human rights

fundamental rights, esp. those believed to belong to an individual and in whose exercise a government may not interfere, as the rights to speak, associate, work, etc.

[1785-95]

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Rights that belong to an individual as a consequence of being human.

The term came into wide use after World War II, replacing the earlier phrase "natural rights," which had been associated with the Greco-Roman concept of natural law since the end of the Middle Ages. As understood today, human rights refer to a wide variety of values and capabilities reflecting the diversity of human circumstances and history. They are conceived of as universal, applying to all human beings everywhere, and as fundamental, referring to essential or basic human needs. Human rights have been classified historically in terms of the notion of three "generations" of human rights. The first generation of civil and political rights, associated with the Enlightenment and the English, American, and French revolutions, includes the rights to life and liberty and the rights to freedom of speech and worship. The second generation of economic, social, and cultural rights, associated with revolts against the predations of unregulated capitalism from the mid-19th century, includes the right to work and the right to an education. Finally, the third generation of solidarity rights, associated with the political and economic aspirations of developing and newly decolonized countries after World War II, includes the collective rights to political self-determination and economic development. Since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, many treaties and agreements for the protection of human rights have been concluded through the auspices of the United Nations, and several regional systems of human rights law have been established. In the late 20th century ad hoc international criminal tribunals were convened to prosecute serious human rights violations and other crimes in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. The International Criminal Court, which came into existence in 2002, is empowered to prosecute crimes against humanity, crimes of genocide, and war crimes.

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Introduction

      rights that belong to an individual or group of individuals as a consequence of being human. They refer to a wide continuum of values or capabilities thought to enhance human agency and declared to be universal in character, in some sense equally claimed for all human beings.

      It is a common observation that human beings everywhere demand the realization of diverse values or capabilities to ensure their individual and collective well-being. It also is a common observation that this demand is often painfully frustrated by social as well as natural forces, resulting in exploitation, oppression, persecution, and other forms of deprivation. Deeply rooted in these twin observations are the beginnings of what today are called “human rights” and the national and international legal processes that are associated with them.

Historical development

      The expression “human rights” is relatively new, having come into everyday parlance only since World War II, the founding of the United Nations in 1945, and the adoption by the UN General Assembly of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. It replaced the phrase “natural rights,” which fell into disfavour in part because the concept of natural law (to which it was intimately linked) had become a matter of great controversy; and it replaced as well the later phrase “the rights of Man,” which was not universally understood to include the rights of women.

Origins in ancient Greece and Rome

      Most students of human rights trace the origins of the concept to ancient Greece (Greek law) and Rome, where it was closely tied to the doctrines of the Stoics (Stoicism), who held that human conduct should be judged according to, and brought into harmony with, the law of nature. A classic example of this view is given in Sophocles' play Antigone, in which the title character, upon being reproached by King Creon for defying his command not to bury her slain brother, asserted that she acted in accordance with the immutable laws of the gods.

      In part because Stoicism played a key role in its formation and spread, Roman law similarly allowed for the existence of a natural law and with it—pursuant to the jus gentium (“law of nations”)—certain universal rights that extended beyond the rights of citizenship. According to the Roman jurist Ulpian, for example, natural law was that which nature, not the state, assures to all human beings, Roman citizens or not.

      It was not until after the Middle Ages, however, that natural law became associated with natural rights. In Greco-Roman and medieval times, doctrines of natural law concerned mainly the duties, rather than the rights, of “Man.” Moreover, as evidenced in the writings of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas (Aquinas, Thomas, Saint), these doctrines recognized the legitimacy of slavery and serfdom and, in so doing, excluded perhaps the most important ideas of human rights as they are understood today—freedom (or liberty) and equality.

      For the idea of human rights qua natural rights to gain general recognition, therefore, certain basic societal changes were necessary, changes of the sort that took place gradually, beginning with the decline of European feudalism from about the 13th century and continuing through the Renaissance to the Peace of Westphalia (Westphalia, Peace of) (1648). During this period, resistance to religious intolerance and political and economic bondage; the evident failure of rulers to meet their obligations under natural law; and the unprecedented commitment to individual expression and worldly experience that was characteristic of the Renaissance all combined to shift the conception of natural law from duties to rights. The teachings of Aquinas and Hugo Grotius (Grotius, Hugo) on the European continent, and the Magna Carta (1215), the Petition of Right of 1628, and the English Bill of Rights (1689) in England, were proof of this change. Each testified to the increasingly popular view (liberalism) that human beings are endowed with certain eternal and inalienable rights that never were renounced when humankind “contracted” to enter the social from the primitive state and never diminished by the claim of the “ divine right of kings.”

Natural law transformed into natural rights

 The modern conception of natural law as meaning or implying natural rights was elaborated primarily by thinkers of the 17th and 18th centuries. The intellectual—and especially the scientific—achievements of the 17th century (including the materialism of Hobbes, the rationalism of Descartes and Leibniz, the pantheism of Spinoza, and the empiricism of Bacon and Locke (Locke, John)) encouraged a belief in natural law and universal order; and during the 18th century, the so-called Age of Enlightenment, a growing confidence in human reason and in the perfectibility of human affairs led to the more comprehensive expression of this belief. Particularly important were the writings of John Locke (Locke, John), arguably the most important natural-law theorist of modern times, and the works of the 18th-century philosophes (philosophe) centred mainly in Paris, including Montesquieu (Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de), Voltaire, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Rousseau, Jean-Jacques). Locke argued in detail, mainly in writings associated with the English Glorious Revolution (1688), that certain rights self-evidently pertain to individuals as human beings (because these rights existed in “the state of nature” before humankind entered civil society); that chief among them are the rights to life, liberty (freedom from arbitrary rule), and property; that, upon entering civil society, humankind surrendered to the state—pursuant to a “ social contract”—only the right to enforce these natural rights and not the rights themselves; and that the state's failure to secure these rights gives rise to a right to responsible, popular revolution. The philosophes, building on Locke and others and embracing many and varied currents of thought with a common supreme faith in reason, vigorously attacked religious and scientific dogmatism, intolerance, censorship, and social and economic restraints. They sought to discover and act upon universally valid principles governing nature, humanity, and society, including the inalienable “rights of Man,” which they treated as a fundamental ethical and social gospel.

      Not surprisingly, this liberal intellectual ferment exerted a profound influence in the Western world of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Together with the Glorious Revolution in England and the resulting Bill of Rights (Rights, Bill of), it provided the rationale for the wave of revolutionary agitation that swept the West, most notably in North America and France. Thomas Jefferson (Jefferson, Thomas), who had studied Locke and Montesquieu, gave poetic eloquence to the plain prose of the 17th century in the Declaration of Independence, proclaimed by the 13 American colonies on July 4, 1776: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Similarly, the marquis de Lafayette (Lafayette, Marie-Joseph-Paul-Yves-Roch-Gilbert du Motier, marquis de), who won the close friendship of George Washington (Washington, George) and who shared the hardships of the American Revolution, imitated the pronouncements of the English and American revolutions in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of August 26, 1789, proclaiming that “men are born and remain free and equal in rights” and that “the aim of every political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man.”

      In sum, the idea of human rights, though known by another name, played a key role in late 18th- and early 19th-century struggles against political absolutism. It was, indeed, the failure of rulers to respect the principles of freedom and equality that was responsible for this development.

“Nonsense upon stilts”: The critics of natural rights

      The idea of human rights as natural rights was not without its detractors, however. In the first place, because it was frequently associated with religious orthodoxy, the doctrine of natural rights became less attractive to philosophical and political liberals. Additionally, because they were conceived in essentially absolutist terms, natural rights were increasingly considered to conflict with one another. Most importantly, the doctrine of natural rights came under powerful philosophical and political attack from both the right and the left.

      In England, for example, conservative (conservatism) political thinkers such as Edmund Burke (Burke, Edmund) and David Hume (Hume, David) united with liberals such as Jeremy Bentham (Bentham, Jeremy) to condemn the doctrine, the former out of fear that public affirmation of natural rights would lead to social upheaval, the latter out of concern lest declarations and proclamations of natural rights substitute for effective legislation. In his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), Burke—a believer in natural law who nonetheless denied that the “rights of Man” could be derived from it—criticized the drafters of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen for proclaiming the “monstrous fiction” of human equality, which, he argued, serves but to inspire “false ideas and vain expectations in men destined to travel in the obscure walk of laborious life.” Bentham, one of the founders of Utilitarianism, was no less scornful. “Rights,” he wrote, “is the child of law; from real law come real rights; but from imaginary laws, from ‘law of nature,' come imaginary rights.…Natural rights is simple nonsense; natural and imprescriptible rights (an American phrase)…[is] rhetorical nonsense, nonsense upon stilts.” Agreeing with Bentham, Hume insisted that natural law and natural rights are unreal metaphysical phenomena.

