The right to privacy

The right to privacy is a human right and an element of various legal traditions which may restrain both government and private party action that threatens the privacy of individuals.^[1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_privacy


Author Dustin Milligan talks about his book "The Case of the Missing Montreal Bagel" which teaches kids about the right to privacy.

DI, NO A LA VIOLENCIA!!

Strange Days on Planet Earth

Around the globe, scientists are racing to solve a series of mysteries. Unsettling transformations are sweeping across the planet, and clue by clue, investigators around the world are assembling a new picture of Earth, discovering ways that seemingly disparate events are connected. Crumbling houses in New Orleans are linked to voracious creatures from southern China. Vanishing forests in Yellowstone are linked to the disappearance of wolves. An asthma epidemic in the Caribbean is linked to dust storms in Africa. Scientists suspect we have entered a time of global change swifter than any human being has ever witnessed. Where are we headed? What can we do to alter this course of events? National Geographic's Strange Days on Planet Earth, premiering in Spring 2005 on PBS, explores these questions. Drawing upon research being generated by a new discipline, Earth System Science (ESS), the series aims to create an innovative type of environmental awareness. By revealing a cause and effect relationship between what we as humans do to the Earth and what that in turn does to our environment and ecosystems, the series creates a new sense of environmental urgency. Award-winning actor, writer and director Edward Norton (Primal Fear, American History X, Italian Job) hosts the series. A dedicated environmental activist, Norton has a special interest in providing solar energy to low income families. Each of the four one-hour episodes is constructed as a high-tech detective story, with the fate of the planet at stake.

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

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?

On December 10, 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

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

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

What are human rights?

Human Rights: The Big Picture

Government of Liberia Bureau of Immigration officials register asylum-seekers from Côte d’Ivoire in the town of Loguatuo, in Nimba County. © UNICEF/NYHQ2010-2753/Bill Diggs

What are human rights? 

Human rights are fundamental rights and freedoms to which every human being is entitled. These rights include individual, political, civil, spiritual, social, economic and cultural rights that help us to develop to our fullest potential.

Human rights are universal – they apply to all people, everywhere. You do not have human rights because of your citizenship, race, sex, language, or religion, but because you are a human being. They are also indivisible – no rights are more important than others. You cannot be granted only some rights, while others are denied.

How did rights come about? 

The concept of human rights has been around for a long time, and we can trace ideas about universal human rights back to ancient cultures, the world’s major religions, and many philosophers. But it was not until 1948 and the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that we got an internationally recognized definition of these rights.

In 1945, after the Second World War, world leaders gathered in San Francisco with the goal of creating a global organization that would work for peace and promote cooperation between countries. There, the United Nations was founded with a Charter (a guiding document) that committed all member states to promote "universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion."

However, many people felt that a better definition of human rights was needed – something that would make it clear for to governments, the United Nations and all people what having human rights actually are. In 1946, the United Nations established a committee to look into this, and after two years of drafting and negotiating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted.

What rights do people have? 

The Declaration contains a preamble and 30 articles that spell out the rights of all people. They cover: 

• Individual rights – you have the right to life and liberty, to be free from slavery and torture, and equality before the law. 
• Civil and political rights – you have the right to a nationality, to freedom of movement, to form a family and to own property. 
• Spiritual and public rights – you have the right to freedom of thought and religion, to freedom of opinion and expression, and to access public services. 
• Economic, social and cultural rights – you have to the right to an adequate standard of living, to get an education, to work and to participate in cultural activities. 

The Declaration in itself is not a legally binding document, but it has become what is known as “customary international law”. That is, when enough states begin to behave as though something is law, it becomes law "by use." The Declaration is also the foundation for a number of human rights treaties that have been adopted since 1948, for example the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

You can read more about the Declaration and other human rights treaties on the website of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights at: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/

http://www.voicesofyouth.org/sections/human-rights/pages/human-rights-the-big-picture