Hello internet! I’m David Bassano – Dr.
D if you like. Today I want to address the
question, what are human rights? Human rights
is a very complex field of study, and there’re
many angles from which to approach it – philosophical,
religious, legal, social, political… and
even the most basic concepts of human rights
are surrounded by controversy and debate.
What I want to do in this video is to give
you an outline of what human rights are and
why they are so important. And I’ll offer
some sources for further study so that you
can do your own research.
What are human rights? When we say “human
rights,” what we typically mean is “universal
human rights.” That is, the rights that
all human beings have, regardless of gender,
nationality, religion, or any other particular
attribute. They are universal to all us. They
are considered inalienable – they cannot
be taken away – and they are natural or,
if you like, “God-given.” They are egalitarian
in that they apply equally to everyone – nobody
is more human than anyone else, so no one
has more rights than anyone else. Human rights
do not need to be earned. You automatically
have them, because you are human. Do human
rights have limits? Sure. Your rights may
not impinge on anyone else’s rights. You
don’t have the right to lie to a jury or
dump toxins into a river, because that harms
the community.
As the old American phrase goes: “Your right
to swing your fist ends at my face.”
What’s the difference between human rights
and civil rights? Civil rights are legal protections
granted by a particular nation or state to
its own citizens. Human rights are said to
apply to all people around the world.
Okay, that all sounds like a nice idea in
theory. But how can we claim to actually,
absolutely have these rights, and whoever
says otherwise is wrong? The best answer to
that is: because people want them.
People want human rights because they make
our lives much more livable, much more meaningful.
When we have the right to live free from police
abuse, we can live without anxiety about our
physical safety. When we live without racism
or other discrimination, it’s easier for
us to live with dignity. When we can practice
our own religion, or no religion, we’re
able to live with integrity and conscience.
When we live without gender roles being forced
on us, we can choose the life we want. With
the right to free speech, we can express ourselves,
and freedom of the media is necessary for
a free society. Human rights improve our lives.
These are not primarily philosophical points.
Without human rights, our daily life is much
worse, much more painful. It is simply not
a philosophical point that I don’t want
to be thrown in prison for practicing my religion,
or to watch the police beat up my family because
we’re from the wrong ethnic group. That’s
not open to debate. Every human being wants
to live without abuse.
And people certainly do care about their rights.
They’ll get them, by one method…or another.
They’re willing to die to for them, if needs
be. And that’s what gives universal human
rights their power: the people demand them.
Now, if you’re a political realist, you
may argue: “Well, sure, politicians may
pretend to care about human rights, just so
they can get elected. But do think they really
care about your rights? All this talk of rights
is political nonsense!”
Let’s assume, for sake of argument, that
politicians and other leaders do not really
care about your rights. It’s the safest
assumption. But since the people can fight
for their rights, particularly in a democracy,
then politicians need to respect the people’s
rights to get elected. Are politicians just
hypocrites? My point is: Who cares if they
are? It’s not important. What’s important
is whether or not the politicians can be forced
into respecting human rights. Leaders come
and go; they’re not as important as our
rights, which are permanent.
Now, I don’t want to talk too much here
about the history of human rights. I want
to discuss that in detail in future videos,
and it’s a fascinating story.
But for now, let’s just say that …The
idea of human rights was expanded particularly
in the Age of Enlightenment in the West. The
American Revolution used these new concepts
of rights to create the first modern democracy;
the entire concept of democracy makes no sense
outside of the context of human rights. Other
revolutions soon followed through the 18th
and 19th centuries.
But while the French and American revolutions
put forth the concept of universal human rights,
often without actually following them, the
international community was not particularly
interested in universal rights, the rights
of people in other countries. Political leaders
remained concerned only with what happened
within one’s own borders. What you do on
your side of the border is none of my business.
But that was going to change.
Let’s address the most commonly-accepted
expression of universal human rights: The
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, or
UDHR, signed at the United Nations in 1948.
This is the world’s best attempt at laying
out the definition of universal human rights
that everyone should follow, in every nation
around the world.
The driving force behind this document was
the greatest catastrophe in history: World
War II, which claimed some 30 to 50 million
lives. During the war, the anti-fascist countries
of the United Nations needed to convince their
people that this wasn’t just another one
of the endless power struggles between countries;
to get their citizens’ full commitment,
they needed to present it as a battle between
good and evil. And we’re the good guys.
But why are we the good guys? The reason,
we told the world, is because we respect human
rights and the fascists do not. That was an
easy sell, given that we were up against Adolf
Hitler. Also, when news of fascist atrocities
came out – the Holocaust, the Rape of Nanking,
the Bataan Death March – the world was so
shocked that many leaders pushed for international
laws against such behavior.
