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human rights |
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The modern term for what political theorists used to called ‘natural rights’, that is, rights alleged to belong ‘naturally’ to all human beings irrespective of what positive law has to say on the matter. On this view, human rights should be replicated in legal rights, though often they are not. Nevertheless, stimulated by the reaction to the Holocaust during the Second World War, international law has come to embody a substantial body of human rights treaty law (plus machinery for implementation) via both the United Nations system and regional bodies such as the European Union, the Organization of American States and the Organization of African Unity (now replaced by the African Union). It is also held by international human rights lawyers that in addition to treaty instruments such as the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1950), the Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (both adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1966, and both entering into force ten years later), certain human rights are now enshrined in customary international law in consequence of state practice. Notable among these are the prohibitions on genocide, slavery and torture and the principle of non-discrimination. Long a controversial question within Western political theory and jurisprudence, human rights is now a controversial question in interstate relations. It presents a particularly testing problem for diplomats from states concerned about human rights who are resident in those which are not, or which are concerned but subscribe either to a different list of human rights or to the sophistry that ‘collective human rights’ (as determined by the government) take precedence over ‘individual human rights’. See also domestic jurisdiction; intervention; United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. |
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