Human Right Course of UoB

 University Of Burao

Faculty of Community Development

HUMAN RIGHTS COURSE

COURSE CONTENT OUTLINE

1. Introduction to Human Rights

Definition
Fundamental and basic rights
History of human rights

Types of Human rights

Human Right Systems
Types of human right violations
Principles of Human Rights

Human Responsibilities

Human rights and the Millennium Development Goals

2. Human Right Instruments

Islamic Doctrines: Quran and Sunnah
Somaliland Constitution
Xeerka Komishanka Qaranka Xuquuqda Aadamaha Somaliland (X39)
Other Somaliland National policies
International Bill of Human Rights
Somali Customary Law

3. Human Dignity and Basic Sphere Standards

Human dignity
Minimum sphere standards

4. Selected and specific group human rights

Right to an adequate standard of living/poverty reduction
Right to education
Right to health
Right to free and fair elections
Right of equal access to justice and a fair trial
Children’s rights
Women’s rights
Rights of persons with disabilities
Rights of minorities and indigenous peoples

5. Protection and Human Right Monitoring

Define advocacy
Types of Advocacy
Advocacy Strategies
monitoring human rights
Human right monitoring tools

Unit 1: INTRODUCTION TO HUMAN RIGHTS

1. What are Human Rights?

Human rights are rights inherent to all human beings, whatever our nationality, place of residence, sex, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, language, or any other status. We are all equally entitled to our human rights without discrimination. These rights are all interrelated, interdependent and indivisible.

Human rights define certain minimum standards and rules of procedure to which those in power should or must remain in their treatment of people. This primarily concerns state authorities such as governments, police or armed forces, but increasingly also those non-governmental power, such as international organisations, business enterprises and/or the private sector in general as well as religious communities or individuals that exert power over other people. On the one hand, human rights set limits to the power exercised by government and nongovernmental entities and on the other they oblige these within their purview to lay the foundation for enabling people to actually exercise and enjoy their rights through affirmative measures.

As with other legal norms human rights, are violated daily in various, in part, even systematic, ways, but a growing number of national and international courts and other oversight bodies monitor compliance with human rights.

People’s lives are affected in many different ways by moral and legal rights and duties, but only few rights are so fundamental that they have been embodied as human rights in national constitutions and international law treaties. Central concerns are human life and dignity. Human dignity is violated, for example, when people are tortured, enslaved, bought and sold like property, unlawfully imprisoned, murdered, degraded or discriminated against or otherwise treated in a way that degrades them to the status of mere objects of power wielded by others. Human dignity is also breached if people are forced to live in absolute poverty, that is, without a minimum of food, clothes and shelter and without effective access to education, work, medical care, justice and social security.

 2. Fundamental and Basic Rights

Fundamental rights are taken to mean such rights as the right to life and the inviolability of the person. Within the UN, extensive standards have been developed which, particularly since the 1960s, have been laid down in numerous conventions, declarations and resolutions, and which bring already recognised rights and matters of policy which affect human development into the sphere of human rights. Concern that a broad definition of human rights may lead to the notion of ‘violation of human rights’ losing some of its significance has generated a need to distinguish a separate group within the broad category of human rights. Increasingly, the terms ‘elementary’, ‘essential’, ‘core’ and ‘fundamental’ human rights are being used.

Another approach is to distinguish a number of ‘basic rights’, which should be given absolute priority in national and international policy. These include all the rights which concern people’s primary material and non-material needs. If these are not provided, no human being can lead a dignified existence. 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. They also include freedom of thought and conscience, as well as the right to suitable nutrition, clothing, shelter and medical care, and other essentials crucial to physical and mental health.

Mention should also be made of so-called ‘participation rights’; for instance, the right to participate in public life through elections (which is also a political right; see above) or to take part in cultural life. These participation rights are generally considered to belong to the category of fundamental rights, being essential preconditions for the protection of all kinds of basic human rights

 3. History of Human rights

Throughout history, concepts of ethical behaviour, justice and human dignity have been important in the development of human societies, as has the question of the relationship of the individual to the wider community. Such ideas can be traced back to the ancient civilisations of Babylon, China and India. They contributed to the laws of Greek and Roman society and are central to Buddhist, Christian, Confucian, Hindu, Islamic and Jewish teachings.