      This assault upon natural law and natural rights intensified and broadened during the 19th and early 20th centuries. John Stuart Mill (Mill, John Stuart), despite his vigorous defense of liberty, proclaimed that rights ultimately are founded on utility. The German jurist Friedrich Karl von Savigny (Savigny, Friedrich Karl von), England's Sir Henry Maine (Maine, Sir Henry), and other “historicalist” legal thinkers emphasized that rights are a function of cultural and environmental variables unique to particular communities. The English jurist John Austin (Austin, John) argued that the only law is “the command of the sovereign” (a phrase of Hobbes). And the logical positivists (Logical Positivism) of the early 20th century insisted that the only truth is that which can be established by verifiable experience and that therefore ethical pronouncements are not cognitively significant. By World War I, there were scarcely any theorists who would defend the “rights of Man” along the lines of natural law. Indeed, under the influence of 19th-century German Idealism and parallel expressions of rising European nationalism, there were some—the Marxists (Marxism), for example—who, though not rejecting individual rights altogether, maintained that rights, from whatever source derived, belong to communities or whole societies and nations preeminently.

The persistence of the notion

      Although the heyday of natural rights proved short, the idea of rights nonetheless endured. The abolition of slavery, the implementation of factory legislation, the rise of popular education and trade unionism (trade union), the universal suffrage movement—these and other examples of 19th-century reformist impulses afford ample evidence that the idea was not to be extinguished, even if its a priori derivation had become a matter of general skepticism. But it was not until the rise and fall of Nazi (National Socialism) Germany that the idea of human rights truly came into its own. Many of the gruesome atrocities committed by the Nazi regime had been officially authorized by Nazi laws and decrees, and this fact convinced many that law and morality cannot be grounded in any purely Idealist or Utilitarian or other consequentialist doctrine. Certain actions, according to this view, are absolutely wrong, no matter what the circumstances; human beings are entitled to simple respect, at least.

      Today the vast majority of legal scholars and philosophers—particularly in the liberal West—agree that every human being has, at least in theory, some basic rights. Indeed, except for some essentially isolated late-19th-century and early-20th-century demonstrations of international humanitarian concern to be noted below, the last half of the 20th century may fairly be said to mark the birth of the international as well as the universal recognition of human rights. In the charter establishing the United Nations, for example, all member states pledged themselves to take joint and separate action for the achievement of “universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.” In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, representatives from many cultures endorsed the rights therein set forth “as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations.” And in 1976 the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, each approved by the UN General Assembly in 1966, entered into force and effect.

Defining human rights

      To say that there is widespread acceptance of the principle of human rights is not to say that there is complete agreement about the nature and scope of such rights—which is to say, their definition. Among the basic questions that have yet to receive conclusive answers are the following: whether human rights are to be viewed as divine, moral, or legal entitlements; whether they are to be validated by intuition, culture, custom, social contract, principles of distributive justice, or as prerequisites for happiness; whether they are to be understood as irrevocable or partially revocable; and whether they are to be broad or limited in number and content.

The nature of human rights: Commonly accepted postulates

      Despite this lack of consensus, a number of widely accepted (and interrelated) postulates can assist in the task of defining human rights. Five in particular stand out, though not even these are without controversy.

      First, regardless of their ultimate origin or justification, human rights are understood to represent both individual and group demands for political power, wealth, enlightenment, and other cherished values or capabilities, the most fundamental of which is respect and its constituent elements of reciprocal tolerance and mutual forbearance in the pursuit of all other such values or capabilities. Consequently, human rights imply both claims against persons and institutions impeding the realization of these values or capabilities and standards for judging the legitimacy of laws and traditions. At bottom, human rights qualify state sovereignty and power, sometimes expanding the latter even while circumscribing the former (as in the case of certain economic and social rights—for example, see below Égalité (human rights)).

      Second, human rights are commonly assumed to refer, in some vague sense, to “fundamental,” as distinct from “nonessential,” claims or “goods.” In fact, some theorists go so far as to limit human rights to a single core right or two—for example, the right to life or the right to equal freedom of opportunity. The tendency is to emphasize “basic needs” and to rule out “mere wants.”

      Third, reflecting varying environmental circumstances, differing worldviews, and inescapable interdependencies within and between different value or capability systems, human rights refer to a wide continuum of claims, ranging from the most justiciable to the most aspirational. Human rights partake of both the legal and the moral orders, sometimes indistinguishably. They are expressive of both the “is” and the “ought” in human affairs.

      Fourth, most assertions of human rights—though arguably not all—are qualified by the limitation that the rights of individuals or groups in particular instances are restricted as much as is necessary to secure the comparable rights of others and the aggregate common interest. Given this limitation, which connects rights to duties, human rights are sometimes designated prima facie rights, so that ordinarily it makes little or no sense to think or talk of them in absolutist terms.

      Finally, if a right is determined to be a human right, it is understood to be quintessentially general or universal in character, in some sense equally possessed by all human beings everywhere, including in certain instances even the unborn. In stark contrast to the divine right of kings and other such conceptions of privilege, human rights extend in theory to every person on Earth, without discriminations irrelevant to merit or need, simply for being human.

      In several critical respects, however, all these postulates raise more questions than they answer. Granted that human rights qualify state power, do they also qualify private power? If so, when and how? What does it mean to say that a right is fundamental, and according to what standards of importance or urgency is it so judged? What is the value of embracing nonjusticiable rights as part of the jurisprudence of human rights? Does it harbor more than rhetorical significance? If so, how? When and according to what criteria does the right of one person or group of people give way to the right of another? What happens when individual and group rights collide? How are universal human rights determined? Are they a function of culture or ideology, or are they determined according to some transnational consensus of merit or value? If the latter, is the consensus regional or global? How exactly would such a consensus be ascertained, and how would it be reconciled with the right of nations and peoples to self-determination? Is the existence of universal human rights incompatible with the notion of national sovereignty? Should supranational norms, institutions, and procedures have the power to nullify local, regional, and national laws on capital punishment, corporal punishment of children, “honor killing,” veil wearing, female genital cutting, male circumcision, the claimed right to bear arms, and other practices? How would such a situation comport with Western conceptions of democracy and representative government?

      In other words, though accurate, the five foregoing postulates are fraught with questions about the content and legitimate scope of human rights and about the priorities, if any, that exist among them. Like the issue of the origin and justification of human rights, all five are controversial.

The content of human rights: Three “generations” of rights

      Like all normative traditions, the human rights tradition is a product of its time. Therefore, to understand better the debate over the content and legitimate scope of human rights and the priorities claimed among them, it is useful to note the dominant schools of thought and action that have informed the human rights tradition since the beginning of modern times.

      Particularly helpful in this regard is the notion of three “generations” of human rights advanced by the French jurist Karel Vasak. Inspired by the three themes of the French Revolution, they are: the first generation of civil and political rights (liberté); the second generation of economic, social, and cultural rights (égalité); and the third generation of solidarity rights (fraternité). Vasak's model is, of course, a simplified expression of an extremely complex historical record, and it is not intended to suggest a linear process in which each generation gives birth to the next and then dies away. Nor is it to imply that one generation is more important than another. The three generations are understood to be cumulative, overlapping, and, it is important to note, interdependent and interpenetrating.

Liberté: Civil and political rights

      The first generation of civil and political rights derives primarily from the 17th- and 18th-century reformist theories noted above (i.e., those associated with the English, American, and French revolutions). Infused with the political philosophy of liberal individualism and the related economic and social doctrine of laissez-faire, the first generation conceives of human rights more in negative terms (“freedoms from”) than positive ones (“rights to”); it favours the abstention over the intervention of government in the quest for human dignity. Belonging to this first generation, thus, are rights such as those set forth in Articles 2–21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including freedom from gender, racial, and equivalent forms of discrimination; the right to life, liberty, and security of the person; freedom from slavery or involuntary servitude; freedom from torture and from cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; freedom from arbitrary arrest, detention, or exile; the right to a fair and public trial; freedom from interference in privacy and correspondence; freedom of movement and residence; the right to asylum from persecution; freedom of thought, conscience, and religion; freedom of opinion and expression; freedom of peaceful assembly and association; and the right to participate in government, directly or through free elections. Also included are the right to own property and the right not to be deprived of it arbitrarily—rights that were fundamental to the interests fought for in the American and French revolutions and to the rise of capitalism.

