The human rights , human rights , or right of the person , indicate a concept according to which any human being has universal rights, whatever the substantive law into force or other local factors such as the Ethnie or the Nationalité. The qualifier of universal was registered in the title of the Universal declaration of the human rights of 1948 with UNO on the initiative of Rene Cassin.

According to this philosophy - fought or eclipsed at the 19th century and the 20th centuries by other doctrines - but to which the events of our time give again a singular topicality, the man, as such and independently of a its social condition, has rights “inherent in its person, inalienable and crowned” and thus opposable in all circumstances at the company and the capacity. Thus, the concept of human rights is it by universalist definition and egalitarian, incompatible with the systems and the modes based on the superiority or the “historical vocation” of a caste, a race, people, a class or any groups social; incompatible as much with the idea that the construction of a better company justifies the elimination or the oppression of those which are supposed to make obstacle has this construction.

The human rights are thus prerogatives recognized with the individuals, considered as essential with the Démocratie and the peaces, consequently generally recognized by standards of constitutional value and/or international conventions, so that their respect is ensured, if need be even against the State.

The existence, the validity and the contents of the human rights are a permanent subject of debate in Philosophie and Political sciences. As of 1791, in its Vindiciae Gallicae - work published in answer to the Reflections on the Revolution of France of Edmund Burke, appeared the previous year - the British philosopher James Mackintosh (1765 - 1832) expressed the philosophical point of view of a Libéral on the events of the French revolution until spring 1791. Excesses of the Revolutionists and the Terreur led it a few years later to be opposed to them and to join Burke in its criticism, but its initial defense of the human rights at that time constitutes an interesting testimony from the point of view of a Whig cultivated, representative of the liberal philosophy resulting from the Age of Enlightenment.

Legally, the human rights are defined in the laws and international conventions, and in more in the internal laws of many States. However, for much from people, the doctrines of the human rights extend beyond the laws and form a fundamental moral base to control the contemporary geopolitical order.

Alternatives of denomination

Since the end of the 20th century, many which is those prefer the term of human rights (that they find less sexist and more coherent, and which is being the literal translation of the equivalent in the other Romance languages or in English: " diritti umani" (Italian), " derechos humanos" (Spanish), " direitos humanos" (Portuguese), " drets humans" (Catalan), " human rights" (English). The French denomination inherited the 18th century is among the Romance languages to only convey ambiguity between human rights “male” and human right “human being”. The advisory French commission of the human rights refuted these arguments in an opinion dated December 19th, 1998) but the traditional denomination remains the most used in France. However, the French often use the expression “women's rights” when it is explicitly question of women, which adds with the ambiguity of origin by suggesting that the women would have rights different from those of the men. To leave these ambiguities, even to France some, like the French Movement for the family planning (MFPF), propose to speak about right of the person , like one does it with the Canada; international Amnesty in France explicitly chose to speak about human rights like one does it in Suisse. Lastly, the use human rights with a H capital with man is hardly attested in the dictionaries of French language.

History

Antiquity

See also: Cylinder of Cyrus

Iran, marked the concept of the human rights to, under the reign of Cyrus the Large one. After his conquest of Babylon in -539, the king made carry out the Cylindre of Cyrus, discovered in 1879. This document is usually mentioned like the “first charter of the human rights”. Into 1971, UNO translated it in all its official languages. One can in fact of putting in perspective it in a tradition mésopotamienne presenting the ideal of the king right, whose first known example is that of the king Urukagina of Lagash, having reigned to, and of which one of the other famous representatives is Hammurabi of Babylon, with its famous code dating from. The inscription of Cyrus however presents some innovative characters, in particular on the decisions concerning the religion.

This document recalls the events having preceded the catch by Babylon, then exposes the decisions of Cyrus for the Babylonians: it reigns peacefully, delivers certain people of unjust drudgeries. It grants people of the off-set countries the right to repossess in their country of origin, and leaves the statues of divinities formerly taken along to Babylon to return in their sanctuaries of origin. He proclaims the total freedom of worship in his empire.

