Fundamental Human Rights
Fundamental human rights are essential entitlements and freedoms that every individual is inherently entitled to, regardless of their nationality, ethnicity, gender, or any other status. These rights encompass civil, political, economic, social, and cultural aspects, and are protected by national and international laws. They include the right to life, liberty, equality, and dignity, as well as freedom of expression, religion, and assembly.
7 Key excerpts on "Fundamental Human Rights"
eBook - ePubThe EU Charter of Fundamental Rights
A Commentary
- Steve Peers, Tamara Hervey, Jeff Kenner, Angela Ward, Steve Peers, Tamara Hervey, Jeff Kenner, Angela Ward(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Hart/Beck(Publisher)
...This said, fundamental social rights have some peculiarities in relation to so-called classical human rights and fundamental rights. These relate to their political contentiousness in terms of the right–left/liberal–conservative divide that has been absent in the case of classical human/fundamental rights. The fact is that their protection is considerably more costly than the protection of classical rights. 16 I. Philosophical Foundations of Fundamental Social Rights 62.18 Philosophically and historically the need to afford some kind of protection to certain social rights can be justified with reference to human dignity and equality. Both of these values are equally recognised by the Charter. 62.19 Human dignity is conditioned by human vulnerability, which the legal-philosopher HLA Hart included in the list of those concerns that define the ‘minimum content of natural law’. 17 In fact, human vulnerability justifies different obligations of protection and care that human societies recognised in some form or other in respect of children, the elderly, the sick and the poor, well before the emergence of the modern welfare state. Many fundamental social rights are derived from this, transformed from principles of religious mercy or charity into rights that everybody may enjoy by virtue of being a human being with a claim to equal consideration and dignity. 62.20 Let us imagine the example of a newborn foundling, discovered lying on the breast of her mother, unknown and unidentifiable because of her foreign origins, the mother having died after the delivery. Let us further assume that the baby suffers from a chronic condition requiring continuous medication, leaving her physically and mentally handicapped...
eBook - ePubEthics for International Business
Decision-Making in a Global Political Economy
- John Kline(Author)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...In the illustration of US human rights policy reflected in Exhibit 3.1, the first step would be to determine whether food or other specific items constitute fundamental rights that must be respected. The second step then queries which individuals or institutions have a duty to act and what specific actions (for example, the provision of food aid) would fulfill their obligation to respect the human rights of others. Ethical analysis might respond to the first challenge by attempting to identify a set of Fundamental Human Rights that constitute basic minimum conditions for any individual member of a global society. The UN Declaration of Human Rights offers one possible formulation of such an answer. Ethicists have suggested more abbreviated versions of the Declaration’s list, attempting to identify a fundamental core of normative values. 13 To begin, such a core list might start with an individual’s basic right to life, moving quickly to associated (perhaps derivative) rights such as security of person (freedom from killing or torture) and the minimal food, shelter or health care necessary for survival. Formulating a list of rights beginning from a blank slate does not ask whether valued rights are civil/political or economic/social/cultural in nature. Instead, the approach is somewhat similar to Rawls’s “veil of ignorance” test to determine which principles would be termed “just” or “fair” by individuals who did not know their place in the world. Which rights would individuals consider basic or fundamental, a type of ethical minimum condition inherent as a right for every human person, if such rights were chosen without knowing in advance where in the world each individual would reside, and under what conditions? Exhibit 3.2 offers a seemingly extreme yet instructive case scenario involving international trade in human organs. Driven by the extreme poverty in Moldova, Nicolae Bardan sold a kidney (albeit illegally) for $3,000...
eBook - ePub- Hilaire Barnett(Author)
- 2009(Publication Date)
- Routledge-Cavendish(Publisher)
...In the United Kingdom, with its uncodified Constitution, the traditional approach to human rights has been rather different. Here, individuals are free to do whatever they please, provided that they do not contravene the law. Freedoms and rights exist but may be limited by what Parliament may enact. For example, in order to understand the scope (and limits) of the right to freedom of speech it is necessary to know that defamation (making wrongful and damaging falsehoods about another person) is actionable; that expression which threatens a breach of the peace or speech, which stirs up racial hatred, is a criminal offence. The ‘right’ is what remains once all the restrictions are considered. This conventional approach must now be seen in light of both the European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act 1998, which makes the majority of Convention rights enforceable in the domestic courts. Before looking at these in detail, a brief overview of the history of rights is required. The origins of rights In Western societies Christian natural law has historically been highly influential. Natural law thought pre-dates Christianity and may be traced to the ancient Greek philosophers. Natural law theory in essence claims that there is a higher source of authority than the government. That higher source is – for Christian natural law theorists – God. For secular theorists, the higher source of authority is man’s rationality, which enables humans to understand what is morally required for the law of the State to be valid and to require the obedience of its citizens. In either case – religious or secular – natural law sets moral standards with which the law must comply. Failure to comply with this essential morality would make the law of the State invalid. Furthermore, according to some theorists, if the law of the State (the positive law) fails to match up to moral standards, citizens are not obliged to follow that law...
