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?