Topic two

Everyday Jesus cares for you.

Human Rights Numbers at a Glance

Someone is killed by armed conflict every 12 mins, 1/5 people globally report experiencing discrimination, 625 human rights advocates were killed or disappeared, 82 journalists were killed

Treaty bodies

Committees

Special Rapporteurs

• Individual who focuses on one human rights issue or case

• Not a safe job

UPR

• Every four years they do an investigation for human rights

• Indigenous issues and extractive issues is where Canada struggles

Prescriptive law

There is no will to enforce prescriptive law

Enforcement jurisdiction

Internationally recognized human rights

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, International Covenant on Social and Political Rights, and International Covenant on Economic, Civil, and Cultural Rights
International bill of rights are these three

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

• Right to life, trial, movement, asylum, nationality, marriage/family, ownership, freedom of thought and expression, public assembly, democracy, social security, food and shelter, education, play

• Against discrimination, slavery, torture, unfair detainment

International Covenant on Social and Political Rights

Right to self-determination, physical integrity, liberty and security, procedural fairness and individual liberties

International Covenant on Economic, Civil, and Cultural Rights

• Labour rights, rights to family life, social security, adequate standard of living, health, education, participate in cultural life

• Canada does not have a law to education, but because Canada has signed this covenant, we have an international commitment to education

• Second generation rights

• Progressive realization

  • Means we are working towards it, it's not instant

Human Rights

•  inherent rights by virtue of being human

  • Equal, inalienable, universal

Human Rights in general

• Modern liberal human rights first manifested with the Declaration of Independence (1776) and the Declaration on the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789)

  • Largely a post-WWII phenomenon (UN Charter, UDHR, ICCPR/ICESCR)

  • Starting point for human rights is the 1700s, but emerged greatly post-WWII

• Dehumanizing language of other humans is a red flag as it is an indicator of someone violating human rights

Common Factors Amongst Human Rights Violating States

1. Low measures of democracy

2. Economic underdevelopment and poverty

3. History of past repression

4. Armed conflict

5. Domestic security threats

6. Military regimes

7. Rapid economic growth

   • Could be very destabilizing by creating disruption to certain industries

8. Ethnic diversity

9. Exclusive ideology

   • Dehumanization is when you should be expecting human rights violation

Human rights in liberal societies

• Liberal societies perform better than non-liberal societies in human rights indicators/measures

  • Nordic countries rank the highest

• Importance of high state capacity and relevant institutions

• Common human rights concerns include access to justice, freedom of expression, privacy, institutional discrimination, treatment of immigrants and asylum seekers

• Liberal societies vary considerably in how they balance market freedoms (capitalism) and labour rights

• Institutions are important for human right protection and compliance

Human capacity is

key

Horizontal obligations

Vertical obligation

•  is when the states have to seize the violations of these rules

  • State not to violate our rights

The politics of human rights

• Human rights are inherently political

  • I.e., debates regarding the three generations of human rights

  • Human rights are heavily political

  • Magna Carta was the rule of law that subjected the King to higher authority which is the law

  • Human rights law is protecting us from the overstretch of authority

  • Modern liberal human rights are critiques different theoretical perspectives (i.e., post-colonial, Marxist)

  • Human rights are used as a source of (il)legitimacy

  • Canadian provinces initially opposed the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

  • Cold War-era human rights divisions globally

1st generation of human rights

• Negative rights

• Includes physical integrity rights

• We have rights in the civil realm (right to speech) and the political realm (choosing who represents us)

• ICCPR

2nd generation of human rights

• Positive rights

  • Positive rights to provide for education, healthcare, etc.

  • ICESCR

3rd generation of human rights

• Group rights

• Genocide law can be called group right law

Generations of human rights and cold war

• UDHR was a declaration contained both 1st and 2nd rights, but Cold War happened. So the West took the 1st rights while Communists took the 2nd rights. So, there is a hierarchy in the rights as seen in 1st, 2nd, 3rd numeration

Human rights measures

1. Events-based data

• I.e., Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch reports

1. Standards-based data

• I.e., Freedom House's Freedom in the World reports

1. Administrative data

• I.e., UNDP's Human Development Index

1. Combined data

• I.e., Social Progress Index

Theoretical perspectives

Natural law, utilitarianism, cultural relativism, and rationalism

natural law

• Sees the law as an ontologically, we discover the law. The law of human nature pre-exists us and we only discovered it

• Opposite of constructivist

• They exist naturally

• They can be violated, but not taken away

• John Locke and St. Thomas Aquinas

• Human rights are universal

• The weakness to natural law is

Utilitarianism

Deontological is good of in itself, this is not outcome focus

• Overall outcomes, we weigh good and bad

Cultural relativism

• Realtivist

  • No human moral code

• We should evaluate moral code/human rights based on moral contexts

• Human rights is an imposition on values, traditions, and cultures

• Human rights emerges from moral contexts, so we have to evaluate in contexts

rationalism

• Answering the why human rights compliance happens

• Rationals assume that your agency is to pursue your own self interest

• Look at systems of incentives and disincentives

• So, if a state has an incentive to violate human rights, they would then violate it, if there is disincentives, then they would not violate human rights

• We assume human behaviour stays rational and the referent point is that we are based on incentives systems

The “liberal” state

constitutionalized or federal human rights bills/charters and human rights institutions

Examples of “liberal” state

• I.e., United States Bill of Rights, The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, English Bill of Rights, Declaration on the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union

• I.e., Canadian Human Rights Commission and Tribunal, Australian Human Rights Commission, Netherlands Human Rights Institute

Civil society

• assumed central roles in recognizing, advocating for, monitoring and publicizing human rights

  • I.e., Civil rights movement, BLM

Markets/business

• emphasis on corporate social responsibility (CSR)

Corporate social responsibility (CSR)

• Voluntary activities of business firms that produce public good or mitigate public bads that goes beyond law

• Ronald McDonald House is a corporate social responsibility