In the ancient Rome, there was the concept of established among, which was a whole of rights that all Roman citizens had.

Modern time

The concept of minimal rights due to the only quality of human being, or right natural, is at the same time very old and very general. What characterizes the idea of the human rights, it is the idea to explicitly register them in the right (oral or writing), to recognize to them a universal application and a force higher than any other standard. One passes then often by a form of proclamation, rather than by the ordinary rules of enact legal standards; the terms used are those of a preexistent and indisputable obviousness, which one discovers and which one recognizes, rather than a simple debatable convention. The unanimity is implicitly convened like source of the legitimacy of these rights. Even if references to divine or influences religious can be, they are distinguished well from a religious rule by their universal character and laic.

With this definition (not of the contents, but of the form), one can go up at least until the Moyen-âge to find the first demonstrations, concrete and with real effects in the practices, of the idea of the human rights.

During the 16th century, in Occident, the discovery of native-born people of the America by Europeans and the first practices of African deportation towards the " New Monde" are at the origin of activism for the human rights of Bartolomé de Las Put and certain sectors of the Catholic church which appear with the acts Veritas ipsa and Sublimis Deus

The first declaration of human rights of the modern time is that of the State of Virginia (the United States), written by George Mason and adopted by the Convention of Virginia the June 12th 1776 ( Bill off Rights ).

It was largely copied by Thomas Jefferson for the declaration of human right contained in the Declaration of Independence of the United States (July 4th, 1776), by the other colonies for the drafting of these declarations of human rights, and by the French National Assembly for the Déclaration of the human rights and the citizen of 1789.

In 1791, the pope Pie VI condemned the declaration of the human rights and of the citizen in his encyclical Adeo foot-note on pretext that this one was only philosophical and replaced the natural right like to the rights of the Church.

The concept of human right will remain practically stable during nearly one century, then, under the influence of the taking into account of social problems and after several decades, the rights known as of “second generation” (or “right-credit” guaranteed by the State on the other human beings) were added by the Universal declaration of the human rights (UNO, 1948).

Human rights since the creation of UNO

The place of the organization of the United Nations in the legitimation and the promotion of the human rights is essential.

Since the Charter of the United Nations (1945) and the Universal declaration of the human rights, the concept of human rights was extended, legislated and of the devices were created to supervise the violations of these rights. Let us quote certain big events:

  • 1966 : Adoption by UNO of the international Pact relating to the civil laws and political and of the international Pact relating to the economic rights, social and cultural.
  • 1967 : Creation of mechanisms of investigations by the Commission of UNO on the violations of the human rights of the Member States.
  • 1991 : First international meeting of the national institutions of promotion and protection of the human rights organized by the National advisory commission of the human rights (CNCDH) in Paris under the aegis of the United Nations.
  • December 1993: Adoption by the General meeting of the United Nations of the Action plan of Vienna, which grants a broad place to the democracy and the development, regarded as forming integral part of the human rights and who calls all the States left to create national institutions guarantors of the human rights.
  • 2006 : Creation of the the Council of the human rights of UNO during the adoption by the General meeting on March 15th, 2006 of resolution A/RES/60/251.

Principal texts

Through the History, several texts gradually brought to the current definition of the human rights:

; In Canada and Quebec:

Extension of the concept of the human rights

The philosophy of the human rights wonders about the existence, the nature and the justification of such rights vis-a-vis the reproaches which the assertion of their universality can incur in a world tried by the Relativisme. It is a particularly important question of contemporary political philosophy.

The initial points related to mainly the freedom, the safety, the property and the resistance to the oppression (declaration of 1789), which are rights against the State and find their inspiration in liberalism. Later versions added to it questions of dignity and wellbeing (education, health, etc), which is rights on the State, inspired of socialism in the broad sense.

