Write 200-250 words on the following topic. Be sure to cite the readings and lectures. Topic: Select two international organizations and explain what role they play in promoting, monitoring, investig

A brief history of human rights
The history of human rights is actually a combination of various histories.
● Human rights in philosophy: the ideas on human dignity and the rights that belong to everyone
everywhere.
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● Human rights in law: the norms and sanctions that over the centuries have been laid down in
(international) law, treaties and declarations.
● Human rights in politics and campaigning: the practice of denouncing abuses of governments and
calling for solidarity and action for the victims.
Are human rights as old as human civilization?
Some human rights ideas are as old as civilization. From the earliest times, for example byb King
Hammurabi of Babylon around 1750 BC, laws have been written (or cut in stone) that include
principles of justice, fairness and protection. Such laws prescribed that:
● people must be protected by law;
● a ruler is restricted by law and cannot arbitrarily deal with his subjects;
● women, children, foreigners and other groups deserve special protection;
● even slaves should not be mistreated;
● courts must be free from corruption and arbitrariness.
These ancient laws however cannot be equated to ‘human rights’. They were not universal: they were
valid for a certain state or society, not for humanity as a whole. They maintained gross inequality:
there was no question that a monarch, a citizen and a slave would have the same rights. And much of
what we now label human rights is not mentioned in those old laws, such as the right to freedom of
opinion or the prohibition of torture.
A timeline
In the history of human rights, there is no linear sequence of developments. Yet a series of phases
can be distinguished. ‘Phase’ here means that certain ideas and practices had a breakthrough or
blossoming in a particular historical time. Not that they were always completely new at the time – see
for example the reemergence of people’s representation in Medieval times.
Ancient history: The inherent dignity of human beings. Ideas about the inherent dignity of man
originated thousands of years ago, in law and religion. It came with notions such as that one
should not use arbitrary violence, lie, steal or break contracts. Already before 200 BC. most of the
world’s major belief systems had been founded: the Jewish faith (later developed into
Christianity), Confucianism and Daoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, and the
humanistic philosophy of Athens.
1.
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Five protagonists of individual freedom
3th century BC: Equality. The idea that equality of rights applies to all people is found in the
Greek philosophy of the Stoics. They considered man and woman to be equal. They argued for
respect for women and children, for compassion and tolerance towards the other, for inclusion of
‘barbarians’ into the human community. Some stoics considered slaves on equal footing as well.
2.
13th century: People’s representation. The practice that government owes a responsibility to
representatives of the people already existed in Greek city states such as Athens, but thereafter
disappeared for many centuries. From the 12th century, small parliaments were established in
Scotland, Poland, the kingdom of León and Paris. Most conspicuous was the English Magna Carta
of 1215, a contract between the monarch and the (well-to-do) citizens who formed a
‘parlamentium’ (‘talkhouse’).
3.
18th century: The right to individual freedom. Some protagonists are identified in the next
paragraph. This was the era in which the American Declaration of Independence (1776) and the
French Declaration of Human Rights and Citizen (1789) were adopted.
4.
19th century: Socio-economic rights and abolition of slavery. Rights to protection in the field of
work and unemployment arose in the 19th century under pressure from the trade union
movement. A British national trade union was founded in 1830. Under pressure from within and
outside of parliament, the British Empire abolished the slave trade in 1807 and slavery in 1833.
Only decades later was slavery abolished in countries such as Russia (1861), the Netherlands
(1863) and the United States (1865).
5.
Early 20th century: Equal rights for women and men. Women’s suffrage was introduced in New
Zealand (1893), later in countries including The Netherlands and Russia (1917), the United
States (1920) and the United Kingdom (1928).
6.
Since 1948: Universal standards. From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) has
emerged an ongoing series of international human rights conventions, declarations and monitoring
institutions.
7.
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Many philosophers, activists, politicians and others have contributed to the development of human
rights. Major breakthroughs occurred in the 18th century, during the Enlightenment. These are five
individuals whose acts and writings had great influence also far beyond the borders of their native
countries.
Voltaire (France, 1694-1778) advocated the right to choose a religion or not. From 1726 he lived
alternately in exile and under a false name in France. Only at the end of his life he received great
honors in France. His writings shaped the ideas of the Enlightenment, his actions on behalf of
victims of religious persecution made him an example of free-minded campaigning against
injustice and intolerance. The statement attributed to him, ‘I detest your ideas but am willing to
die for your right to propagate them’, is actually from a biographer but accurately reflects his life
and work.
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John Locke (England, 1632-1704) got many of his ideas on rights and politics during his years of
exile in the Netherlands (1683-1688). In his Two Treatises of Government (1690), he assumed a
‘natural state’ in which all people are born free and equal, and not subject to any authority. Civil
society replaces that natural state. The state so becomes the result of a social contract, in which
people voluntarily commit themselves to the decisions of the majority. In that society, the king
has no divine right and everyone has inalienable rights to life, freedom, property and health.
