Human Rights

The UN defines human rights as those rights that are inherent to all human beings, regardless of nationality, place of residence, sex, national or ethnic origin, religion, language or any other status. Human rights include civil and political rights, such as the right to life and liberty, as well as social, cultural and economic rights, such as the right to practice cultural traditions, the right to work and the right to education. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, human rights law developed, which includes treaties, international legislation, general principles and other sources. These laws describe obligations of governments to act to promote and protect human rights and freedoms of individuals or groups and to refrain from acting in ways that are deleterious to the inhabitants of their countries and other nations.

Some of the most important precepts of human rights are that they are universal, inalienable, equal and non-discriminatory. Despite the precept of universality, only 80 per cent of states in the world have ratified more than one core human rights treaty which binds them legally to obligations of protecting human rights of people in the world. Human rights are also described as being inalienable, which posits that they cannot be taken away. Important to note, however, is that these rights can be limited in due process situations. The human right of liberty, for example, may be restricted if a person is found guilty of a crime in a court of law. Every human being is believed to have equal rights regardless of group membership, geographic location, citizenship status and so on.

Human rights scholarship and legislation refer to many different rights, and the list continues to expand into the twenty-first century. The breadth of rights categorized as human rights, and the changing nature of human rights in scholarship and practice, contributes to challenges faced by the human rights movement on the world stage, as well as by researchers who strive to implement action research and Participatory Action Research (PAR) in the name of human rights, as discussed below.

Civil and political rights, for example, have been grouped together as first generation rights, with the understanding that the existence of these rights in political doctrine and scholarship across disciplines predates the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) by the UN General Assembly in 1948. Social, cultural and economic rights are referred to as second generation rights as their presence in the arena of human rights corresponds to the adoption of the UDHR. More recently, in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, there are arguments for international human rights to consider an entirely new set of rights, labelled third generation rights. Third generation rights refer to the collective rights of societies, such as the right to sustainable development and to environmental health and safety. These rights are thought to be needed for societies in the majority world to be able to enjoy first- and second generation rights. The human rights scholar Burns Weston points out that human rights doctrine is changing as the ethos of human rights around the globe changes. Weston [Page 421]explains, for example, that third generation rights were introduced as an increasing support was felt around the world for self-determination and the rights of minority and indigenous groups.

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