      Yet it would be wrong to assert that these and other first-generation rights correspond completely to the idea of “negative” as opposed to “positive” rights. The right to security of the person, to a fair and public trial, to asylum from persecution, and to free elections, for example, manifestly cannot be assured without some affirmative government action. What is constant in this first-generation conception is the notion of liberty, a shield that safeguards the individual—alone and in association with others—against the abuse of political authority. This is the core value. Featured in the constitution of almost every country in the world and dominating the majority of international declarations and covenants adopted since World War II, this essentially Western liberal conception of human rights is sometimes romanticized as a triumph of the individualism of Thomas Hobbes (Hobbes, Thomas) and John Locke over Hegelian statism.

Égalité: Economic, social, and cultural rights

      The second generation of economic, social, and cultural rights originated primarily in the socialist tradition (collectivism), which was foreshadowed among adherents of the Saint-Simonian movement of early 19th-century France and variously promoted by revolutionary struggles and welfare movements that have taken place since. In large part, it is a response to the abuses of capitalist development and its underlying and essentially uncritical conception of individual liberty, which tolerated, and even legitimized, the exploitation of working classes and colonial peoples. Historically, it is a counterpoint to the first generation of civil and political rights, conceiving of human rights more in positive terms (“rights to”) than in negative ones (“freedoms from”) and requiring more the intervention than the abstention of the state for the purpose of assuring the equitable production and distribution of the values or capabilities involved. Illustrative are some of the rights set forth in Articles 22–27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, such as the right to social security; the right to work and to protection against unemployment; the right to rest and leisure, including periodic holidays with pay; the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of self and family; the right to education; and the right to the protection of one's scientific, literary, and artistic production.

      But in the same way that all the rights embraced by the first generation of civil and political rights cannot properly be designated “negative rights,” so all the rights embraced by the second generation of economic, social, and cultural rights cannot properly be labeled “positive rights.” For example, the right to free choice of employment, the right to form and to join trade unions, and the right to participate freely in the cultural life of the community (Articles 23 and 27) do not inherently require affirmative state action to ensure their enjoyment. Nevertheless, most of the second-generation rights do necessitate state intervention because they subsume demands more for material than for intangible goods according to some criterion of distributive justice. Second-generation rights are, fundamentally, claims to social equality. However, partly because of the comparatively late arrival of socialist-communist and compatible “Third World” influence in international affairs, the internationalization of these rights has been relatively slow in coming, and with free-market capitalism in ascendancy under the banner of globalization at the turn of the 21st century, it is not likely that these rights will come of age any time soon. On the other hand, as the social inequities created by unregulated national and transnational capitalism become more and more evident over time and are not accounted for by explanations based on gender or race, it is probable that the demand for second-generation rights will grow and mature, and in some instances even lead to violence. This tendency is apparent already in the evolving European Union and in wider efforts to regulate intergovernmental financial institutions and transnational corporations to protect the public interest.

Fraternité: Solidarity rights

      Finally, the third generation of solidarity rights, while drawing upon and reconceptualizing the demands associated with the first two generations of rights, is best understood as a product of both the rise and the decline of the nation-state in the last half of the 20th century. Foreshadowed in Article 28 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which proclaims that “everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights set forth in this declaration can be fully realized,” this generation appears so far to embrace six claimed rights. Three of these rights reflect the emergence of Third World nationalism and its “revolution of rising expectations” (i.e., its demand for a global redistribution of power, wealth, and other important values or capabilities): the right to political, economic, social, and cultural self-determination; the right to economic and social development; and the right to participate in and benefit from “the common heritage of mankind” (shared Earth and space resources, scientific, technical, and other information and progress, and cultural traditions, sites, and monuments). The other three third-generation rights—the right to peace, the right to a healthy and sustainable environment, and the right to humanitarian disaster relief—suggest the impotence or inefficiency of the nation-state in certain critical respects.

      All six of these rights tend to be posed as collective rights, requiring the concerted efforts of all social forces, to a substantial degree on a planetary scale. However, each of them also manifests an individual dimension. For example, while it may be said to be the collective right of all countries and peoples (especially developing countries and non-self-governing peoples) to secure a “new international economic order” that would eliminate obstacles to their economic and social development, so also may it be said to be the individual right of every person to benefit from a developmental policy that is based on the satisfaction of material and nonmaterial human needs. It is important to note too that the majority of these solidarity rights are more aspirational than justiciable in character and that their status as international human rights norms remains ambiguous.

      Thus, at various stages of modern history, the content of human rights has been broadly defined not with any expectation that the rights associated with one generation would or should become outdated upon the ascendancy of another, but expansively or supplementally. The history of the content of human rights reflects evolving perceptions of which values or capabilities stand, at different times, most in need of responsible attention and, simultaneously, humankind's recurring demands for continuity and stability.

Legitimacy and priority

Liberté versus Égalité

      The fact that the content of human rights has been broadly defined should not be taken to imply that the three generations of rights are equally acceptable to everyone. Nor should it suggest that they or their separate elements have been greeted with equal urgency. The debate about the nature and content of human rights reflects, after all, a struggle for power and for favoured conceptions of the “good society.”

      First-generation proponents, for example, are inclined to exclude second- and third-generation rights from their definition of human rights altogether or, at best, to regard them as “derivative.” In part this is because of the complexities involved in putting these rights into operation. The suggestion that first-generation rights are more feasible because they stress the absence over the presence of government is somehow transformed into a prerequisite of a comprehensive definition of human rights, such that aspirational claims to entitlement are deemed not to be rights at all. The most compelling explanation, however, has more to do with ideology or politics. Persuaded that egalitarian claims against the rich, particularly where collectively espoused, are unworkable without a severe decline in liberty and equality, first-generation proponents, inspired by the natural law and laissez-faire traditions, are partial to the view that human rights are inherently independent of organized society and are individualistic.

      Conversely, second- and third-generation defenders often look upon first-generation rights, at least as commonly practiced, as insufficiently attentive to material—especially “basic”—human needs and, indeed, as instruments in service to unjust social orders, hence constituting a “bourgeois illusion.” Accordingly, if they do not place first-generation rights outside their definition of human rights, they tend to assign such rights a low status and to treat them as long-term goals that will come to pass only after the imperatives of economic and social development have been met, to be realized gradually and fully achieved only sometime vaguely in the future.

      This liberty-equity and individualist-collectivist debate was especially evident during the period of the Cold War, reflecting the extreme tensions that then existed between Liberal and Marxist conceptions of sovereign public order. Although Western social democrats during this period, particularly in Scandinavia, occupied a position midway between the two sides, pursuing both liberty and equity—in many respects successfully—it remains true that the different conceptions of rights contain the potential for challenging the legitimacy and supremacy not only of one another, but, more importantly, of the sociopolitical systems with which they are most intimately associated.

The relevance of custom and tradition

      With the end of the Cold War, however, the debate took on a more North-South character and was supplemented by a cultural-relativist critique that eschews the universality of human rights doctrines, principles, and rules on the grounds that they were Western in origin and therefore of limited relevance in non-Western settings. The viewpoint underlying this assertion—that the scope of human rights in any given society is fundamentally determined by local, national, or regional customs and traditions—may seem problematic, especially when one considers that the idea of human rights and many of its precepts are found in all the great philosophical and religious traditions. Nevertheless, the historical development of human rights demonstrates that it cannot be wholly mistaken. Nor is it surprising that it should emerge soon after the end of the Cold War. First prominently expressed at an Asian meeting preparatory to the second UN World Conference on Human Rights convened in Vienna in June 1993, it reflects the end of a bipolar system of alliances that had discouraged independent foreign policies and minimized cultural and political differences in favour of undivided Cold War loyalties. Against the backdrop of increasing human rights interventionism on the part of the UN and by regional organizations and deputized coalitions of states (as in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Somalia, Liberia, Rwanda, Haiti, and Serbia and Kosovo, for example), the viewpoint serves also as a functional equivalent of the doctrine of respect for national sovereignty and territorial integrity, which had been declining in influence not only in the human rights context but also in the contexts of national security, economics, and the environment. As a consequence, there remains sharp disagreement about the legitimate scope of human rights and about the priorities that are claimed among them.

Inherent risks in the debate

      On final analysis, however, this legitimacy-priority debate can be dangerously misleading. Although useful for pointing out how notions of liberty and individualism have been used to rationalize the abuses of capitalism and Western expansionism and how notions of equality, collectivism, and culture have been alibis for authoritarian governance, in the end it risks obscuring at least three essential truths that must be taken into account if the contemporary worldwide human rights movement is to be objectively understood.