As the preamble to the UDHR puts it: “…disregard
and contempt for human rights have resulted
in barbarous acts which have outraged the
conscience of mankind…” This is why, since
World War II, respect for human rights has
been taken as the source of legitimacy for
all governments. You don’t want your people
to compare you to Hitler, now do you?
So the anti-fascist leaders claimed the mantle
of moral authority in the war by claiming
they were fighting for human rights. And World
War II convinced those leaders that universal
human rights could prevent crimes against
humanity. But the framers of the UDHR pointed
out another advantage of universal human rights:
peace and stability.
Universal human rights are the best defense
against civil wars and revolts. People who
believe that their government legitimately
protects their rights and interests have no
reason to rebel.
Again, from the preamble to the UDHR: “…it
is essential, if man is not to be compelled
to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion
against tyranny and oppression, that human
rights should be protected by the rule of
law…” An international standard of universal
human rights would make the world safer and
more secure.
And, although the authors of the UDHR didn’t
mention it, it was certainly on the leaders’
minds at the United Nations: had human rights
and democracy been strong enough in Germany
and Japan, the fascists would never have been
able to seize power in those nations and launch
aggressive wars. So maybe we should be concerned
with human rights in other countries after
all. It may end up being our business in the
end anyway!
There are, of course, even more reasons to
safeguard human rights: nations make social
and economic progress when respecting these
rights. When all members of society, regardless
of gender, race, and so on, are permitted
to receive an education and pursue the careers
of their choice, it unleashes the nation’s
full potential; furthermore, an educated nation
tends to be a wealthier one.
Therefore, the health of humanity is largely
synonymous with the health of universal human
rights. That is why our civil rights, only
applicable within the nation, are not enough.
Those rights must apply to all humans – they
must be universal.
But this leads to a very big issue in human
rights debates – that of cultural relativism.
Different cultures have different concepts
of rights. Often, national leaders will argue
that universal human rights are based, philosophically
and legally, on European ideas of rights that
don’t fit in their culture. Therefore, they
say, universal rights don’t apply to them;
they instead follow their own concepts of
rights. They often insist that universal rights
are just another method of Western dominance
over the rest of the world, another form of
imperialism.
However, consider this: who gets to decide
what the cultural norms are? Suppose you have
a country where women are not allowed to participate
in politics or go to school. The national
leaders must of course all be men. The men
say that it is their culture, or their religion,
which determines that women are not allowed
to have these rights. But what do the women
say? Since they never get the chance to speak
out in politics, we may never even know what
they think. Is this just and moral? Don’t
the women get a say in what the culture norms
are? If not, are they really cultural norms,
or just the excuse of the powerful who need
to suppress people in order to protect their
monopoly on power? This is why so many people
are skeptical about cultural relativism in
human rights.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
is not a legal instrument with the force of
law; it is a model for international rights,
to serve as guide to other human rights laws,
treaties, national constitutions, and norms
of international behavior. So what’s actually
in this thing?
The declaration has four philosophical foundations:
dignity, liberty, equality, and brotherhood.
Unlike earlier conceptions of human rights,
the UDHR is not directly based on religious
thought, because the theology of one religion
might be incompatible with others; the idea
is universality, to include everyone. That’s
why it uses a secular concept of universal
human rights – so that different religions,
as well as the non-religious, may use them.
Besides the preamble, it contains thirty articles
which spell out the rights that all human
beings are held to have. I can’t go into
each article in the course of this video,
but there is a link to the document in the
description box below.
The first five articles of the UDHR cover
such basic rights as liberty and equality,
and guarantee freedom from torture and degrading
punishment.
The next six articles cover legal aspects
of individual rights, such as equal protection
under the law, the right to a fair trial,
being presumed innocent until proven guilty,
and protection against arbitrary arrest.
Articles twelve through seventeen cover individual
rights vis-à-vis the community, such as freedom
of movement, the right to a nationality, the
right to start a family, and the right to
own property.
Next are freedom of thought, conscience and
religion, opinion and expression, peaceful
assembly, and the right to political participation.
The last articles cover economic, social and
cultural rights, including the right to work
for fair wages, the rights to education, leisure,
and healthcare. They also limit how these
rights are to be upheld; for example, no one
may exercise these rights where they might
contradict the purposes and principles of
the United Nations.
Is the UDHR truly universal to all human cultures?
Does everyone agree with it? No. And the authors
knew it couldn’t be entirely universal.
But it was their best attempt at creating
a universal standard of human rights, and
with the war and the Holocaust still fresh
in everyone’s minds, they decided that something
imperfect was definitely better than nothing.