One can distinguish some general features:

  • the human rights are rights in a certain direction:
    • the men are carrying these rights
    • these rights define statutes of protection (for example, the right to life must be protected by the law)
    • these rights imply duties and responsibilities (duties of protection, respect, provision of the means of application of these rights, assistance, etc)
  • the human rights are conceived as political standards indicating how citizens must be treated by their State and their institutions
  • but certain rights intervene in an obvious way in the private beliefs and behaviors, such as for example the equality and what concerns the fight against the Discrimination S. the moral dimension of these rights can also be heard in a more fundamental way: the human rights in themselves indeed engage a certain design of the human being and what it must make or not to make. What implies a contrario that one can criticize these rights in the name of an other design of the man (cf will infra)
  • the human rights are minimal standards rather than abstract ideals: they define the limits below which the human life is intolerable (in terms of human needs: food, habitat inter alia)
  • the human rights are international standards, which must relate to all the countries and all the people
  • the human rights are priority standards: nobody can be private about it without serious injustices
  • the human rights are inalienable: nobody can lose them, temporarily or definitively, voluntarily or not.
  • a postulate of the human rights is that they are sufficiently justified to be transcultural; in other words, the human rights are in theory rational standards

Institutional and legal aspects

The human rights have thus more and more a legal consistency in the world, of the fact so much:
  • of their integration in Constitution S and Loi S
  • that creation of international jurisdictions, such as the European Court of the human rights. Thus the jurisprudence built gradually by the latter concerning the disagreements between the State S and the private individuals starts to be taken into account by the legal doctrines in many countries, even not Europeans.

Human rights and democracy

The source of the right in the field of the human rights comes from the existence from the individual, whereas the source of the right in mode democratic derives by definition from the general will. It is when these two sources of right enter in conflict which the company must find a balance and a means of reconciling these two requirements. For example, we profit from freedom of expression, but the criminal law prohibited which one insults his neighbor; we have each one the basic right marry us, but the civil law prohibited the marriage between brothers and sisters; in several countries, the right to the abortion exists without that being regarded as a violation of the basic right to the life.

The laws in these examples do not violate therefore necessarily the human rights but this raises the question difficult to know which are the acceptable limits that the law can impose on the human rights, in an democratic society governed by the right.

Human rights and Rule of law

The Démocratie S assume in theory the respect of the human rights, in particular through the doctrines of the Rule of law. However, one should not confuse the respect of the human rights by a State and its democratic character, even if both often go hand in hand.

A democratic State can violate the human rights. To avoid it, one generally admits that it is necessary to limit the sovereignty of the people by independent parapets, a role often held by the judicial bodies (at the national level, by constitutional judges or Supreme courts) or, as indicated hereafter for the European Court of the human rights (at the regional level).

Conversely an authoritative State violates by definition the human rights (by the non-observance of freedom, and the threat which it makes weigh on the other rights). But it frequently happens that, in a situation where the human rights (to be started with the respect of the life) are violated by individuals or groups nonofficial or foreign, the people believe preferable (wrongly or rightly) to call upon authoritarian regimes to face the situation.

The human rights are the stake of a fight between the assertion of the Souveraineté of the States and the establishment of an inviolable sphere around each individual.

Classification

The legal doctrines distinguish all, by concern teaching, the human rights between several generations. One then sees several classifications, which are unanimous for the first generation and which becomes increasingly fuzzy and complex to the third, even fourth generation.

  • the first generation is civil and political human rights;
  • Second generation: economic rights and social;
  • Third generation: rights of solidarity;
  • Fourth generation: total rights.

Each new generation, which is chronologically shifted compared to the others, often makes the object of criticism and is often badly accepted. Thus, at the 19th century, the rights of the first generation were already criticized. The rights of the second generation, them, were also criticized to the 20th century (until in the years 1970-1980, one could see doctrines which were opposed to it), but they are them also admitted by almost the whole of the lawyers. Remain still the rights of the third and fourth generations. If the rights of the third very badly definite (in their contents) and thus are very badly accepted, the rights of the fourth, them, result from isolated doctrines, with the result that there does not exist any consensus today on their contents and even less on their existence.