eBook - ePubCreating Capabilities
The Human Development Approach
- Martha C. Nussbaum(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Belknap Press(Publisher)
...If they are to deliver it, they need to know what it is. It seems urgently important to distinguish items that are genuinely fundamental (the freedom of speech, protection of bodily integrity) from items that are not fundamental, and even bad. Legislators, courts, and administrative agencies cannot enforce such a conception unless they know what it is. A written constitution is one handy way of making such entitlements explicit and giving them security against majority whim. Some nations work, instead, with unwritten understandings of fundamental rights. Nonetheless, if they can be removed in an hour by an impatient majority—as the freedoms of speech and association were voted away during the State of Emergency declared by Indira Gandhi in 1975—then human dignity is in a perilous position, and the nation needs to find a better way of delivering capability security. Supramajoritarian protection of some type for fundamental entitlements—whether in a written constitution or not—seems essential to that security. In other words, all societies that pursue a reasonably just political conception have to evaluate human freedoms, saying that some are central and some trivial, some good and some actively bad, some deserving of special protection and others not. This evaluation also affects the way we will assess an abridgment of a freedom. Certain freedoms are taken to be entitlements of citizens based upon justice. When any one of these is abridged, that is an especially grave failure of the political system. In such cases, people feel that the abridgment is not just a cost to be borne; it is a cost of a distinctive kind, involving a violation of basic justice. When some freedom outside the core is abridged, that may be a small cost or a large cost to some actor or actors, but it is not a cost of exactly that same kind, one that in justice no citizen should be asked to bear...
eBook - ePubDignity and International Human Rights Law
An Introduction to the Punta del Este Declaration on Human Dignity for Everyone Everywhere
- Brett Scharffs, Ewelina Ochab(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Human dignity for everyone everywhere is the primary goal of human rights. 22 17 Jack Donnelly, “Human Rights and Human Dignity: An Analytic Critique of Non-western Conceptions of Human Rights” (1982) 76 American Political Science Review 303; Christopher McCrudden, “Human Dignity and Judicial Interpretation of Human Rights” (2008) 19 European Journal of International law 655; Oscar Schachter, “Human Dignity as a Normative Concept” (1983) 77 American Journal of International Law 848; David Kretzmer and Eckart Klein, The Concept of Human Dignity in Human Rights Discourse (Brill, 2002). 18 Jack Donnelly, “Human Rights and Human Dignity: An Analytic Critique of Non-western Conceptions of Human Rights” (1982) 76 American Political Science Review 303. 19 Id., 312. 20 Glendon (2001) 146. 21 Article 1(2) of the Basic Law. 22 For example, Kateb claims that “Human dignity is … perceived to be the basis for human rights.” Kateb (2011) 1. It is interesting and significant that human dignity for everyone everywhere is not only the foundational principle of human rights but also the objective, goal, telos, or end of human rights. 23 Human rights are not a goal in themselves but a way to protect and. strengthen the human dignity of everyone everywhere. The goal of human rights is to protect human dignity for everyone everywhere. 24 b. Human dignity for everyone everywhere is an invaluable criterion for evaluating laws, policies, and government actions for how well they accord with human rights standards Assessing human rights performance is a difficult task. There are many important data-driven efforts to measure and evaluate how well countries perform in the protection and realization of human rights. Comprehensive human rights performance indices include those produced by the Pew Research Center, 25 Human Rights Watch, 26 Amnesty International, 27 and Freedom House. 28 23 Schlink suggests two ways that dignity may be used...
eBook - ePubHannah Arendt and the Challenge of Modernity
A Phenomenology of Human Rights
- Serena Parekh(Author)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Respect for human rights is merely the standard for whether a political regime is admissible as a member in good standing into a just political community. It’s the basis for judging political regimes. 81 Rawls shares with Singer the view that human rights are primarily about guiding action and, in Rawls’ case, they are a way to define what a just society might look like. Rawls avoids the deeper metaphysical questions by showing how human rights are norms that would be chosen under “veil of ignorance” conditions. That is, if people were to choose a constitutional structure for their political community behind a veil of ignorance about their particular circumstances, then they would certainly agree that each person should have basic human rights. This is his justification for human rights. 82 Thomas Pogge gives an illuminating interpretation of the Rawlsian view of human rights. Pogge, like Rawls, stresses the importance of social institutions. For Pogge, human rights must be understood as an assertion that each society ought to be organized so that every person in the society has secure access to those rights. 83 In general, human rights refer to a special class of moral concerns that we see as the most weighty, unrestricted, and broadly shareable. To say that human rights are weighty means that they should play a role in our reflections about social institutions and our conduct. By unrestricted, Pogge means that respect for such rights does not depend on culture, religion, citizenship, etc., but that they apply to all people in all times and places. They are broadly shareable in the sense that they can be understood and appreciated by everyone. He claims that “human” rights differ importantly from “natural” rights because human does not suggest an ontological status that is independent of human effort, decision, and recognition—or deny such a status...
eBook - ePubFundamental Rights and Private Law in Europe
The Case of Tort Law and Children
- Nuno Ferreira(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Moreover, all significant international and European human rights instruments, above all those with an impact on the rights of children, such as the ECHR and the CRC, now expressly bind the EU institutions. That carries the clear implication that all considerations above made with regard to those legal instruments are equally applicable to the EU institutions as well. Finally, one should recall that the principles of direct applicability, direct, indirect, and incidental horizontal effect, and supremacy ensure that EU law possesses a vast impact on Member States’ jurisdictions, including on their constitutional texts and conventions (Falzea 1998 : 291–300). Accordingly, when children’s rights become thoroughly and adequately mainstreamed into EU’s law and policy-making, respect for child-related rights and principles contained in the CFR, ECHR, CRC, ICCPR, ICESCR and UDHR will also be improved in individual Member States’ jurisdictions (Ferreira 2011). 4.4 The Fundamental Rights of Children at National Level 4.4.1 Introduction Children undoubtedly occupy a privileged position in any legal system. This is the case in all legal fields, including private law. This fact is not precluded by the fact that the rights of children were (at least, until recently) limited, in comparison to those of adults, and did not include most ‘public rights’ (Hierro Sánchez-Pescador 1999 : 23). Private law protects children’s interests and patrimony, as well as those of any person lacking legal or natural capacity, both through offering specific rights to children and sparing them from certain obligations...
