Principles of Human Rights

 

PRINCIPLES OF HUMAN RIGHTS

1.       Universality

·         Everyone is born with and possesses the same rights, regardless of where they live, their gender or race, or their religious, cultural or ethnic background.

·         It applies to all the people/objects in a particular group, without any exception

·         rights can be enforced without a national border

2.       Inalienability

·         human rights cannot be taken away from a person, it is absolute and cannot be diminished

·         These rights are not transferable or nullified

·         XPN: Rights may be alienated or diminished but must be done according to due process

·         Ex.: the right to liberty may be restricted if a person is found guilty of a crime by a court of law

3.       Imprescriptibility

·         Human rights are imprescriptible because they cannot be lost even by a long passage of time.

·         Man does not lose his rights even if he fails to use or assert them.

·         Included in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789, France), it was expressly mentioned that these imprescriptible rights are the right to liberty, property, safety and resistance against oppression.

·         Ex.: a man’s right to liberty is not lost even if he had been arbitrarily detained by the authorities. He does not lose such right even if he fails to claim it

4.       Inherent

·         Human rights are inherent as they are not granted by any person or authority, irrespective of their caste, creed, religion, sex, and nationality.

·         They do not need any event for their existence

·         human rights persist without the need of any written instrument or declaration for their existence

·         The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1994 defines human rights as “inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world”

·         Human rights when guaranteed by a constitution are known as “Fundamental Rights”, as a written constitution is a fundamental law of the state.

5.       Indivisible  

·         All human rights are indivisible

·         one set of rights cannot be enjoyed fully without the other

·         It is indivisible and interdependent because all rights – political, civil, social, cultural and economic – are equal in importance and none can be fully enjoyed without the other

·         Consequently, all human rights have equal status, and cannot be positioned in a hierarchical order. Denial of one right invariably impedes enjoyment of other rights.

6.       Interdependent

·         The fulfillment or exercise of one cannot be had without the realization of the others.

·         The indivisibility principle recognizes that if a government violates rights such as health, it necessarily affects people’s ability to exercise other rights such as the right to life.

·         Human rights are interdependent and interrelated. Each one contributes to the realization of a person’s human dignity through the satisfaction of his or her developmental, physical, psychological and spiritual needs. The fulfilment of one right often depends, wholly or in part, upon the fulfilment of others.

7.       Fundamental

·         Without human rights the life and dignity of man will be meaningless.

·         At first there were no human rights, if you were in the right crowd you were safe, if you weren’t then you weren’t. This is a common practice during the reign of ancient egyptian pharaohs, that when a person is a slave he will die as a slave.

·         According to the United Nations there are a total of 30 human rights, and these rights should apply to everyone, in order to give meaning to the life and dignity of a man.