The origins of human rights may be found both in Greek philosophy and the various world religions. In the Age of Enlightenment (18th century) the concept of human rights emerged as an clear category. Man/woman came to be seen as an autonomous individual, gifted by nature with certain unchallengeable fundamental rights that could be claimed to against a government and should be safeguarded by it. Human rights were henceforth seen as elementary preconditions for an existence worthy of human dignity.

Before this period, several charters codifying rights and freedoms had been drawn up constituting important steps towards the idea of human rights. During the 6th Century, the Achaemenid Persian Empire of ancient Iran established unprecedented principles of human rights. Cyrus the Great (576 or 590 BC - 530 BC) issued the Cyrus cylinder which declared that citizens of the empire would be allowed to practice their religious beliefs freely and also abolished slavery. The next generation of human rights documents were the Magna Charta Libertatum of 1215, the Golden Bull of Hungary (1222), the Danish Erik Klipping’s Håndfaestning of 1282, the Joyeuse Entrée of 1356 in Brabant (Brussels), the Union of Utrecht of 1579 (The Netherlands) and the English Bill of Rights of 1689. These documents specified rights which could be claimed in the light of particular circumstances (e.g., threats to the freedom of religion), but they did not yet contain an all-embracing philosophical concept of individual liberty. Freedoms were often seen as rights conferred upon individuals or groups by virtue of their rank or status.

In the centuries after the Middle Ages, the concept of liberty became gradually separated from status and came to be seen not as a privilege but as a right of all human beings. Spanish theologists and jurists played a prominent role in this context.  

The Enlightenment was decisive in the development of human rights concepts. The ideas of Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), one of the fathers of modern international law, of Samuel von Pufendorf (1632-1694), and of John Locke (1632-1704) attracted much interest in Europe in the 18th century. Locke, for instance, developed a comprehensive concept of natural rights; his list of rights consisting of life, liberty and property. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) elaborated the concept under which the sovereign derived his powers and the citizens their rights from a social contract. The term human rights appeared for the first time in the French Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen (1789).

The people of the British colonies in North America took the human rights theories to heart. The American Declaration of Independence of 4 July 1776 was based on the assumption that all human beings are equal. It also referred to certain undeniable rights, such as the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These ideas were also reflected in the Bill of Rights which was broadcasted by the state of Virginia in the same year. The provisions of the Declaration of Independence were adopted by other American states, but they also found their way into the Bill of Rights of the American Constitution. The French Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen of 1789, as well as the French Constitution of 1793, reflected the emerging international theory of universal rights. Both the American and French Declarations were intended as systematic enumerations of these rights.

The classic rights of the 18th and 19th centuries related to the freedom of the individual. Even at that time, however, some people believed that citizens had a right to demand that the government endeavour to improve their living conditions. Taking into account the principle of equality as contained in the French Declaration of 1789, several constitutions drafted in Europe around 1800 contained classic rights, but also included articles which assigned responsibilities to the government in the fields of employment, welfare, public health, and education. Social rights of this kind were also expressly included in the Mexican Constitution of 1917, the Constitution of the Soviet Union of 1918 and the German Constitution of 1919.

In the 19th century, there were frequent inter-state disputes relating to the protection of the rights of minorities in Europe. These conflicts led to several humanitarian interventions and calls for international protection arrangements. One of the first such arrangements was the Treaty of Berlin of 1878, which accorded special legal status to some religious groups. It also served as a model for the Minorities System that was subsequently established within the League of Nations.

