PROFESSOR: The past few weeks we’ve been talking about globalisation, and the many ways that our world is different because of it. Today I want to cover one area that has flourished thanks to globalisation, and that’s international human rights law. We’ll start with an overview of how international human rights law developed, and then move on to a discussion of the challenges of upholding such law.

It’s important to start with a definition of human rights so that we are all on the same page. Human rights are the commonly understood and accepted fundamental rights that belong to all human beings. They are universal and egalitarian in nature, and transcend nationality, ethnicity, socio-economic class, and so on.

Interestingly, this is a very new concept. The ancient world did not possess an understanding of universal human rights. In fact, there wasn’t even a word for “right” in any language prior to 1400. The first traces of such thought appeared with the concept of natural rights in the Medieval law tradition that was popular during the seventeenth and eighteenth century during the Enlightenment, and was expounded upon by philosophers such as John Locke and Francis Hutcheson. Their philosophical perspectives on rights subsequently influenced the political discourse of the American and French revolutions, and impacted leading philosophers Thomas Paine, John Stuart Mill, G.W.F. Hegel, and many others in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

But the human rights movement didn’t really pick up, at least in my opinion, until after the Second World War. The atrocities committed during the Holocaust by the Nazis brought attention to the need for universal moral standards for which the entire world would be held accountable. These concerns culminated in the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, drafted and adapted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948 in Paris, France. Over the years, the Declaration has been translated into a rich body of legally binding treaties, domestic laws, customary international laws, general principles, and regional agreements. All together, they comprise the International Bill of Human Rights, which guarantees, amongst others, the right to life, equality before the law, freedom of expression, and the rights to work, social security, and education.

So, you are probably wondering, if we have such an excellent body of international human rights laws, why do rampant human rights violations continue to exist in every nation in the world?

The reason, in a nutshell, is that implementing and upholding these laws is incredibly challenging for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, there is no way to hold United Nations member states accountable for upholding international human rights laws. There is currently no international court to administer the laws. Sure, there are several judicial bodies, such as the International Criminal Court and the European Court of Human Rights, but they have limited jurisdiction and scope.

Thus, the responsibility to uphold the laws rests on individual member states. The problem with this is that many states are either lacking in capacity, due to economic or political instability, or do not have the political will. In many cases, the state’s economy benefits from forms of exploitation that violate human rights law. So, international human rights law is trapped in the paradox of the nation state as both the primary protector and violator of these rights.

Another challenge is jurisdiction. Let’s say that a country does everything it can in its own courts and legal systems to uphold human rights laws. What happens if a citizen of that country commits a crime in another country? Who is responsible for prosecuting and trying the case? In a globalised world with greater movement across borders than ever before, trying criminals and criminal syndicates is increasingly complex.

The last point I want to bring up is that not all cultures agree with the universality of human rights. This is especially the case in instances where deeply entrenched religious values and customs conflict with the founding concepts. For example, in many more traditional patriarchal cultures, women do not have equal rights, and this is supported by religious texts and interpretations. For people from these cultures, human rights law undermines their belief systems and ways of life.

Answer

1. Globalisation

2. All human beings

3. Seventeenth

4. Eighteenth

5. John Locke

6. Francis Hutcheson

7. B

8. C

9. International court

10. Universality