      First, one-sided characterizations of legitimacy and priority are very likely, at least over the long term, to undermine the political credibility of their proponents and the defensibility of the rights they regard as preeminently important. In an increasingly interdependent global community, any human rights orientation that does not support the widest possible shaping and sharing of values or capabilities among all human beings is likely to provoke widespread skepticism. The last half of the 20th century is replete with examples.

      Second, such characterizations do not accurately reflect reality. In the real world, virtually all societies, whether individualistic or collectivist in essential character, consent to, and even promote, a mixture of all basic values or capabilities. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Four Freedoms (freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear) is an early case in point. A more recent demonstration is found in the Declaration and Programme of Action of the Vienna conference mentioned above, adopted by representatives of 171 states. It proclaims that, “[w]hile 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.”

      Finally, none of the international human rights instruments currently in force or proposed says anything about the legitimacy or priority of the rights it addresses, save possibly in the case of rights that by international covenant are stipulated to be “nonderogable” and therefore, arguably, more fundamental than others (e.g., freedom from arbitrary or unlawful deprivation of life, freedom from torture and from inhuman or degrading treatment and punishment, freedom from slavery, and freedom from imprisonment for debt). To be sure, some disagreements about legitimacy and priority can derive from differences of definition (e.g., what is “torture” or “inhuman treatment” to one may not be so to another, as in the case of punishment by caning or by death). Similarly, disagreements also can arise when treating the problem of implementation. For instance, some insist first on certain civil and political guarantees, whereas others defer initially to conditions of material well-being. Such disagreements, however, reflect differences in political agendas and have little if any conceptual utility. As confirmed by numerous resolutions of the UN General Assembly and reaffirmed in the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, there is a growing consensus that all human rights form an indivisible whole and that the protection of human rights is not and should not be a matter of purely national jurisdiction. The extent to which the international community actually protects the human rights it prescribes, on the other hand, is a different matter.

International human rights: Prescription and enforcement

Developments before World War II

      Ever since ancient times, but especially since the emergence of the modern state system, the Age of Discovery, and the accompanying spread of industrialization and European culture throughout the world, there has developed, for economic and other reasons, a unique set of customs and conventions regarding the humane treatment of foreigners. This evolving International Law of State Responsibility for Injuries to Aliens, as these customs and conventions came to be called, represents the beginning of active concern—however much they served the interests of colonial expansion—for human rights on the international plane. The founding fathers of international law—particularly Francisco de Vitoria (Vitoria, Francisco de), Grotius, and Emmerich de Vattel (Vattel, Emmerich de)—were quick to observe that all persons, outlander as well as other, were entitled to certain natural rights, and they emphasized, consequently, the importance of according aliens fair treatment.

      With the exception of occasional treaties to secure the protection of Christian denominations, it was not until the start of the 19th century, however, that active international concern for the rights of nationals began to make itself felt. Then, in the century and a half before World War II, several noteworthy efforts to encourage respect for nationals by international means began to shape what today is called the International Law of Human Rights (which for historical but no theoretically convincing reasons was treated separately from the International Law of State Responsibility for Injuries to Aliens).

 Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, numerous military operations and diplomatic representations, not all of them with the purest of motives but performed nonetheless in the name of “humanitarian intervention” (a customary international law doctrine), undertook to protect oppressed and persecuted minorities in the Ottoman Empire, Syria, Crete, various Balkan countries, Romania, and Russia. Paralleling these actions, first at the Congress of Vienna (Vienna, Congress of) (1814–15) and later between the two World Wars, a series of treaties and international declarations sought the protection of certain racial, religious, and linguistic minorities in central and eastern Europe and the Middle East. During the same period, the movement to combat and suppress slavery and the slave trade found expression in treaties sooner or later involving the major commercial powers, beginning with the Treaty of Paris (1814) and culminating in the International Slavery Convention (1926).

      In addition, beginning in the late 19th century and continuing well beyond World War II, the community of nations, inspired largely by persons associated with what is now the International Committee of the Red Cross, concluded a series of multilateral declarations and agreements designed to temper the conduct of hostilities, protect the victims of war, and otherwise elaborate the humanitarian law of war (now commonly referred to as International Humanitarian Law). At about the same time, first with two multilateral labour conventions concluded in 1906 and subsequently at the initiative of the International Labour Organisation (International Labour Organization) (ILO; established in 1919), a reformist-minded international community embarked upon a variety of collaborative measures directed at the promotion of human rights. These measures addressed not only concerns traditionally associated with labour law and labour relations (e.g., industrial health and safety, hours of work, and annual paid holidays), but also—mainly after World War II—such core human rights concerns as forced labour, discrimination in employment and occupation, freedom of association for collective bargaining, and equal pay for equal work.

      Finally, during the interwar period, the covenant establishing the League of Nations (Nations, League of) (1919)—though not formally recognizing “the rights of Man” and failing to lay down a principle of racial nondiscrimination as requested by Japan (owing mainly to the resistance of Great Britain and the United States)—nevertheless committed its members to several human rights goals: fair and humane working conditions, the execution of agreements regarding trafficking in women and children, the prevention and control of disease in matters of international concern, and the just treatment of indigenous colonial peoples. Also, the victorious powers—who as “mandatories” were entrusted by the League with the tutelage of colonies formerly governed by Germany and Turkey—accepted responsibility for the well-being and development of the inhabitants of those territories as “a sacred trust of civilization.” This arrangement was later carried over into the trusteeship system of the United Nations.

      As important as these efforts were, however, it was not until after the war—and the Nazi atrocities accompanying it—that active concern for human rights truly came of age internationally. In the proceedings of the International Military Tribunal at Nürnberg in 1945–46 (the Nürnberg trials), German high officials were tried not only for “crimes against peace” and “war crimes” but also for “crimes against humanity” committed against civilian populations, even if the crimes were in accordance with the laws of the country in which they were perpetrated. Although the tribunal, whose establishment and rulings subsequently were endorsed by the UN General Assembly, applied a cautious approach to allegations of crimes against humanity, it nonetheless made the treatment by a state of its own citizens the subject of international criminal process. The ad hoc international criminal tribunals established in 1993–94 for the prosecution of serious violations of International Humanitarian Law in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda were its first heirs on the international plane. Both courts were empowered to impose sentences of life imprisonment (though not the death penalty), and both focused their efforts, with some success, on political leaders who had authorized human rights abuses. Most conspicuous was the arrest and detention in June 2001 of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević (Milošević, Slobodan) by the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia, representing the first time a former head of state has been placed in the physical custody of an international judicial authority. The tribunal charged him with war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed by Serbian forces in Kosovo in 1999 and subsequently with the crime of genocide allegedly committed by Serbian forces during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992–95.

      Also heir to the Nürnberg tribunal is the International Criminal Court, authorized by the adoption by 160 countries of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in July 1998. The statute creates a permanent international criminal court whose jurisdiction includes crimes against humanity, crimes of genocide, war crimes, and crimes of “aggression” (pending the adoption of an acceptable definition of that term). However, the creation of the court, which depends on the ratification of the statute by at least 60 signatory states, was resisted by some countries, notably the United States, on the ground that it would unduly infringe upon their national sovereignty. The long-term future of the court is therefore uncertain.

Human rights in the United Nations

      The Charter of the United Nations (1945) begins by reaffirming a “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.” It states that the purposes of the UN are, among other things:

to develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples…[and] to achieve international co-operation…in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.

      In addition, in two key articles all members “pledge themselves to take joint and separate action in co-operation with the Organization” for the achievement of these and related purposes. It must be noted, however, that a proposal to ensure the protection as well as the promotion of human rights was explicitly rejected at the Charter-drafting San Francisco conference establishing the UN. Also, the Charter expressly provides that nothing in it “shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state,” except upon a Security Council finding of a “threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression.” Furthermore, though typical of major constitutive instruments, the Charter is conspicuously given to generality and vagueness in its human rights clauses, among others.

      Thus, not surprisingly, the reconciliation of the Charter's human rights provisions with the history of its drafting and its “domestic jurisdiction” clause has given rise to legal and political controversy. Some authorities have argued that, in becoming parties to the Charter, states accept no more than a nebulous promotional obligation toward human rights and that, in any event, the UN has no standing to insist on human rights safeguards in member states. Others have insisted that the Charter's human rights provisions, being part of a legally binding treaty, clearly involve some element of legal obligation; that the “pledge” made by states upon becoming party to the Charter consequently represents more than a moral statement; and that the domestic jurisdiction clause does not apply because human rights no longer can be considered a matter “essentially within the domestic jurisdiction” of states.

