Human rights are the rights all people have simply because they are human beings. To advocate human rights is to demand that the dignity of all people be respected. Both government and private individuals can violate human rights.
Human rights apply in people’s homes, schools, and workplaces. In fact they apply everywhere. We have our human rights from the moment we are born until the moment we die.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a statement of basic human rights and standards for government that has been agreed to by almost every country in the world.
First written and adopted by the United Nations (UN) in 1948 under the leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt, it proclaims that all people have the right to liberty, education, political and religious freedom, and economic well-being. The Declaration also bans torture and says that all people have the right to participate in their government process.
(Eleanor Roosevelt believed that her work on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was her greatest accomplishment.)
Today these rights are generally promoted, recognized, and observed by countries that belong to the UN.
The UDHR is not a binding treaty. However, the UN has established a system of international treaties and other legal mechanisms to enforce human rights. These include the following major treaties:
• The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights protects the freedoms of speech, religion, and press and the right to participate in government.
• The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights provides for the right to adequate education, food, housing, health care, protection of property, and employment in safe conditions at an adequate salary.
• The Convention on the Rights of the Child spells out basic human rights to which children everywhere are entitled, including the right to education and to be free from exploitation.
Some believe the right to a clean environment should be added to the Covenants, while others call for a right to economic development for poor countries.
The United States has signed and ratified the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and has signed but not ratified both the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
There are other important human rights treaties covering specific areas of human rights, including genocide and discrimination against women. Even when the United States signs a human rights agreement, it often restricts its enforcement within the country.
This is done by announcing that the United States is taking reservations, which is a legal way of making a provision less enforceable than it might otherwise be.
The government gives a number of reasons for these reservations, including the fact that the treaty would take away the power of individual states to make law under our system of federalism, as well as the belief that other countries should not impose their views on the states. Those who advocate ratification argue that states could still decide how to implement treaties.
Human rights are standards that all countries can use when writing laws. Sometimes human rights become law in a country when the government signs an international treaty guaranteeing such rights.
Human rights also can become law if they are included in a constitution or if the legislature of a country passes laws protecting or guaranteeing these rights. Even though they may not refer to them as “human rights,” there are many provisions that protect human rights in the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights and in federal, state, and local laws.
Many of the human rights documents—including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—mention cultural rights, and it is widely accepted that all people have a right to their own culture. But what does this right to culture mean when culture comes into conflict with other universally accepted human rights?
For example, the practice of female infanticide, or the killing of female babies, might be accepted in one culture, but the world community condemns it as a violation of a human right, the right to life. So cultural rights, like many other rights, are not absolute.
This is an important function of the basic human rights.
No comments:
Post a Comment