International Human Rights: Prescription and Enforcement
July 19th, 2009 at 02:55am Under Civil Rights Law
INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS: PRESCRIPTION AND ENFORCEMENT
INTRODUCTION
Rights that belong to an individual as a consequence of being human. They refer to a wide continuum of values that are universal in character and in some sense equally claimed for all human beings. It is a common observation that human beings everywhere demand the realisation of diverse values to ensure their individual and collective well-being. It also is a common observation that these demands are often painfully frustrated by social as well as natural forces, resulting in exploitation, oppression, persecution, and other forms of deprivation. Deeply rooted in these twin observations are the beginnings of what today are called “human rights” and the legal processes, national and international, associated with them.
BEFORE WORLD WAR II
Ever since ancient times, but especially since the emergence of the modern state system, the Age of Discovery, and the accompanying spread of industrialization and European culture throughout the world, there has developed, for economic and other reasons, a unique set of customs and conventions relative to the humane treatment of foreigners. This evolving International Law of State Responsibility for Injuries to Aliens, as these customs and conventions came to be called, may be understood to represent the beginning of active concern for human rights on the international plane.
HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE UNITED NATIONS
The charter of the United Nations (1945) begins by reaffirming a “faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small.” It states that the purposes of the United Nations are, among other things, “to develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self determination of people and to achieve international cooperation in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion.”
In addition, the commission, together with other UN organs such as the International Labour Organization (ILO), the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and the UN Commission on the status of women, drafts human rights standards and has prepared a number of international human rights instruments. Among the most important are the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (together with its Optional Protocol; 1976) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1976). Collectively known as the International Bill of Rights, these three instruments serve as touchstones for interpreting the human rights provisions of the UN Charter
Unlike the League of Nations, the United Nations incorporated the principle of respect for human rights into its Charter: Article 1, paragraph 3, affirms that “promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion” is one of the basic purposes of the organization. According to the charter, the General Assembly is to initiate studies and make recommendations and ECOSOC is to set up commissions to fulfil this purpose. Consequently, the commission on Human Rights, chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, was created in 1946 to develop conventions on a wide range of issues, including an international bill of rights, civil liberties, the status of women (for which there is a separate commission), freedom of information, the protection of minorities, the prevention of discrimination on the grounds of race, sex, language or religion and any other human rights concerns.
CONCLUSION
Whatever the current attitudes and policies of governments, the reality of popular demands for human rights, including both greater economic justice and greater political freedom, is beyond debate. A deepening and widening concern for the promotion and protection of human rights, hastened by the self-determinist impulse of a post-colonial era, is now unmistakably woven into the fabric of contemporary world affairs. Substantially responsible for this progressive development has been, of course, the work of the United Nations, its allied agencies, and such regional organization. The implementation of international human rights law depends for the most part on the voluntary consent of nations and commitment to implement it in domestic laws for the protection as well as for the respect of human rights of the citizens of the nation.