Human Rights Essay
What lessons can be learned from history about how to deal with human rights violations? Your answer should make reference to at least 3 historical case studies.
To fully understand what the question is asking we must first define what is meant by ‘Human Rights’ and what constitutes a violation of these rights. Once this essay has defined what a human rights violation is it shall then go on to describe periods in history where there has been a clear breach of a peoples human rights and describe what society has learned from these events.
Peter Baehr, An author and professor of Human Rights from the Netherlands defines human rights as “internationally agreed values, standards or rules regulating the conduct of states towards their own citizens and towards non-citizens…Human rights tell states what they may not do, but also what they are supposed to do.”(Baehr, 1999. P1). Human rights as we know them came about at the end of World War two as a consequence of the reign of the National Socialists in Germany who killed more than six million Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and political opponents. It was the greatest scale of fundamental human rights violations in modern times. The acts committed in this period of time helped permanently etch into the minds of the world the true meaning of what ‘genocide’ and ‘crimes against humanity’ meant. (Freeman, M. 2002). The UN then created a universal document to state what human rights where; some of the most important are as follows;
“The right to life, liberty and security of person (article 3), The prohibition of slavery (article 4), The prohibition of torture (article 5), The prohibition of arbitrary arrest, detention or exile (article 9), The right to a fair trial (article 10), The right to freedom of movement (article 13), The right to property (article 17), The right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion (article 18), The right to freedom of opinion and expression (article 19), The right to freedom of assembly and
To fully understand what the question is asking we must first define what is meant by ‘Human Rights’ and what constitutes a violation of these rights. Once this essay has defined what a human rights violation is it shall then go on to describe periods in history where there has been a clear breach of a peoples human rights and describe what society has learned from these events.
Peter Baehr, An author and professor of Human Rights from the Netherlands defines human rights as “internationally agreed values, standards or rules regulating the conduct of states towards their own citizens and towards non-citizens…Human rights tell states what they may not do, but also what they are supposed to do.”(Baehr, 1999. P1). Human rights as we know them came about at the end of World War two as a consequence of the reign of the National Socialists in Germany who killed more than six million Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and political opponents. It was the greatest scale of fundamental human rights violations in modern times. The acts committed in this period of time helped permanently etch into the minds of the world the true meaning of what ‘genocide’ and ‘crimes against humanity’ meant. (Freeman, M. 2002). The UN then created a universal document to state what human rights where; some of the most important are as follows;
“The right to life, liberty and security of person (article 3), The prohibition of slavery (article 4), The prohibition of torture (article 5), The prohibition of arbitrary arrest, detention or exile (article 9), The right to a fair trial (article 10), The right to freedom of movement (article 13), The right to property (article 17), The right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion (article 18), The right to freedom of opinion and expression (article 19), The right to freedom of assembly and