First generation

The first generation of the human rights are civil laws and policies. These are rights that the individual can oppose to the State, which cannot act as a contrary direction to limit or remove these rights or freedoms; they are named thus freedoms resistance. Historically, these rights, already embryonic in the English usual Constitution, developed at the end of the 18th century and were recognized at the time of the revolutions American (1787) and Frenchwoman (1789).

Classically, one distinguishes:

  • the individual freedoms: it is the capacity of self-determination of each individual. One can count among these last:
    • the physical freedom, of which initially right to the life, then the prohibition of slavery, the prohibition of torture and the sorrows inhuman or degrading and the prohibition of arbitrary detention ( Habeas corpus ) also called safety (Montesquieu);
    • family freedoms (freedom of the Marriage, Filiation, and today Private life);
    • the private property (comparable by the Declaration of 1789 with a natural and imprescriptible right of the Man, articles 2 and 17);
    • contractual freedom (article 1134 of the Civil code French).
  • the political freedoms, i.e.
    • right to vote;
    • right of resistance to oppression;
    • right of meeting peaceful…

They recover inter alia the freedoms of the worships, meeting, conscience, teaching, communication, association, etc

Today, the two types of freedoms are mixed, in particular because of a concomitant claim and a protection.

Second generation

The rights of the second generation are rights which require the intervention of the State to be effective; the individual, contrary to the assumption of the rights resistance, is able to require State a certain action. They are named thus the rights credits, that the State must, in return of an abandonment on the one hand of the freedom of his citizens. They are also the social rights. The concept appears following the socialist fights , and she is regarded today as leaves whole the Rule of law.

Historically, these rights appeared with the introduction of the Welfare state, the shortly after the Second world war.

One can give an not-exhaustive list of it:

  • Right to work;
  • Right to the social coverage;
  • Right to education;
  • Right to strike
  • etc

Opposition between rights of the first and the second generations

There exists a certain opposition between the rights against the State and the rights on the State. The partisans of the rights resistance frequently qualify the rights credit of false rights, because the State can satisfy the rights of second generation of the ones only while forcing others to do it, which violates their rights of first generation. One often quotes as example the right to the housing (2nde generation) which is opposed to the property right (1st generation).

The Universal declaration of the human rights (1948) is accompanied by two international pacts of the United Nations relating to the civil laws and policies (first generation) and with the economic rights, social and cultural (second generation) (December 16th, 1966). These two pacts were seldom signed both unit; the countries of the block of the west signed more readily the first while those of the Eastern bloc signed the second.

In France, the Constitutional council does not admit a hierarchisation of these two categories of rights, since it is brought to reconcile, more than to make prevail one on the other, these two generations, even if in practice that leads it to have a preference for the application of the rights of the first generation.

Third generation

The rights solidarity, which would be due to a national solidarity, emerged in the doctrines in the years 1980.

Although the doctrines still divide on the contents, the human rights of the third generation articulate all around the basic principle of the equality or nondiscrimination.

One can quote as follows:

  • right of the environment;
  • considerations of bioethics;
  • right to the development;
  • right to peace…

A fourth generation?

Some as Emmanuel Kobla Quashigah would speak about a fourth generation of the rights, which would be total; thus, all the actors of the company would have interest to implement these rights.

Nevertheless, the contents of these rights are not clear. The theories take again certain rights of the third generation to put them in the fourth (right of the environment, bioethics…), the difference being, for them, that the rights of the first three generations would stick to the alive man in company (with a slip of freedom towards the material equality), while the rights of the fourth would be rights attached to the human being as a species.

Critical of the human rights

The human rights are sometimes presented like an invention modern Occident ale. Although similar proclamations exist in fact in other places and other times, they are simply more badly known, like the Charte of Manden in current the Mali. Moreover, they are sometimes used like a means of pressure of the countries known as “ Western ” on other countries of the world. Some see there even a weapon Idéologique of destruction religious Culturelle and , and of economic control of the others Nation S.