•
Cesare Beccaria (Italy, 1735-1794) published On crime and punishment in 1764. The legal
system must contribute to the greatest happiness of the greatest number, it should never be
dependent on the arbitrary power of kings and nobility. Punishments must be humane, capital
punishment and torture must be abolished. His logically constructed system makes Beccaria a
founder of the rule of law.
•
Thomas Paine (1737-1809) was born in England and emigrated to America in 1774. There he
published Common Sense, a call for American independence that sold a hundred thousand copies
within a year. He witnessed the revolution in France, escaped the guillotine and on return to
England published The Rights of Man (1791). Its principles are first, that all people are born free
and have equal rights. Second, that politics must not interfere with ‘natural’ rights of people such
as freedom, property, security and the right to resist oppression. And third, that state power
comes from the people.
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Processes
What processes have driven the historical development of human rights? One factor behind the
development of human rights is the pursuit of freedom in the sense of emancipation for such groups
as citizens, workers, women and slaves. There is also the pursuit of legalization, as in international
laws against atrocities such as slavery, torture and imprisonment. In human rights the principle of
objectivity is crucial, in that reporting should be factual and honest. The Roman historian Tacitus
(1st century) already wrote that historical descriptions should be ‘sine ira et studio’ (without
resentment or bias). Humaneness is a driving force behind the efforts to limit both physical and
mental cruelty. Sentimentality appeals to compassion for others as human beings who have feelings
just like you: slaves, the poor, the insane, criminals, women and children. Around 1750 a fiction
literature arose in Europe in which empathy plays an important role for the less fortunate. In his
Nobel Prize speech, Barack Obama summarized the process as ‘the continuous expansion of moral
imagination’. The idea of universality emphasizes the validity of humanity, norms and moral
judgments wherever and whenever. We find it already in Greek Stoa philosophy. Finally, there is the
appeal to activism. Karl Marx wrote in 1845: ‘Philosophers have only interpreted the world. The point
is to change it.’ In human rights, the path to that change is non-partisan and non-violent.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Only in 1948 did a true worldwide statement come to pass: the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights (UDHR). In essence, the text is the elaboration of an idea that has existed since time
immemorial: that shared fundamental rights are needed because society cannot exist without them. A
society that allows arbitrariness in the form of deception, or breach of contract, or random violence,
or indiscriminate killings is a danger to itself.
Mary Wollstonecraft (England, 1759-1797), who was friends with Paine, wrote the first book on
how women should be fully equal to men: in their rights, their opportunities of education, their
representation in politics. In her Vindication of the Rights of Women (1791), she says: ‘Women, I
acknowledge, have other duties to fulfill; but the principles to which they must be subject, so I
will stubbornly maintain, must be the same.’ And: ‘I really think women should be represented [in
politics]’. After her premature death, the public showed more interest in her love life than in her
writings. It took another hundred years for her ideas to be widely taken seriously.
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references to a belief or tradition were left out in the final text. People with very different professional
backgrounds and with different beliefs and ideologies were involved in the shaping of the declaration.
That the final text includes a wide range of human rights including socio-economic rights, is due in
particular to the different backgrounds of Western participants in de preparatory debates. When it
came into existence, not all countries agreed with the UDHR (that is, eight countries abstained from
the final vote). Yet decisions not to amend the Universal Declaration were taken by the UN member
states in 1968 (Tehran) and 1993 (Vienna) without a vote against. That means that all UN member
states, and not only those who agreed in 1948, have now accepted the UDHR (as does Taiwan,
kicked out of the UN in 1971). Since 1948, the United Nations have adopted some 300 treaties and
declarations in the field of human rights. References to the Universal Declaration are found in the
constitutions of at least ninety countries.
Aren’t human rights actually of a recent date?
In his book The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (2010), American historian Samuel Moyn
argues that only around 1968 did human rights become a concept that united humanity in its
struggle for justice. In Eastern and Western Europe, as well as in the United States and Latin
America, human rights crystallized within a few years as the key word in social activism, the rhetoric
of international politics and the actions of the United Nations. That was in the space left by the
demise of earlier political utopias, such as communism and nationalism. Moyn describes how modern
human rights ideology took flight with Amnesty International, the organization that was founded in
1961 and grew into a genuine transnational movement in the 1970s. That organization rendered
human rights a broadly shared commitment that is not government dependent. Amnesty was awarded
the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977. That same year, U.S. President Carter made human rights the
cornerstone of his foreign policy.
The human rights defenders of Amnesty and other organizations refer to historical sources for their
work, in particular the Enlightenment. Moyn does not feel that such reference is valid: ‘During the
Enlightenment, people did not light candles to get prisoners free. They rather put the king’s neck
under the guillotine.’ So human rights have been with us for only a few decades? In the sense of a
concept that is recognized worldwide: yes. But as this article argues, ideas and practices from long
ago have shaped what we now call human rights.