UNIT 5: Rights, liberties and responsibilities

What are our rights and how are they protected?

Human rights are, on the one hand, concerned with the development of human beings, that is, how they are able to realise their full potential in their relationships with their fellow citizens. On the other hand, human rights define the responsibilities of the nation state towards individuals. Important human rights documents include the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Traditionally, human rights have been divided into categories – civil, political, social, economic and cultural. These categories are often associated with stages of development in human rights history, with civil and political rights regarded as “the first generation”, followed by social and economic rights as the “second generation” and cultural or development rights being viewed as a “third generation”. Notwithstanding the value of categorising rights, EDC/HRE seeks to promote an integrated understanding of human rights. It places equal emphasis on all categories: civil, political, social, economic and cultural. Thus, EDC/HRE seeks to balance a tendency in the past to view certain rights as more important than others. While human rights have been traditionally associated with the state and its relationship with the individual, EDC/HRE is increasingly placing emphasis on the rights of groups or peoples. Attempts to include these ideas in EDC/HRE are important for the development of the concept itself and for the development of local, national and regional communities.¹⁹

Human rights have three elements: the holder of the rights, the content of the right (what the holder is entitled to claim) and the duty-bearer (the person or institution that must respond to the claim). Duties are usually assessed at three levels:

• To respect is to refrain from directly or indirectly depriving individuals of their rights, including refraining from establishing an institutional system that would deprive people of their rights or giving incentives to others to deprive people of their rights.
• To protect is to enforce that respect; to prevent those who seek to deprive another of rights – whether they be government officials, international institutions, private corporations, community leaders, vigilantes or family members – from doing so.
• To fulfil is to aid the deprived – including those for whom one has a special responsibility, those who are deprived because there has been a failure of the duty to respect and the duty to protect their rights, and those who are victims of natural disasters. This aid includes legislative, budgetary, judicial and other action to provide the best possible policy environment for the protection of rights.²⁰

Liberties protected as civil rights include freedom of thought, opinion and expression, freedom of religious belief and practice, of movement within a state and the right to peaceful assembly and association. Other civil rights protect the privacy of the individual, family life and the right to equality before the law.²¹

Responsibilities are a logical consequence of human rights. In order to be protected, every right carries corresponding responsibilities, both for citizens and for the state. Every individual has a moral duty not to violate another person’s personal dignity. Governments, in signing up to international agreements and bound by their own constitutions, not have only a moral obligation, but also a legal duty.

UNIT 5: Rights, liberties and responsibilities

What are our rights and how are they protected?

19. From “A glossary of terms for education for democratic citizenship” KarenO’Shea, Council of Europe, DGIV/EDU/CIT (2003)
20. Based on “Duties sans Frontières. Human rights and global social justice”, International Council of Human Rights Policy.
21. Idem.