Thus, the principle of universality of the human rights is sometimes disputed by certain countries. The Western countries are shown to want to start again indirectly a policy colonialist, reorganizing the world with the image which they wish to give of themselves. This crisis was particularly acute with regard to the principle of the humane Ingérence, qualified by Bernard Kouchner of Droit of interference , taking again a concept created by the philosopher Jean-François Revel in 1979, to see having of interference (obligation made in any State provide assistance, at the request of the supranational authority).

This report led the Organization of African Unity (OAU) to declare in 1981 the African Charte of the human rights and the people. This charter takes again the principle of the Universal declaration of 1948, by adding to it a certain number of rights which were neglected there: right to self-determination of the people or obligation made in the States “ eliminate all the forms from foreign economic exploitation ” for example.

According to Robert Badinter, the loss of credibility comes from those which proclaim the human rights without respecting them.

It is also necessary to quote the Déclaration of the human rights in Islam adopted the August 5th 1990 by the Organization of the Islamic conference.

The Universalism - or the universality - human rights, such as defined in Occident, is often put in opposition to the cultural Relativisme which promotes a concept of equality of the Culture S - were most brutal from the point of view of the western world, and which can also go until rejecting any upgrading capability of the ethnic values under the terms of the principle of the fight against the Acculturation.

The Western vision of the basic rights, founded on the civil liberties and policies, was a long time opposed within the United Nations (UNO) to that of the socialist Bloc privileging the economic rights, social and Culturel S and the satisfaction of the elementary needs. The collapse of this concurrent ideology at the end of the 20th century has, by-effect, supported the current diffusion of the Western model.

Violations of the human rights

The violation of the human rights is the abuse anybody way which deceives any fundamental human right. It is a term used when a government violates the national right or international relating to the protection of human rights. According to the Universal declaration of the human rights, the fundamental human rights are violated when, inter alia things:

  • some Race, Faith, or group sees itself denying its recognition like a “person”. (Articles 2 & 6)

  • the men and the women are not treated like equal. (Article 2)
  • the different, racial or religious groups are not treated like equal. (Article 2)
  • the life, the freedom or the safety of anybody are threatened. (Article 3)
  • a person is sold like or is used like a slave. (Article 4)
  • a punishment cruel, inhuman or degrading is used on a person (such as Torture or Capital punishment). (Article 5) (See also Prisoners' rights)
  • the victims of abuse see themselves denying an effective legal defense. (Article 8)
  • the punishments are treated arbitrarily or unilaterally, without right to a lawsuit right. (Article 11)
  • the arbitrary intervention in the personal lives or deprived by the government officials. (Article 12)
  • prohibition with the citizens to leave or turn over to their country. (Article 13)
  • the Freedom of expression or the Liberté of religion is denied. (Articles 18 & 19)
  • the right to join a Syndicat is denied. (Article 23)
  • the right to education is denied. (Article 26)

The violations of the human rights and the abuses include these documents by the non-governmental organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Worldwide organization against torture, Freedom House, International Freedom off Expression Exchange and Anti-Slavery International. Very little country does not make significant violations of human rights, according to Amnesty International. In his report/ratio of 2004 on the human rights (covering 2003) the Holland, Norway, Denmark, Iceland and Costa Rica are the only countries which did not violate at least some human rights significantly.

Certain people think that the abuses human rights are more current in the Dictature S than in the Démocraties because the Freedom of expression and the Freedom of the press tends to discover the state orchestrated abuse and exposes it. The abuses nevertheless human rights also arrive in the democracies. For example, Amnesty International denounced the management of the Prison of Guantánamo by the the United States “a scandal of human rights” in a series of reports/ratios.

References

See too

Related articles

Bond external

  • Site of UNO on the human rights
  • Site of the European Court of the human rights
  • Human Rights Network International (HRNi) - Internet site on the human rights: references, documents, articles.
  • Platform of the human rights - Online news (independent information) on the human rights in the world.
  • numerical Encyclopedia of the human rights - database of the world, European and French texts, by the Institute of political studies of Grenoble
  • universal Index of the human rights (of the documents of the United Nations)

Simple: Human rights Zh-min-nan: Jîn-kôan

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