Serageldin Human Righats

1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-977-795-484-6
Verlag: Aldar Almasriah Allubnaniah
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 134 Seiten

Ismail Serageldin is the Co-Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Nizami Ganjavi International Center (NGIC). He was the Founding Director of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the New Library of Alexandria in Egypt (2001-2017). Before that he was the Vice-President of the World Bank (1993-2000) in charge of Environmentally Sustainable Development (ESD), and the Chairman of the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). He served on many international committees and commissions, including serving as a member of the High Level group for the Alliance of Civilizations convened by the Secretary General of the United Nations (2006-2007). He was also a distinguished professor at Wageningen University and the College de France. He is a member of many Academies and serves on many commissions, boards, and advisory committees for academic, research, and NGO institutions. He has lectured widely and published more than 100 books and 500 articles. He has received many awards from many countries and has received more than 40 honorary doctorates from all over the world.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Serageldin, Ismail

Leseproben

II. Human Rights and the Supportive State Origins The first half of the 20th century was disastrous by any measure. Two world wars, several minor wars (including the culturally famous Spanish civil war), the rise of Fascism, Nazism, and Communism, as well as the great pandemic and the Great Depression, not to mention colonialism, racism, and famines. Artists renewed the many domains of art, from painting to architecture, and of science from physics to astronomy. The carnage in WW2 included mass bombing of civilians by the Nazi blitzkrieg, to allied actions – nuclear bombing (Hiroshima and Nagasaki) and firebombing (Dresden) – to full-scale genocide by the Axis powers. But the democratic governments of the US, UK, and France led to the expansion of suffrage to women, and the improvement of child labor conditions. Democratic ideals gained ground after WW2, even as decolonization continued to be delayed for over a decade and the Cold War between the West and the Soviet Bloc would dominate world affairs until 1989-1991 when the USSR collapsed. But shortly after the creation of the UN, one of the most remarkable documents in the world was formulated and approved by all the governments of the time: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)(1). The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), is the crowning achievement of a long tradition(2) that in the modern period draws from the late 18th century’s American “Bill of Rights” (the first ten amendments to the American Constitution)(3) and the French Revolution’s “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizens”(4). Today, the UDHR is uncontested as the fundamental document that is the benchmark against which to measure the behavior of governments towards their citizens and the treatment of minorities by majorities, and the behavior of forces in hostile territories. As such, there should be no justification for the breach of a person’s human rights(5). From Declaration To Law Powerful as it is, the UDHR still needed a legally binding treaty behind it. Indeed, the ideas spelled out in the UDHR have been codified in international treaties that form the basis of an important part of International Law. These include two major covenants that were launched by the General Assembly of the UN in 1966(6) and came into force in 1976. These were: The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) which is a multilateral treaty that came into force in 1976(7); and The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), which also came into force in 1976(8). But Critics pointed out that there was no mechanism for anyone to seek redress under these treaties. So, in 2008, the UN General assembly adopted a resolution(9) to create the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights which establishes complaint and inquiry mechanisms for the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. It entered into force in 2013 and by 2018 the Protocol had 45 signatories. But two more international agreements must be mentioned here: The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), adopted in 1979 by the UN General Assembly, and often described as an international bill of rights for women. Consisting of a preamble and 30 articles, the CEDAW defines what constitutes discrimination against women and sets up an agenda for national action to end such discrimination. Since 2008, the responsibility for following up on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women has been domiciled in the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child,
as UNICEF, the sponsor of the convention states: Contained in this treaty is a profound idea: that children are not just objects who belong to their parents and for whom decisions are made, or adults in training. Rather, they are human beings and individuals with their own rights. The Convention says childhood is separate from adulthood, and lasts until 18; it is a special, protected time, in which children must be allowed to grow, learn, play, develop and flourish with dignity. The Convention went on to become the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history and has helped transform children’s lives(10). Thus, the international multilateral system has adopted a wide-ranging and notable legal framework of conventions to promote the implementation of Human Rights, giving special attention to the protection of women from discrimination and recognizing children as individuals with their own right. This domain of International Law has been the topic of many analyses and reviews(11), and newer controversies, generated by the actions of governments against terrorists have raised many questions(12). The “Rights of the Environment” are protected through other instruments including the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), not to mention “The Earth Charter”. But all of these are part of a different discussion and will not be addressed in this essay. Negative and Positive Rights Some scholars have focused on the idea of negative and positive rights. The negative rights are assumed to be those that can be fulfilled by other people not preventing a person from exercising them (e.g. free speech) whereas the positive rights are those that require specific government or social action to be provided (e.g. employment, shelter, health, and education). Many, however, hold that these distinctions are not useful, and the Universal Declaration made no such distinctions in its enumeration of rights. Indeed, the distinctions between negative and positive rights fall short under scrutiny. Negative rights demand a state presence from police power that provides safety, to laws and courts and legal professionals to ensure that any attackers would pay a price and that in the pursuit of your rights, or compensation for their infringement, there is indeed equality before the law and other such considerations. The provision of government effort in ensuring so-called negative rights may be greater than the effort that governments have to deploy to ensure some measure of positive rights. Most negative rights have more or less precise definitions in the laws, codes, and regulations of society. Whereas the definition of what constitutes adequate levels and “quality” of education, healthcare, or shelter is less clear, and usually a topic of political and legislative debate. Today the distinction between positive and negative rights is usually emphasized by libertarians who believe that positive rights do not exist until they are created by contract. The UDHR did not specify or classify Human Rights into these categories. On Rights and Capabilities On the other hand, as Amartya Sen has forcefully argued, individual capabilities have to be taken into account. Persons may have limited capabilities that prevent them from exercising rights that are fully guaranteed to them by the prevailing laws and regulations in their society. Physical disability, or extreme poverty, or mental illness, are all examples of how such limitations in the capabilities of individuals may...