Chapter 6: Human Rights §

(F) Day of the week: Monday Class: IS201 Created Time: December 30, 2019 3:57 PM Database: Class Notes Database Date: December 30, 2019 3:57 PM Days Till Date: Passed Last Edited Time: June 9, 2021 10:42 AM Type: Lecture

What is Human Rights? §

1. How do you define human rights?

   Ability for citizen to act in anyway they want under the law without discriminations

2. What are fundamental rights?

   Necessary rights for a human to survive and live

   rights to life

   rights to food

   rights to water

   rights from

The Four Freedoms (Franklin Roosevelt) §

1. Freedom of speech
   • Express of ideas
   • Right to constructive criticism and demonstration (non-violently)
2. Freedom of worship
   • worship any religion you want
   • practice religions
3. Freedom from want
   • Access to to necessities to live
4. Freedom from fear
   • No fear from economic, government, warfare. to do anything

Three Generations of Human Rights §

1st Generation of Rights (Negative Rights) §

right to not be subjected to something by another person

• Civil Rights: protect against abuse of power (live)
• Political Rights: Participate in control of state power (vote, speech, association)

2nd Generation of Rights (Positive Rights) §

• Economic rights: rights to work
• Social rights: education
• Cultural rights

3rd Generation of Rights (Collective Rights) §

Minority rights:

• self-determination
• safe environment
• peace

Principles of human rights §

• Universality: anyone have human rights
• No one can take your rights, only in crisis situation
• Indivisibility: equal status between positive and negative rights for all people
• Interdependence: rights rely on each other to be effective, fail of one could fail others

The International Bills of Rights §

Universal Declaration of Human Rights §

A non-binding declaration

by Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt

• Adopted by UNGA in Paris (10th, 1948)

30 articles (translated to 500+ languages)

ratify both positive and negative rights

International Convent on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (1976) §

binding Covenant dealing with positive rights

• Adopted by UNGA (1966) (in force 1976)

  Cambodia ratifies in 1992

170 parties

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1976) §

binding Covenant dealing with negative rights

• Adopted by UNGA (1966) (in force 1976)

  Cambodia ratifies in 1992

173 parties

State’s Obligations to Human Rights §

• Respect: to not violate people’s rights

• Protect: stop others from interfering or degrading citizens’ rights

• Fulfil: build legislations, institutions to enable their human rights

  Educate people of their rights

• Effective Remedy: compensation for violations of human rights

The United Nations and Human Rights §

UN Charter and Human Rights §

to build awareness for Human Rights issues

• Chapter 1, Article 1:

  International cooperation in promoting respect of human fundamental rights without discrimination

• Article 55:

  UN’s responsibility to promote universal respect for human fundamental rights.

• Article 56:

  Obligation of member states to cooperate with other states and organizations to protect and promote human rights

Charter-based Bodies

• UN’s resolution to establish body

• Instruments

  European Convention for Protection of Human Rights

  American Convention on Human Rights and San Jose Pact on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

Treaty-Based Body

• Treaties that negotiated to establish a body to facilitate the treaty

• Mechanism

  Ex: ICCPR: reports to monitor progress or issues of the treaty

  SEAN Intergovernmental Commission on HR

Universalism vs Cultural Relativism §

Universalism: Human rights should be applied to all regard of cultural differences

more of Western Value, Individual rights

Cultural relativism: all cultures are different. Human rights should be relative to culture

when judging another, use their own culture as the context

more of Asian’s Values, collective rights

Western Values vs Asian Values §

Asian Values: attain rights for citizen to survive and get order, rather than advocate individual rights which causes chaos.