessing the pain of bodies. For Meister, physical pain is always perceived as an egregious violation of human rights. However, the same is often not said of other types of violence such as abuses along the supply chain or mass incarceration (Whyte 2012). For example, Amnesty’s 1976 report that documented abuses in Argentina, which contributed to the organisation being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, did not comment on the growing poverty or the cutback of social welfare programs (as was the policy linchpin of the junta government) (Whyte 2012). Indeed, the international human rights regime is not a complete solution for social justice or human emancipation (Donnelly 2006, 616). In theory, this is unproblematic since different ethical, legal, and political practices need to come together for the functioning of an effective society. In practice, however, human rights today often exclude larger emancipatory visions and can even have morally perverse unintended consequences (Donnelly 2006, 616). For example, the way in which torture is construed as the ultimate human rights violation has the effect of limiting the ways we conceptualise violence and rights violations at a broader structural level (Kelly 2011, 328). In this way, the pathologising of torture has reduced the politics of human rights to a discussion about the need to limit gratuitous pain, rather than, for instance, the collective redistribution of wealth (Kelly 2011, 328).

This trend of sensationalising overt pain has inadvertently led to a pernicious form of torture (Kelly 2011, 328). Far from being the leftovers of our pre-civilised past, or a custom reserved for authoritarian regimes, political scientist Darius Rejali (2007) argues that there is a particular type of torture practiced by liberal democracies, namely what he has dubbed “clean tortures.” These are techniques that are designed to leave no traces. Such techniques include: Tasers; extremely hot or cold showers; refrigerated cells; sleep deprivation; and the infliction of noise (Rejali 2007, 553-7 for complete list). Rejali (2007, 39) links the development of clean torture techniques to the corresponding development of democratic monitoring, both domestic and international, that are intended to prevent torture. Rejali (2007, 390) argues that it is no coincidence that clean tortures began to spread rapidly in the 1970s, right about the same time when Amnesty was raising awareness of the significance of torture as a human rights issue. This increased sensitivity to signs of pain in our collective conscience has thus had the effect of perpetuating a type of torture available to democracies that is arguably more insidious given that it is harder to see.

In The Twilight of Human Rights legal scholar Eric Posner (2014, 112) argues, that even if human rights at the international level were enforceable, there is little reason to believe that individual human rights would promote the wellbeing of all people in a diverse collection of countries “where the interests, values, and needs of the populations cannot be captured in a simple list of rights.” Consider the rise of living standards and advancement of economic rights in China over the last 30 years. Hundreds of millions of people have been brought out of poverty. Posner (2014, 91) suggests that given the lack of democratic culture in China, and the extraordinary political turmoil that existed there until rather recently, there would be a significant risk to the management of the economy (and even societal peace) if China were to suddenly comply with civil and political rights. Liberal democracies run into the mirror image of this predicament. Democratic legislatures are often reluctant to formulate laws in compliance with the cosmopolitan norms of human rights. In the example of counter-terrorism measures in the US and UK, courts have repeatedly judged legislation intended to allow arbitrary detention unlawful. In any case, governments remain unwilling to respect well-established international human rights norms (Nash 2009, 99). As elected representatives, politicians are often unwilling to risk appearing soft on those who are perceived to threaten the state’s safety. This broad trend in contemporary politics shows that even in democratic societies there are contexts in which human rights are simply not popular (Nash 2009, 99). As we can see, it is thus impossible to separate the world into “good democratic states” that protect human rights and “bad authoritarian states” that are the biggest violators (Posner 2014, 121).

Conclusions

This essay has sought to navigate some tensions between human rights and democracy. It was argued that these tensions originate from the conflicting values upon which human rights and democracy were distinctly founded, the ways in which they are applied and the kinds of politics that they make room for. The careful juggling between the preservation of democratic institutions and the protection of human rights will thus remain shaky, even in the best of times. These tensions have risen out of the rift between liberal democracy’s conceptualisation of the universal Man and the national citizen, or rather, “the real beneficiary of rights” (Douzinas 2013, 56). Since rights form the basis upon which people are allocated into rulers, ruled, and excluded, it is hard to imagine a utopia in which human rights exist for those who do not belong to a demos (Douzinas 2013, 59).

This essay has also considered the broader shift in contemporary political discourse that interprets human rights as a moral story of ‘good versus evil.’ This is a false dichotomy, since states fall along a continuum of human rights compliance. Many states with authoritarian governments are responsive to the needs and interests of their populations and do protect the more significant human rights just as well as democratic governments are able to (Dryzek 2016, 362). This discussion is important because we ought to interrogate whether the human rights project epitomised by Amnesty International is the best solution to the banal lack of freedom, justice and equality experienced by people in all parts of the contemporary world.

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Whyte, J 2012, ‘Intervene, I said’, Overland , no. 207 Winter, viewed 19 October 2016, <https://overland.org.au/previous-issues/issue-207/feature-jessica-whyte/>.

Written by: Lillian Carson Written at: The University of Melbourne Written for: Course: Human Rights; Degree: Master of International Relations Date written: November 2016

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Women Who Shaped the Declaration

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Ethics and Values: The Moral Compass of Humanity

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