Human Right #3: Everyone has the right to life and to live in freedom and safety.

Human rights have become the ethical, social and political reference of our time. Their proclamation has meant new attitudes and a new mentality towards social, political and cultural issues. They are major principles and ethical values which ethically guide our behaviour from a social point of view. As we know, in a human being we cannot separate the social and individual aspects, so we could say that they are like an ethical lighthouse for our behaviour. They are not just ethical references for political constitutions and legislations in different countries; they also help and promote people's social and political activities. Human rights are therefore the backbone of active citizenship.

Nevertheless, the use of human rights is often questioned due to their "lack of credibility". It seems that writing human rights into laws and constitutions is enough, but it isn't. It is not enough that human rights are approved in laws; they have to be a part of the social and political life of our countries, because if that does not happen they lose credibility and trust. What does it matter if they are written but not applied? What is the point if they are protected only by words and not actions? Apart from a crisis of credibility, there is also another problem: that they are just used for protesting and as a way to solve conflicts. But we forget that they are also used as a way of building a responsible and active citizenship, they can help create shared projects in which rights are not just used for protest, but also as a means of imagining a shared life together.

Human rights are an ideal that can encourage the realisation of social life. They are often great principles, norms or values that are rendered useless, but we also have to look at the positive side: they teach us what we can achieve by changing laws and  rules. They let us withdraw from our conventionality and pull away from the idea that laws are fine as they are. Human rights are a motor of change, not only so that we can protect them in words, but also as a means of inventing laws that will make them real.

When human rights form part of a constitution - the legal project of countries and regions -, they are the legal form that guarantees the bond of citizenship. By recognising ourselves in human rights, we recognise ourselves as sharing a common dignity upon which we have the right to insist. In addition, and this is important, this  dignity can belong to everyone, not just a few. Thanks to human rights we can aspire to an international and global citizenship But, as mentioned previously, they must be human rights that help, guide and plan, thus becoming the duty and reponsibility of all states and every one of us. The human rights, human duties and human responsibilities of every one of us can become the heart of a common mission.

Human Rights Video: No Slavery

Human Rights Video: No Torture

Human Rights Video: Equal Before the Law

Human Rights Video: Protected by Law

Human Rights Video: No Unfair Detainment

"We the People"

"The Man Who Wouldn`t Be King"

George Washington is one of the Greatest American Generals, Presidents and Heroes Ever. George Washington inspired his men, his fellow americans and nations domestic and foreign. To fight in war for liberty, opposing the largest army and navy in the world at the time, keeping moral among his troops, facing betrayel of his peers, finally defeating the british, resigned his commision when he could've been king and then to be nominated and become the first President of a new country is beyond epic.

Human Right #1: We are all born free and equal.

 Human rights

What are they?
Human rights are a way of acknowledging and demanding the dignity of all human beings.
Human rights are not just a series of values we have more or less agreed upon. They bear a lot of responsibility because each right creates obligation and duty. If we recognise and accept the "right to work" as a right this means that we need to organise society so that we create conditions that guarantee work for everyone. This, of course, bears a great responsibility for all, every single person and mankind in general. That is why we must speak of rights, duties and responsibilities.

Human rights are not a "fairytale" we should tell from time to time and neither are they
a mere imposition from the Western world. They are a grand ethical project that can bring
together citizens at all levels.

When were they founded?

World War II (1939-1945) saw some of the greatest acts of cruelty in the history of mankind. After the war, states considered that it was necessary to have a series of legal and
institutional rules so that such a crimes could not happen again. With that purpose, the
Declaration of Human Rights was written in 1948, which was in part based on the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen from the French Revolution in 1789. The different countries that would later form the United Nations reached a consensus and the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" was created.

On what are they based?

To base something on something else means to explain it, to give reasons for why it
was done that way and not another. In this case the question is: why these rights and not other ones? We agree and reach a consensus because these values are desirable and defensible.

It is not that they appear to be good because we agree, because agreeing on something does not necessarily guarantee its goodness.

In the Declaration of Human Rights we can find three ways of justifying and explaining
these rights:

1. Individualist justification (anti-state); human rights are individual and natural, prior
to the State and therefore claimed by individuals and groups in the face of the State;
States must acknowledge these rights.

2. Statal justification (contractual); rights are the result of a contract or agreement
between the governors and governed, rights depend on the authority of the State.

3. Statal justification (historical); rights appear with the different forms of State of the
modern era. There are no rights prior to the State. The State, in its various forms,
is the one that proclaims them.

Maybe human rights can be considered as invariably human and therefore have to be
protected, guaranteed and promoted by States.


ACTIVITIES:1. Write a short history of the devising of human rights. Pay attention to these three dates:
1776, 1789, 1948.

2. What is the difference between saying something is good and therefore we agree, and
saying that as we agree therefore it is good?

3. What would you base human rights on? How would you justify them? Why have they to be obeyed?

Democratic citizenship

The exercising of our citizenship is always done in a historical context that is always
evolving and changing. Therefore it is important to approach the exercising of citizenship  historical point of view. That means, knowing that our pretentions to citizenship are not the first and will not be the last.

In recent decades, moral philosophy and politics have not approached citizenship only
in legal terms, as if the practise of the citizenship was only reduced to the relation between the people and the legal systems or legislation itself. Nowadays, as well as speaking of legal
citizenship, we use terms such as social, cultural, economic and even intercultural citizenship.

In order to refer to all of these things as part of peoples' democratic life we shall speak of
"democratic citizenship".

In this unit we will look at how the concept of citizenship has changed, and to what
extent it has been related, from the very beginning, to political organisation. Sometimes we
refer to political organisation in terms of government (polis, republic) and this is the reason why it is important to understand the relationship between citizenship and types of states. Nowadays we only speak of true citizenship when there is a state ruled by laws, values and human rights.

We also describe political organisations as "democracy", describing not only the forms of
government, but also a form of participating in public matters, of identifying with a political
community and promoting a worthwhile existence for all human beings.

One of the most important institutions in the development of democratic citizenship is
the Public Administration. It is a part of an executive power, not only in a national sense, but also in the context of an autonomous region and in a local sense. Nowadays, democratic citizenship is not only practised on a national level. On the one hand it is open to a cosmopolitan citizenship, where the people in a country consider themselves as citizens of the world; for example the way people in Spain are citizens of the European Union. On the other hand, democratic citizenship is open to an environment of proximity in which local and autonomous powers participate. In Spain, the city halls and autonomous regions are institutions that administer increasingly more public services every day. 

This idea of service has developed historically as the ideas of separation of powers and social justice have become part of citizens'democratic convictions.

Turtle's Flute

Turtle was a gifted flutist. One day a greedy man shuts her in a cage. Find out how Turtle escapes in this Brazilian folktale.