      When all is said and done, however, it is clear from the actual practice of the UN that the problem of resolving these opposing contentions has proved less formidable than the statements of governments and the opinions of scholars would suggest. Neither the Charter's drafting history nor its domestic jurisdiction clause—nor, indeed, its generality and vagueness in respect of human rights—has prevented the UN from investigating, discussing, and evaluating specific human rights situations. Nor have they prevented it from taking concrete action in relation to them—at least not in the case of “a consistent pattern of gross violations,” as in the Security Council's imposition of a mandatory arms embargo against South Africa in 1977 and its authorization of the use of military force to end human rights abuses in Somalia and Haiti in the early 1990s. Of course, governments usually are protective of their sovereignty, or domestic jurisdiction. Also, the UN organs responsible for the promotion and protection of human rights suffer from most of the same disabilities that afflict the UN as a whole, in particular the absence of supranational authority, the presence of divisive power politics, and the imposition of crippling financial constraints by member states (most notably the United States). Hence, it cannot be expected that UN actions in defense of human rights will be, normally, either swift or categorically effective. Indeed, many serious UN efforts at human rights implementation have been deliberately thwarted by the major powers. In 1999, for example, opposition by China and Russia prevented the Security Council from agreeing on forceful measures to end the persecution by Serbia of ethnic Albanians in the province of Kosovo, prompting the United States and other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to take matters into their own hands through a massive bombing campaign against Serbian targets. Nevertheless, assuming some political will, the legal obstacles to UN enforcement of human rights are not insurmountable.

      Primary responsibility for the promotion and protection of human rights under the UN Charter rests in the General Assembly and, under its authority, in the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the Commission on Human Rights, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR). The UN Commission on Human Rights, an intergovernmental subsidiary body of ECOSOC that met for the first time in 1947, serves as the UN's central policy organ in the human rights field. The UNHCHR, a post created by the General Assembly in 1993, is the official principally responsible for implementing and coordinating UN human rights programs and projects, including overall supervision of the UN's Geneva-based Centre for Human Rights, a bureau of the UN Secretariat.

The UN Commission on Human Rights and its instruments

      For the first 20 years of its existence (1947–66), the UN Commission on Human Rights concentrated its efforts on setting human rights standards, believing itself unauthorized to deal with human rights complaints. Together with other UN bodies such as the ILO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) (UNESCO), the UN Commission on the Status of Women, and the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, it has drafted standards and prepared a number of international human rights instruments. Among the most important of these have been the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966), and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights together with its Optional Protocols (1966; 1989). Collectively known as the “International Bill of Human Rights,” these three instruments serve as touchstones for interpreting the human rights provisions of the UN charter. Also central in this regard have been the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD; 1965), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW; 1979), the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984), and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), each of which elaborates on provisions of the International Bill of Human Rights.

      The commission continues to perform this standard-setting role. Beginning in 1967, however, it was specifically authorized to deal with violations of human rights, and since then it has set up elaborate mechanisms and procedures to investigate alleged human rights violations and otherwise monitor compliance by states with international human rights law. Thus, much of the work of the commission is now investigatory, evaluative, and advisory in character. Each year it establishes a working group to consider and make recommendations concerning alleged “gross violations” of human rights, reports of which are referred to it by its Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities (on the basis of both “communications” from individuals and groups and investigations by the Sub-Commission or one of its working groups). Also, on an ad hoc basis, the commission appoints Special Rapporteurs, Special Representatives, Special Committees, and other envoys to examine human rights situations—both country-oriented and thematic—and report back to it on the basis of trustworthy evidence. These fact-finding and implementation mechanisms and procedures were the focus of the commission's attention during the 1970s and '80s. In the 1990s the commission increasingly turned to economic, social, and cultural rights, including the right to development and the right to an adequate standard of living. Increased attention has been paid also to the rights of minorities, indigenous peoples, women, and children. (See also Sidebar: Children and Human Rights.)

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights

      Appointed by the secretary-general in a regular rotation of geographic regions and approved by the General Assembly, the UNHCHR serves a fixed term of four years with the possibility of renewal for an additional four-year term. The first high commissioner, José Ayala Lasso of Ecuador, took office in April 1994, and Mary Robinson, formerly president of Ireland, became the second high commissioner in September 1997. Among other duties, the high commissioner is charged by the General Assembly to promote and protect all civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights; to provide advisory services and technical and financial assistance in the field of human rights to states that request them; to coordinate human rights promotion and protection activities throughout the UN system, including education and public-information programs; and otherwise to enhance international cooperation for the promotion and protection of human rights—all within the framework of the International Bill of Human Rights.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

      The catalog of rights set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted without dissent by the General Assembly on December 10, 1948, is scarcely less than the sum of most of the important traditional political and civil rights of national constitutions and legal systems, including equality before the law; protection against arbitrary arrest; the right to a fair trial; freedom from ex post facto criminal laws; the right to own property; freedom of thought, conscience, and religion; freedom of opinion and expression; and freedom of peaceful assembly and association. Also enumerated are such economic, social, and cultural rights as the right to work, the right to form and join trade unions, the right to rest and leisure, the right to a standard of living adequate for health and well-being, and the right to education.

      The Universal Declaration, it should be noted, is not a treaty. It was meant to proclaim “a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations” rather than enforceable legal obligations. Nevertheless, the Universal Declaration has acquired a status juridically more important than originally intended, and it has been widely used, even by national courts, as a means of judging compliance with human rights obligations under the UN Charter.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and its Optional Protocols

      The civil and political rights guaranteed by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which was opened for signature on December 19, 1966, and entered into force on March 23, 1976, incorporate almost all those rights proclaimed in the Universal Declaration, including the right to nondiscrimination but excluding the right to own property and the right to asylum. The covenant also designates several rights that are not listed in the Universal Declaration, among them the right of all peoples to self-determination and the right of ethnic, religious, and linguistic minorities to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practice their own religion, and to use their own language. To the extent that the Universal Declaration and the covenant overlap, however, the latter is understood to explicate and to help interpret the former.

      In addition, the covenant calls for the establishment of a Human Rights Committee, comprising persons serving in their individual expert capacities, to study reports submitted by the state parties on measures they have adopted to give effect to the rights recognized in the covenant. For state parties that have expressly recognized the competence of the committee in this regard, the committee also may respond to allegations by one state party that another state party is not fulfilling its obligations under the covenant. If the committee is unable to resolve the problem, the matter is referred to an ad hoc conciliation commission, which eventually reports its findings on all questions of fact, plus its views on the possibilities of an amicable solution. State parties that become party to the covenant's first Optional Protocol further recognize the competence of the Human Rights Committee to consider and act upon communications from individuals claiming to be victims of covenant violations. Other treaty-based organs within the UN system that are empowered to consider grievances from individuals in a quasi-judicial manner are the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and the Committee on Torture, under the 1965 race discrimination and the 1984 torture conventions, respectively.

      Also noteworthy is the covenant's Second Optional Protocol, which is aimed at abolishing the death penalty worldwide. Adopted in 1989 and entered into force in 1991, it has been favourably received in most of the countries of western Europe and many countries in the Americas, though not in the United States.

The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

      Just as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights elaborates upon most of the civil and political rights enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, so the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights elaborates upon most of the economic, social, and cultural rights set forth in the Universal Declaration: the right to work, the right to just and favourable conditions of work, trade union rights, the right to social security, rights relating to the protection of the family, the right to an adequate standard of living, the right to health, the right to education, and rights relating to culture and science. Unlike its companion agreement, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, however, generally this covenant, sometimes called a “promotional convention,” is not intended for immediate implementation, the state parties having agreed only “to take steps” toward “achieving progressively the full realization of the rights recognized in the…Covenant,” and then subject to “the maximum of [their] available resources.” One obligation, however, is subject to immediate application: the prohibition of discrimination in the enjoyment of the rights enumerated on grounds of race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, and birth or other status. Also, the international supervisory measures that apply to the covenant oblige the state parties to report to the UN Economic and Social Council on the steps they have adopted and on the progress they have made in achieving the realization of the enumerated rights.

Other UN human rights conventions and declarations

      Numerous other human rights treaties drafted under UN auspices address a broad range of concerns, including the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide; the humane treatment of military and civilian personnel in time of war; the status of refugees; the protection of stateless persons; the abolition of slavery, forced labour, and discrimination in employment and occupation; the suppression and punishment of the crime of apartheid; the elimination of discrimination in education; the promotion of the political rights of women; the protection of minorities and indigenous peoples; and the promotion of equality of opportunity and treatment among migrant workers. In addition to overseeing human rights treaties, the UN also adopts declarations, in the form of resolutions, aimed at promoting human rights. Although technically not binding on member states in the sense of a treaty or a resolution of the Security Council, such declarations—particularly when they enunciate principles of great and solemn importance—may nevertheless create strong expectations about authority and control. Perhaps the best-known examples subsequent to the Universal Declaration are the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples (1960) and the Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations (1970), which affirms, among other things, “the duty of all states to refrain from organizing, instigating, assisting or participating in … terrorist acts.”