The need for international standards on human rights was first felt at the end of the 19th century, when the industrial countries began to introduce labour legislation. This legislation - which raised the cost of labour - had the effect of worsening their competitive position in relation to countries that had no labour laws. Economic necessity forced the states to consult each other. It was as a result of this that the first conventions were formulated in which states committed themselves vis-à-vis other states in regard to their own citizens. The Bern Convention of 1906 prohibiting night-shift work by women can be seen as the first multilateral convention meant to safeguard social rights. Many more labour conventions were later to be drawn up by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), founded in 1919 (see II§1.D). Remarkable as it may seem, therefore, while the classic human rights had been acknowledged long before social rights, the latter were first embodied in international regulations.

The atrocities of World War II put an end to the traditional view that states have full liberty to decide the treatment of their own citizens. The signing of the Charter of the United Nations (UN) on 26 June 1945 brought human rights within the sphere of international law. In particular, all UN members agreed to take measures to protect human rights. The Charter contains a number of articles specifically referring to human rights. 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). The Assembly adopted the Declaration in Paris on 10 December 1948. This day was later designated Human Rights Day.

During the 1950s and 1960s, more and more countries joined the UN. Upon joining they formally accepted the obligations contained in the UN Charter, and in doing so subscribed to the principles and ideals laid down in the UDHR. This commitment was made explicit in the announcement of Teheran (1968), which was adopted during the first World Conference on Human Rights, and repeated in the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, which was adopted during the second World Conference on Human Rights (1993).

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). These two Covenants together with the UDHR form the International Bill of Human Rights. At the same time, many supervisory mechanisms have been created, including those responsible for monitoring compliance with the two Covenants .

Human rights have also been receiving more and more attention at the regional level. In the European, the Inter-American and the African context, standards and supervisory mechanisms have been developed that have already had a significant impact on human rights compliance in the respective continents, and promise to contribute to compliance in the future. 

  4. Types of human rights

Human rights are typically divided into two categories: negative human rights (rights to be free from) and positive human rights (rights to), although other categorizations exist. Negative human rights, which follow mainly from the Anglo-American legal tradition, denote actions that a government should not take. These are codified in the United States Bill of Rights, the English Bill of Rights and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and include freedoms of speech, religion and assembly.

Positive human rights follow mainly from the Rousseauian Continental European legal tradition, denote rights that the state is obliged to protect and provide. Examples of such rights include: the rights to education, to a livelihood, to legal equality, and to alter forms of consciousness. Positive rights have been codified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in many 20th-century constitutions.

A categorization offered by Karel Vasak is the three generations of human rights: first-generation civil and political rights (right to life and political participation), second-generation economic, social and cultural rights (right to subsistence) and third-generation solidarity rights (right to peace, right to clean environment). Out of these generations, the third generation is the most debated and lacks both legal and political recognition.

Some theorists discredit these divisions by claiming that rights are interconnected. Arguably, for example, basic education is necessary for the right to political participation.

From this core of existential human rights stem various rights to freedom and equality, political rights, economic rights, social and cultural rights, collective rights, procedural rights and specific rights for disadvantaged and vulnerable groups.

1.     Civil rights and liberties: Right to privacy, freedom of movement, opinion, conscience, religious worship, of association and assembly; right to life, personal integrity

2.     Rights of equality: Equality before and under the law, protection against discrimination on grounds of sex, age, race, skin colour, religion, ethnic and social origin or genetic features, political opinion, disability or sexual orientation

3.     Political rights: Right to vote, equal access to authorities, freedom of political parties, right of petition

4.     Economic rights: Right to property, freedom to conduct business, freedom of establishment, freedom to provide services or trade-union freedom, right to work, right to free choice of employment and to just and favourable conditions of work

5.     Social and cultural rights: Right to an adequate standard of living, food, water, housing, clothing, health, education, social security

6.     Collective rights: Right of self-determination of peoples, right to development and a healthy environment

7.     Procedural rights: Right of equal access to justice and a fair trial, particularly in criminal proceedings

8.     Specific rights for disadvantaged groups: Children, the elderly, persons with disabilities, foreigners, refugees, minorities, indigenous peoples and other disadvantaged groups