But the drafters knew that there would be
some resistance to their attempt at universality.
And there was.
The government of Saudi Arabia rejected Article
18, which says, “Everyone has the right
to freedom of thought, conscience and religion;
this right includes freedom to change his
religion or belief…” Disavowing Islam
is considered a crime in many majority-Muslim
nations.
South Africa objected to socio-economic rights,
perhaps because its system of apartheid denied
those very rights to its black citizens.
The USSR claimed that the Declaration had
an “individualist” slant which was incompatible
with socialism.
Some Asian nations claimed that the philosophies
behind the UDHR were basically Western, and
bore little resemblance to Eastern philosophies,
and therefore represented an attempt by the
West to dominate international politics by
imposing its own concepts of rights on the
world.
Nevertheless, the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations,
perhaps exactly because it is not legally
binding. But as we’ll see, that doesn’t
make it useless.
Also, several Asian nations collaborated to
create another international human rights
standard called the Bangkok Declaration in
1993. This standard claims to better represent
Asian political philosophy in that it focuses
more on communal rights as espoused in Confucianism
and Hinduism, and that, as such, it is a better
fit for Asian nations than the Western-based
UDHR. It is also rather suspect in terms of
granting equal rights, but we’ll look at
that in more depth in another video.
Although the Declaration itself is not a binding
treaty, it’s served as the basis for a great
many human rights instruments and covenants,
many of them with the force of law.
The UDHR is the foundation for two binding
UN human rights covenants: the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and
the International Covenant on Economic, Social
and Cultural Rights. These three documents
together are known as the International Bill
of Human Rights.
Other international treaties based on the
UDHR include: the American Convention on Human
Rights, the African Charter on Human and Peoples’
Rights, as the International Convention on
the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination,
the United Nations Convention on the Rights
of the Child, and the International Convention
on the Elimination of Discrimination Against
Women, among others.
The UDHR has also served as a guide to dozens
of former colonies which, upon gaining their
independence, used the document to help form
their own constitutions. It is also often
referred to at the International Court of
Justice and the International Criminal Court.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
has changed the world. Today, the standard
basis for legitimacy of the nation-state is
universal human rights. If you don’t abide
by human rights, you’re not one of the good
guys and other countries will be suspicious
of you. When the people of the world see evidence
of your abuses in the news, they will question
whether or not they want to send you foreign
aid, or buy your products, or visit your country.
Such consequences can be disastrous for dictators.
Now, of course, we shouldn’t be naïve about
what the world’s leaders were getting up
to at the time they signed the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights. While the democracies pushed
for human rights standards after the war,
the United Kingdom still ruled millions of
people around the world against their will
as part of their empire, and the US was still
practicing the apartheid of Jim Crow in the
former confederate states, not to mention
what Joseph Stalin was getting up to…
So you may well argue: “Words on paper!
All these declarations and treaties are useless.
The governments of the world won’t actually
follow through on the treaties. Look at Yugoslavia,
look at Rwanda!”
It’s true that hypocrisy is always part
of human rights and politics. Governments
tend to be Machiavellian, utilitarian. But
the words on paper mean something to the people
of the world. Because the governments have
ratified the human rights treaties, it exposes
their hypocrisy when they then deny human
rights (for an example, read about the Helsinki
Effect, linked in the description box.) It
means that, if your government doesn’t respect
rights, then you don’t need to respect the
government. The government is there to protect
the rights of the people. If the government
becomes the abuser, you have the right to
fight back. Think about the power and influence
of the United States Declaration of Independence,
in the US and around the world, where it inspired
many other revolutions. Words on paper have
great power, IF people take them to heart.
You’d be right to think of human rights
as a battlefield, but it’s one that we can’t
surrender. Our chances of living a peaceful
and happy life depend on them.
So that’s a basic answer to the question,
“What Are Human Rights?” If you’d like
to investigate further, I’ll provide links
to all the documents I mentioned in this video
in the description box, along with a few suggestions
for further reading on the topic.
I’d like to leave you with a thought experiment
to demonstrate the importance of human rights.
Philosopher John Rawls proposed something
called the “Veil of Ignorance” to determine
what a just society really means.
It goes like this. You have permission to
create human society, all of it, from scratch.
You can design its economics, laws, and customs
in any way you want. There’s just one caveat:
when you go to place yourself in that world,
you have no idea who you will be. You could
be any gender, any race, any religion, any
nationality. Your placement will be completely
random. Now, go ahead and create that society.
I’ll bet you create a society which respects
universal human rights so that, no matter
who you are, you are assured a safe and happy
life, free from abuse. That’s the point
of universal human rights. See you next time.