      Other declarations have addressed the rights of disabled persons; the elimination of all forms of intolerance and discrimination based on religion or belief; the right of peoples to peace; the right to development; the rights of persons belonging to national, ethnic, religious, and linguistic minorities; and the elimination of violence against women.

Human rights and the Helsinki process

      After World War II, international concern for human rights was evident at the global level outside the UN as well as within it, most notably in the proceedings and aftermath of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (Security and Co-operation in Europe, Organization for) (CSCE), convened in Helsinki, Finland, on July 3, 1973, and concluded there (after continuing deliberations in Geneva) on August 1, 1975. Attended by representatives of 35 governments—including the NATO countries, the Warsaw Pact nations, and 13 neutral and nonaligned European states—the conference had as its principal purpose a mutually satisfactory definition of peace and stability between East and West, previously made impossible by the Cold War. In particular, the Soviet Union wished to gain recognition of its western frontiers as established at the end of World War II (which ended without the conclusion of an omnibus peace treaty). The West, with no realistic territorial claims of its own, sought concessions primarily on security requirements and human rights, largely in that order.

      The Final Act of the conference, also known as the Helsinki Accords, begins with a Declaration on Principles Guiding Relations between Participating States, in which the participating states solemnly declare “their determination to respect and put into practice,” alongside other “guiding” principles, “respect [for] human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief” and “respect [for] the equal rights of peoples and their right to self-determination.” It was hoped that this declaration, the importance of which is reflected in its having been signed by almost all of the principal governmental leaders of the day, would mark the beginning of a liberalization of authoritarian regimes.

      From the earliest discussions, however, it was clear that the Helsinki Final Act was not intended as a legally binding instrument. The expression “determination to respect” and to “put into practice” were seen as moral commitments only, the Declaration of Principles was said not to prescribe international law, and nowhere did the participants provide for enforcement machinery. On the other hand, the Declaration of Principles, including its human rights principles, was always viewed as being at least consistent with international law, and in providing for periodic follow-up conferences, it made possible a unique negotiating process (“the Helsinki process”) to review compliance with its terms, thus creating normative expectations concerning the conduct of the participating states. In these ways it proved to be an important force in the fall of the Iron Curtain and the transformation of eastern Europe in 1989–90.

      The Helsinki process, involving long-running “follow-up,” “summit,” and other meetings, served also to establish a mechanism for the evolution of the CSCE from a forum for discussion to an operational institution, beginning with the adoption of the Charter of Paris for a New Europe in 1990. In 1994 the CSCE was renamed the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and its principal organs and bureaus now include an Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (in Warsaw), a Conflict Prevention Centre (in Vienna), a High Commissioner on National Minorities (in The Hague), and a Court of Conciliation and Arbitration (in Geneva). These offices have been increasingly pressed into service to alleviate major deprivations of human rights, particularly those arising from ethnic conflicts. In addition, the Vienna Human Dimension Mechanism and the Moscow Human Dimension Mechanism provide a preliminary formal means of raising and seeking to resolve disputes about violations of human rights commitments, including the possibility of on-site investigation by independent experts. All these mechanisms, however, bespeak an essentially interstate process; neither individuals nor nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have access to them except indirectly as suppliers of information and conveyors of political pressure. They thus contrast markedly with the individual complaint procedures that are available within the UN and in regional human rights systems.

Regional developments

      Action for the international promotion and protection of human rights has proceeded at the regional level in Europe, the Americas, Africa, the Middle East, and, to a minor extent, Asia. Only the first three of these regions, however, have created enforcement mechanisms within the framework of a human rights charter.

European human rights system

      On November 4, 1950, the Council of Europe (Europe, Council of) agreed to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, the substantive provisions of which are based on a draft of what is now the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Together with its 11 additional protocols, this convention, which entered into force on September 3, 1953, represents the most advanced and successful international experiment in the field to date. Over the years, the enforcement mechanisms created by the convention have developed a considerable body of case law on questions regulated by the convention, which the state parties typically have honoured and respected. In some European states the provisions of the convention are deemed to be part of domestic constitutional or statutory law. Where this is not the case, the state parties have taken other measures to make their domestic laws conform with their obligations under the convention.

      Notwithstanding these successes, a significant streamlining of the European human rights regime took place on November 1, 1998, when Protocol No. 11 to the convention entered into force. Pursuant to the protocol, two of the enforcement mechanisms created by the convention—the European Commission of Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights—were merged into a reconstituted court, which now is empowered to hear individual (as opposed to interstate) petitions or complaints without the prior approval of the local government. The decisions of the court are final and binding on the state parties to the convention.

      A companion instrument to the European Convention—similar to but preceding the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights—is the European Social Charter (1961) and its additional protocol (1988). In contrast to the adjudicatory enforcement procedures of the European Convention, the charter's provisions are implemented through an elaborate system of control based on progress reports to the various committees and organs of the Council of Europe. In July 1996 the Revised Social Charter, which modernizes its forebear's substantive provisions and strengthens its enforcement capabilities, entered into force. Both charters have suffered from a notable lack of public awareness, however, and this fact, together with an increased emphasis on market-oriented economic policies in many European countries, threatens not only the ratification of the 1996 charter but, as well, the political commitment to the several and joint aims of each treaty.

Inter-American human rights system

      In 1948, concurrent with its establishment of the Organization of American States (American States, Organization of) (OAS), the Ninth Pan-American Conference adopted the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man, which, unlike the Universal Declaration of the UN adopted seven months later, set out the duties as well as the rights of individual citizens. Subsequently, in 1959, a meeting of the American Ministers for Foreign Affairs created the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which has since undertaken important investigative activities in the region. Finally, in 1969, the Inter-American Specialized Conference on Human Rights adopted the American Convention on Human Rights, which, among other things, after entering into force in July 1978, made the existing Inter-American Commission an organ of the convention and established the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which sits in San José, Costa Rica. In November 1988, the OAS adopted the Additional Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights in the Area of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Of the 26 Western Hemispheric states that so far have signed the convention, only the United States has yet to ratify it. Nor is the United States a party to the additional protocol, which entered into force in November 1999.

      The core structure of the Inter-American human rights system is similar to that of its European counterpart. Nevertheless, some noteworthy differences exist, and three stand out in particular. First, as noted above, the American convention, reflecting the influence of the American Declaration, acknowledges the relationship between individual duties and individual rights. Second, the American convention reverses the priorities of the European convention prior to Protocol No. 11 by guaranteeing individual petitions while making interstate complaints optional. Finally, both the Inter-American Commission and the Inter-American Court operate beyond the framework of the American convention. The commission is as much an organ of the OAS Charter as of the American convention, with powers and procedures that differ significantly depending on the source of the commission's authority. The court, while primarily an organ of the convention, nonetheless has jurisdiction to interpret the human rights provisions of other treaties, including those of the OAS Charter.

African human rights system

      In 1981 the Eighteenth Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the Organization of African Unity (replaced by the African Union [AU] in 2002) adopted the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights. Also known as the “Banjul Charter” for having been drafted in Banjul, Gambia, it entered into force on October 21, 1986, and boasts the vast majority of the states of Africa as parties.

      Like its American and early European counterparts, the African Charter provides for a human rights commission, which has both promotional and protective functions. There is no restriction on who may file a complaint with it. In contrast to the European and American procedures, however, concerned states are encouraged to reach a friendly settlement without formally involving the investigative or conciliatory mechanisms of the commission. Also, the African Charter does not, at present, call for a human rights court. African customs and traditions, it has been said, emphasize mediation, conciliation, and consensus rather than the adversarial and adjudicative procedures that are common to Western legal systems. Nevertheless, owing largely to political changes wrought by the end of the Cold War, planning for an African Court of Human Rights was begun in the late 1990s. As envisioned, the court would not replace the commission but would supplement and reinforce its mandate.

