Human Rights
Following World War II and the Holocaust where millions of Jews, homosexuals, communists and Slavs were exterminated by Hitler’s Nazi regime, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted and proclaimed on December 10th 1948 to prevent a another holocaust and to achieve a universal standard of human rights. Over the last sixty years various regional and international treaties and conventions have been adopted to protect and advance human rights towards universality. Furthermore, it equally important to mention that there has been a western dominated movement to universalise human rights. Nevertheless, Universal Human remains a contentious issue of debate among intellectual and policy circles. The purpose of this essay is to outline a few of the prominent issues and problems that are associated with the concept of Universal human rights.
“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights” (UDHR. 1948. P.2) Human rights in its contemporary perception is a fairly recent concept. In fact the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which is often cited as the corner stone of human rights only came into force following World War II and the most “systematic and blatant” violation of human rights in record history that was the Holocaust (http://humanities.sas.upenn.edu/99-00/hn-hr/holocaust.htm). However, before we go any further, it is important that we establish a definition of human rights. Gibney (2008, p.3) provides a simple yet effective definition of the concept of human rights as “a core set of rights that human beings possess by simple virtue of their humanity”. We now return to the core issue at hand that is the Universality of human rights. Over the last 60 years human rights has taken a major step towards universality, aided by the numerous regional and international treaties and conventions such as The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural rights, The European
“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights” (UDHR. 1948. P.2) Human rights in its contemporary perception is a fairly recent concept. In fact the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which is often cited as the corner stone of human rights only came into force following World War II and the most “systematic and blatant” violation of human rights in record history that was the Holocaust (http://humanities.sas.upenn.edu/99-00/hn-hr/holocaust.htm). However, before we go any further, it is important that we establish a definition of human rights. Gibney (2008, p.3) provides a simple yet effective definition of the concept of human rights as “a core set of rights that human beings possess by simple virtue of their humanity”. We now return to the core issue at hand that is the Universality of human rights. Over the last 60 years human rights has taken a major step towards universality, aided by the numerous regional and international treaties and conventions such as The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural rights, The European