HUMAN RIGHTS

DEFINITION
 Human rights as argued by Rebecca Wallace
(2002) is a fundamental and inalienable
rights which are essential for human life as a
human being.
 Louis Henkins (1995) claimed that human
rights shall be defined as the liberties,
immunities and benefits which, by accepted
contemporary values, all human beings
should be able to claim as right of the
society in which they live
 The United Nations (UN) defines human
rights as universal and inalienable,
interdependent and indivisible, and
equal and non-discriminatory.
RIGHT AND OBLIGATIONS

 The primary obligation of persons in

relation to their human rights is the
duty to protect the human rights of
others.
HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT

 Greek philosophy
 Age of Enlightenment (18th century)
 6th Century
 Cyrus the Great (576 or 590 BC - 530
BC)
 Margna Carta of 1215
 Middle Ages
 The Enlightenment
 American Declaration of Independence of 4 July
1776
 18th and 19th centuries
 World War II
 The signing of the Charter of the United Nations
(UN) on 26 June 1945
 Less than two years later, the UN Commission on
Human Rights (UNCHR), established early in 1946,
submitted a draft Universal Declaration of Human
Rights (UDHR) to the UN General Assembly (UNGA).
 Since the 1950s, the UDHR has been
backed up by a large number of
international conventions. The most
significant of these conventions are the
International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights (ICCPR) and the
International Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).
CLASSIFICATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS

CLASSIC AND SOCIAL RIGHTS

 ‘Classic’ rights are often seen to require

the non-intervention of the state
(negative obligation), and ‘social rights’
as requiring active intervention on the
part of the state (positive obligations).
CIVIL, POLITICAL, ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL RIGHTS

Civil rights
- concerns the right to life, liberty and security
of the person, and which offer protection from
physical violence against the person, torture
and inhuman treatment, arbitrary arrest,
detention, exile, slavery and servitude,
interference with one’s privacy and right of
ownership, restriction of one’s freedom of
movement, and the freedom of thought,
conscience and religion.
 Political rights

 They include freedom of expression,

freedom of association and assembly,
the right to take part in the
government of one’s country and the
right to vote and stand for election at
genuine periodic elections held by
secret ballot
 Economic and social rights

 These rights provide the conditions

necessary for prosperity and wellbeing.
 Cultural rights

 the right to participate freely in the

cultural life of the community, the right
to share in scientific advancement and
the right to the protection of the moral
and material interests resulting from
any scientific, literary or artistic
production of which one is the author.
FUNDAMENTAL AND BASIC RIGHTS

 Fundamental rights are taken to mean such

rights as the right to life and the inviolability of
the person.
 Basic rights include the right to life, the right
to a minimum level of security, the inviolability
of the person, freedom from slavery and
servitude, and freedom from torture, unlawful
deprivation of liberty, discrimination and other
acts which impinge on human dignity.
OTHER CLASSIFICATIONS

Freedoms
United States President Franklin D.
Roosevelt summarised these preconditions
in his famous ‘Four Freedoms Speech’ to the
United States Congress on 26 January 1941:
 Freedom of speech and expression;

 Freedom of belief Freedom from want; and

 Freedom from fear.

 Individual and collective rights
 Freedom of association and assembly,
freedom of religion and, more
especially, the freedom to form or join
a trade union, fall into this category.
CONCEPT OF HUMANITY
 Athens and Rome had ´citizens´ who
have rights and obligations towards the
community, they did not have the idea
of a common humanity who are the
members of the same human species :
thus the dichotomy between free men
and slaves.
 A different conception of humanitas
developed under Christian Theology,
one where ´all men are equally part of
spiritual humanity under God who can
be saved through God´s plan of
salvation.
 This again changed in the 18th century
with the rise of the liberal political
philosophy which transferred the
concept of ‘humanity’ from God to
human nature.
 . Michael Ignatieff writes: Our species is one, and
each of the individuals who compose it is entitled
to equal moral consideration.
 Fukuyama argues that the differences that create
our identity are non- essential and superficial. As
far as our genetic inheritance, we are one.
 Judge Habermas, on the other hand, believes that
the common essence of humanity is found not so
much in our physical genetic inheritance but in the
´oneness or integrity of the human nature´, which
is the basis of ethics for the entire human species
HUMAN RIGHTS AS INSTRUMENTS

 Universal Declaration of Human Rights

´´of the General Assembly of the
United Nations.
 Universal Declartion of Human Rights
 ICCPR and ICESR
 Supervisory Mechanisms
Supervisory mechanisms are commonly divided into
four groups:
 The first, and according to some experts the most

important, is the individual complaints mechanism.

 The second supervisory mechanism is the reporting

mechanism.
 The third group of supervisory mechanisms is the

Inter-State complaints mechanism.

 Finally, the fourth group consists of a system of

inquiries, field visits and other forms of fact-finding

or advisory missions
 Rome Statute of the International
Criminal Court.
 Statute of the International Court of
Justice
 Vienna Convention on the Law of
Treaties
 First Protocol to the Geneva
Conventions
HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE PHILIPPINE CONTEXT

 rights of Filipinos can be found in Article III of

the 1987 Philippine Constitution
 also guided by the UN's International Bill of
Human Rights – a consolidation of 3 legal
documents including the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the
International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights (ICCPR), and the International
Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural
Rights (ICESCR).
COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

JUSTICE

“human rights” focuses on what each

person deserves, simply by virtue of
being human.

“social justice” focuses on the

responsibilities of society toward its
members.
 EQUALITY
Human rights law is, classically, about limitations or
“negative obligations” being imposed upon the
State, to stop it from interfering in how individuals
may choose to structure their lives.  
Equality law is about imposing positive obligations.
It requires them to be: blind to differences in race,
gender,  age,  sexuality; deaf to differences in
religion or belief; and ready to make reasonable
adjustments for the differently abled.
 EQUITY
 The route to achieving equity will not
be accomplished through treating
everyone equally. It will be achieved by
treating everyone equitably, or justly
according to their circumstances.
RELIGION

A. HUMAN RIGHTS IN JEWISH LAW

- The Genesis story affirms both the
sovereignty of God and the sacredness of
the individual, for it is a single person
that is first made in the image of God.
Thus, the rabbis teach that killing a
person "is tantamount to diminishing the
reality of God's own self.
B. HUMAN RIGHTS IN ISLAMIC LAW
 These rights are so deeply rooted in our
humanness that their denial or
violation is tantamount to a negotiation
or degradation of that which makes us
human.
C. HUMAN RIGHTS IN CANON LAW
-One distinguishing feature of human
rights under Canon law is its distrust of
individualism and its emphasis on the
community.