      Four other distinctive features of the African Charter are noteworthy. First, it provides for economic, social, and cultural rights as well as civil and political rights. In this respect it resembles the American convention and differs from the European convention. Second, in contrast to both the European and American conventions, it recognizes the rights of groups in addition to the family, women, and children. The aged and the infirm are accorded special protection also, and the right of peoples to self-determination is elaborated in the right to existence, equality, and nondomination. Third, it uniquely embraces two third-generation, or “solidarity,” rights: the right to economic, social, and cultural development and the right to national and international peace and security. Finally, it is to date the only treaty instrument to detail individual duties as well as individual rights—to the family, society, the state, and the international African community. Nevertheless, in view of the turmoil that beset northern and sub-Saharan Africa at the end of the 20th century, it is fair to say that the African human rights system is still in its infancy.

Middle Eastern and Asian human rights systems

      The Permanent Arab Commission on Human Rights, founded by the Council of the League of Arab States (Arab League) in September 1968, has been preoccupied primarily with the rights of Arabs living in Israeli-occupied territories. Functioning more to promote than to protect human rights, at the end of the 1990s it had yet to bring a proposed Arab Convention on Human Rights to a successful conclusion. Nevertheless, work by other intergovernmental and nongovernmental bodies manifested a continuing desire to establish human rights protection mechanisms in the Middle East. Building on the Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights (1981) and the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam (1990), the League of Arab States approved an Arab Charter on Human Rights in September 1994. The charter provides for periodic reports to the league's Human Rights Committee by state parties and for an independent Committee of Experts apparently empowered to request and study reports and submit its own findings to the Human Rights Committee. No other institutions or procedures for monitoring human rights are specified in the charter, however. More so than in most other regions of the world (except Asia), the states of the Middle East were greatly divided over the need to enforce human rights law and the desirability of achieving a true regional system for the promotion and protection of human rights.

      In Asia, despite efforts by NGOs and the United Nations, the states of the region have been at best ambivalent—and at worst hostile—to human rights concerns, thus precluding agreement on almost all regional human rights initiatives. In early 1993, anticipating the Vienna World Conference on Human Rights later that year, a conference of Asia-Pacific NGOs adopted an Asia-Pacific Declaration of Human Rights, and in 1997 another meeting of NGOs adopted an Asian Human Rights Charter. Both of these initiatives supported the universality and indivisibility of human rights. However, whereas the first initiative called for the creation of a regional human rights regime, the second—seemingly in deference to the cultural diversity and vastness of the region—urged instead the establishment of national human rights commissions and so-called “People's Tribunals,” which would be based more on moral and spiritual foundations rather than on legal ones. The states of Asia were slow to respond to these recommendations. Their positions were indicated at a UN-sponsored workshop in 1996, where the 30 participating states concluded that “it was premature … to discuss specific arrangements relating to the setting up of a formal human rights mechanism in the Asian and Pacific region.” The same states agreed, however, to “[explore] the options available and the process necessary for establishing a regional mechanism.” It remains to be seen whether the economic and political crises that beset Asia at the end of the 20th century will stimulate efforts to ensure greater respect for human rights through regional cooperation.

International human rights in domestic courts

      Using domestic courts to clarify and safeguard international human rights is a new and still evolving approach to human rights advocacy. In addition to the inevitable interpretative problems involved in applying norms that are fashioned in multicultural settings, controversial theories about the interrelation of national and international law, as well as many procedural difficulties, burden the human rights claimant in this setting. To be sure, considerable progress has been made, as perhaps best evidenced in the far-reaching decision handed down by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in Filártiga v. Peña-Irala (1980), in which the court held that the international prohibition of torture, because it is unequivocally established in customary international law and applies regardless of the nationality of the victim or the perpetrator (at least in the case of private litigants), must be honoured in U.S. courts. More recently, in 1998–99, the United Kingdom's highest tribunal, the Law Lords of the British House of Lords (Lords, House of), captured international attention when, in response to an extradition request by a Spanish court, it upheld the arrest in England of former Chilean president Augusto Pinochet (Pinochet, Augusto) on charges of torture and conspiracy to commit torture in violation of international treaty law. Although Pinochet was later returned to Chile and declared by a Chilean court to be mentally unfit to stand trial, the Law Lords' ruling established the precedent that former heads of state do not enjoy immunity from prosecution, at least for systematic human rights crimes.

Human rights at the turn of the 21st century

      Whatever the current attitudes and policies of governments, the reality of popular demands for human rights, including both greater economic justice and greater political freedom, is beyond debate. A deepening and widening concern for the promotion and protection of human rights on all fronts, hastened by the ideal of self-determination in a postcolonial era, is now unmistakably woven into the fabric of contemporary world affairs.

      Substantially responsible for this progressive development has been the work of the UN, its allied agencies, and such regional organizations as the Council of Europe, the OAS, and the AU. Also contributing to this development, particularly since the 1970s and '80s, have been five other salient factors: (1) the public advocacy of human rights as a key aspect of national foreign policies, made initially legitimate by the example of U.S. President Jimmy Carter, (2) the emergence and spread of civil society on a transnational basis, primarily in the form of activist nongovernmental human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, Interights, and Human Rights Watch, the International Commission of Jurists, and diverse faith-based and professional groups, (3) a worldwide profusion of teaching and research devoted to the study of human rights in both formal and informal settings, (4) the proliferation of large UN conferences in areas such as children's rights, population, social development, women's rights, human settlements, and food production and distribution, and (5) a mounting feminist intellectual and political challenge regarding not only the rights of women worldwide, but also what feminists consider the paternalistic myths and myth structures that purport to define humane governance generally.

      To be sure, because the application of international human rights law depends for the most part on the voluntary consent of nations, formidable obstacles attend the endeavours of human rights policy makers, activists, and scholars. Human rights conventions continue to be undermined by the failure of states to ratify them and by emasculating reservations and derogations, by self-serving reporting systems that outnumber objective complaint procedures, and by poor financing for the implementation of human rights prescriptions. In short, the mechanisms for the enforcement of human rights are still in their infancy. Nevertheless, it is certain that, out of necessity no less than out of realism, a palpable concern for the advancement of human rights is here to stay.

Burns H. Weston

Additional Reading

Documentary

Human Rights: A Compilation of International Instruments, rev. 5th ed., 2 vol. in 3 (1994–97), published by the United Nations, contains the texts of human rights treaties and other instruments established under the auspices of the United Nations Centre for Human Rights. Yearbook on Human Rights (annual), issued by the Secretariat of the United Nations, documents national and international developments in the human rights field. See also Burns H. Weston (ed.), International Law & World Order: Basic Documents, 5 vol. (1994– ), especially vol. 3; Felix Ermacora, Manfred Nowak, and Hannes Tretter (eds.), International Human Rights: Documents and Introductory Notes (1993); Ian Brownlie (ed.), Basic Documents on Human Rights, 3rd ed. (1992); Richard B. Lillich (ed.), International Human Rights Instruments: A Compilation of Treaties, Agreements, and Declarations of Especial Interest to the United States, 2nd ed. (1990); Albert P. Blaustein, Roger S. Clark, and Jay A. Sigler (eds.), Human Rights Sourcebook (1987); International Human Rights Instruments of the United Nations, 1948–1982 (1983), published by UNIFO Publishers; and James Avery Joyce, Human Rights: International Documents, 3 vol. (1978).

General

Basic works on the subject include Anne F. Bayefsky, The UN Human Rights Treaty System: Universality at the Crossroads (2001); Robert F. Drinan, The Mobilization of Shame: A World View of Human Rights (2001); Michael Ignatieff, Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry, ed. by Amy Gutmann (2001); Richard Falk, Human Rights Horizons: The Pursuit of Justice in a Globalizing World (2000); Martha C. Nussbaum, “Capabilities, Human Rights, and the Universal Declaration,” and Burns H. Weston, “The Universality of Human Rights in a Multicultured World: Toward Respectful Decision-Making,” in Burns H. Weston and Stephen P. Marks (eds.), The Future of International Human Rights (1999), pp. 25–99; Hurst Hannum, Guide to International Human Rights Practice, 3rd ed. (1999), and Autonomy, Sovereignty, and Self-Determination: The Accommodation of Conflicting Rights, rev. ed. (1996); John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (1999); Paul Gordon Lauren, The Evolution of International Human Rights: Visions Seen (1998); William Korey, NGOs and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1998); Michael J. Perry, The Idea of Human Rights: Four Inquiries (1998); S. James Anaya, Indigenous Peoples in International Law (1996); Beverly C. Edmonds and William R. Fernekes, Children's Rights: A Reference Handbook (1996); Alan Gewirth, The Community of Rights (1996); David Gillies, Between Principle and Practice: Human Rights in North-South Relations (1996); Guy S. Goodwin-Gill, The Refugee in International Law, 2nd ed. (1996); A.H. Robertson and J.G. Merrills, Human Rights in the World, 4th ed. (1996); Henry Shue, Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence, and U.S. Foreign Policy, 2nd ed. (1996); Henry J. Steiner and Philip Alston, International Human Rights in Context: Law, Politics, Morals (1996); Thomas Buergenthal, International Human Rights in a Nutshell, 2nd ed. (1995); Asbjörn Eide, Catarina Krause, and Allan Rosas (eds.), Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights: A Textbook (1995); United Nations Centre for Human Rights, United Nations Action in the Field of Human Rights (1994); Ann Elizabeth Mayer, Islam and Human Rights: Tradition and Politics, 3rd ed. (1999); Rebecca J. Cook (ed.), Human Rights of Women: National and International Perspectives (1994); Louis Henkin and John Lawrence Hargrove (eds.), Human Rights: An Agenda for the Next Century (1994); Rein Müllerson, International Law, Rights, and Politics: Developments in Eastern Europe and the CIS (1994); Andrew Clapham, Human Rights in the Private Sphere (1993); Jack Donnelly, The Concept of Human Rights (1985), and International Human Rights, 2nd ed. (1998); Hurst Hannum and Dana D. Fischer (eds.), U.S. Ratification of the International Covenants on Human Rights (1993); Philip Alston (ed.), The United Nations and Human Rights: A Critical Appraisal (1992); Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na‘im (ed.), Human Rights in Cross-Cultural Perspectives (1992); Richard Pierre Claude and Burns H. Weston (eds. and contributors), Human Rights in the World Community, 2nd ed. (1992); James Crawford (ed.), The Rights of Peoples (1992); Astrid J.M. Delissen and Gerard J. Tanja, Humanitarian Law of Armed Conflict: Challenges Ahead (1991); James C. Hathaway, The Law of Refugee Status (1991); Edward Lawson (compiler), Encyclopedia of Human Rights, 2nd ed. (1996); Antonio Cassese, Human Rights in a Changing World (1990; originally published in Italian, 1988); Bertrand Binoche, Critiques des droits de l'homme (1989); Theodor Meron, Human Rights in Internal Strife: Their International Protection (1987), and Human Rights Law-Making in the United Nations (1986); R.J. Vincent, Human Rights and International Relations (1986); Theodor Meron (ed.), Human Rights in International Law: Legal and Policy Issues, 2 vol. (1984, reprinted 1992); David P. Forsythe, Human Rights and World Politics, 2nd ed., rev. (1989); Karel Vasak and Philip Alston (eds.), The International Dimensions of Human Rights, 2 vol., trans. from French (1982); Richard Falk, Human Rights and State Sovereignty (1981); Louis Henkin (ed.), The International Bill of Rights: The Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1981); Myres S. McDougal, Harold D. Lasswell, and Lung-chu Chen, Human Rights and World Public Order: The Basic Policies of an International Law of Human Dignity (1980); Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, The Political Economy of Human Rights, 2 vol. (1979); Adamantia Pollis and Peter Schwab (eds.), Human Rights: Cultural and Ideological Perspectives (1979); Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (1977); Richard P. Claude (ed.), Comparative Human Rights (1976); Manouchehr Ganji, The Realization of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights: Problems, Policies, Progress (1975); Maurice Cranston, What Are Human Rights? (1973); John Carey, UN Protection of Civil and Political Rights (1970); József Halász (ed.), Socialist Concept of Human Rights (1966; originally published in Hungarian, 1965); Hersch Lauterpacht, International Law and Human Rights (1950, reissued 1973); Richard B. Bilder, “Rethinking International Human Rights: Some Basic Questions,” Wisconsin Law Review, 171(1):171–217 (1969); and Egon Schwelb, Human Rights and the International Community: The Roots and Growth of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948–1963 (1964).

Regional instruments and arrangements

Dinah Shelton, “The Promise of Regional Human Rights Systems,” in Burns H. Weston and Stephen P. Marks, The Future of International Human Rights (1999), pp. 351–398; Burns H. Weston, Robin Ann Lukes, and Kelly M. Hnatt, “Regional Human Rights Regimes: A Comparison and Appraisal,” Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, 20(4):585-637 (October 1987).

Europe

Peter Leuprecht, “Innovations in the European System of Human Rights Protection: Is Enlargement Compatible with Reinforcement?”, Transnational Law and Contemporary Problems, 8(2):313–336 (1998); Council of Europe, European Convention on Human Rights: Collected Texts (1994); A.H. Robertson and J.G. Merrills, Human Rights in Europe: A Study of the European Convention on Human Rights, 3rd ed. (1993); Antonio Cassese, Andrew Clapham, and Joseph Weiler (eds.), Human Rights and the European Community, 3 vols. (1991); Pieter van Dijk and G.B.G. van Hoof, Theory and Practice of the European Convention on Human Rights, 2nd ed. (1990); Frede Castberg, The European Convention on Human Rights, trans. from Norwegian with revisions (1974).

The Americas

Cecilia Medina, “Toward Effectiveness in the Protection of Human Rights in the Americas,” Transnational Law and Contemporary Problems, 8(2):337–358 (1998); Christina M. Cerna, “International Law and the Protection of Human Rights in the Inter-American System,” Houston Journal of International Law, 19(3):731-759 (Spring 1997); Thomas Buergenthal and Dinah Shelton, Protecting Human Rights in the Americas, 4th rev. ed. (1995); Rafael Nieto Navia (ed.), La corte y el sistema interamericano de derechos humanos (1994); Thomas Buergenthal and Robert E. Norris (eds.), Human Rights: The Inter-American System (1982– ).

Africa

Chidi Anselm Odinkalu, “The Individual Complaint Procedures of the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights: A Preliminary Assessment,” Transnational Law and Contemporary Problems, 8(2):359–405 (1998); Cees Flinterman and Evelyn Ankumah, “The African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights,” in Hurst Hannum (ed.), Guide to International Human Rights Practice, 2nd ed. (1992) pp. 159–169; U.O. Umozurike, “The African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights,” The American Journal of International Law, 77(4):902–912 (October 1983); Richard Gittleman, “The African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights: A Legal Analysis,” Virginia Journal of International Law, 22(4):667–714 (Summer 1982).

The Middle East and Asia

Vitit Muntarbhorn, “Asia, Human Rights, and the New Millennium: Time for a Regional Human Rights Charter?”, Transnational Law and Contemporary Problems, 8(2):359–405 (1998), and “Protection of Human Rights in Asia and the Pacific: Think Universal, Act Regional?”, in Collection of Lectures, Twenty-Ninth Study Session, International Institute of Human Rights (1998), p. 1; Hassan Moinuddin, The Charter of the Islamic Conference and Legal Framework of Economic Cooperation Among its Member States (1987); Stephen P. Marks, “La commission permanente arabe des droits de l'homme,” Revue des droits de l'homme/Human Rights Journal, 3(1):101–108 (1970).

Regional human rights perspectives

Abdullahi Ahmed An-Naʿim, (ed.), Human Rights in Cross-Cultural Perspectives: A Quest for Consensus (1992); Abdullahi Ahmed An-Naʿim and Francis M. Deng (eds.), Human Rights in Africa: Cross-Cultural Perspectives (1990); Joanne R. Bauer and Daniel A. Bell (eds.), The East Asian Challenge for Human Rights (1999); Wm. Theodore de Bary, Asian Values and Human Rights: A Confucian Communitarian Perspective (1998); Wm. Theodore de Bary and Tu Weiming (eds.), Confucianism and Human Rights (1998); Rhoda E. Howard, Human Rights and the Search for Community (1995); Ann Elizabeth Mayer, Islam and Human Rights: Tradition and Politics, 3rd ed. (1999); Issa G. Shivji, The Concept of Human Rights in Africa (1989); Peter Van Ness (ed.), Debating Human Rights: Critical Essays from the United States and Asia (1999).

Principal human rights periodicals

Australian Journal of Human Rights (semiannual); Canadian Human Rights Yearbook; Columbia Human Rights Law Review (semiannual); European Human Rights Law Review (bimonthly); Harvard Human Rights Journal (annual); Human Rights Internet Reporter (biennial); Human Rights Law Journal (quarterly); Human Rights Monitor (quarterly); Human Rights Quarterly (formerly Universal Human Rights); Human Rights Tribune (quarterly); International Human Rights Reports (three times a year); International Journal of Refugee Law (quarterly); Israel Yearbook on Human Rights; Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights; New York Law School Journal of Human Rights (semiannual); The Review [of the International Commission of Jurists] (semiannual); The Human Rights Review (three times a year); Revue des droits de l'homme/Human Rights Journal (quarterly).Burns H. Weston

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