Human Rights or the Right to Have ‘Rights’?
December 10th each year is not merely a commemoration of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but simultaneously a call for vigilance in this field, showing how long and arduous the path ahead for humanity is until human rights are realized throughout the world.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, approved by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948, affirms that human rights are valid for all human beings throughout the world and belong to every individual solely by virtue of being human. The purpose of these rights in their entirety is to preserve human dignity and freedom. This declaration obligates governments to protect human rights, even though the greatest enemy and obstacle to the realization of human rights are the governments themselves.
It should be noted that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was a product of lessons learned from a “catastrophe” and was placed like a monument over the blood-soaked ruins of death camps such as “Auschwitz,” “Buchenwald,” “Treblinka,” “Majdanek,” and also over the ruins contaminated by atomic dust in “Hiroshima” and “Nagasaki,” to serve as a warning against the recurrence of the disasters that had occurred.
However, humanity subsequently witnessed other horrific events with disbelief: the Vietnam War, the terror regime of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, apartheid in South Africa, the genocide in Rwanda, mass killings in Iran’s political prisons, “ethnic cleansing” in Yugoslavia, Taliban rule in Afghanistan, and recently the “Islamic Caliphate of ISIS” in Iraq and Syria. These events demonstrated that “catastrophes” are easily repeated and have not been learned from, and the defense of human rights must remain on the agenda.
Historical Background
The history of the formation and development of the concept of human rights in its modern sense has gone through three phases: The first phase encompasses the intellectual efforts of philosophers and enlighteners in the 17th and 18th centuries based on “natural rights.” According to these ideas, all humans, regardless of their social position, possess certain fundamental rights. These “universal” rights are considered applicable to every human, and by their nature, every person should enjoy them. However, the idea of “natural rights” rarely addresses the question of how these rights should be realized, since the “natural state” is not yet a “legal and social state.” Therefore, human rights at this stage remain merely an idea.
In the second phase, from the second half of the 18th century onward, with the American and French revolutions, human rights move from potential to actual from a political and legal perspective, and these revolutions elevate human rights to the level of citizens’ rights that every person can invoke. Thus, human rights for the first time become “positive law,” that is, rights created by a governmental system. However, alongside this important step, the claim of human rights to “universality” fades, because although human rights were proclaimed as universal rights, in reality their addressees were only the citizens of these two aforementioned countries, and even within these countries themselves, large sections of society such as women, Black people, religious minorities, and even workers were deprived of such rights.
The third phase begins with the end of World War II, in which human rights enter the scene as a legal standard and become the subject of an international legal system. As mentioned, the core nucleus of this international legal system is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, approved on December 10, 1948, by the United Nations General Assembly, which was later supplemented by a series of other binding international treaties. A more careful examination of the concept of human rights is worthwhile.
The Core Value of “Human Dignity”
The concept of “human dignity” is the most central philosophical value of human rights. Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher, believed that in the realm of ends, everything either has a price or has dignity. That which has a price can be replaced with an equivalent. But that which is higher than all prices and has no equivalent has dignity. According to Kant, the human being is the only creature that possesses dignity and for which no price or equivalent exists. However, human dignity must always be understood as a duty, not a privilege. Human freedom of will means responsibility and responsible conduct, which is to say that humans not only can, but are obligated to justify their actions to others. Therefore, accepting human dignity is not merely a gain in theoretical knowledge, but rather a carrier of practical insight and prudence. Thus, in the philosophy of human rights, dignity is a kind of relationship, not an attribute. In other words, dignity is not something within the human being, but a relationship among human beings; a relationship that humans establish on the basis of humanity between themselves and others. Whenever we attach dignity to particular qualities, we have eliminated and limited its unique characteristic. For precisely this reason, we must speak of the “integrity” and “inviolability” of human dignity. The “inviolability” of human dignity does not naturally mean that no human’s dignity is ever violated, but rather refers to an inseparable bond among all humans, and whoever violates human dignity simultaneously violates their own dignity.
Another point is that dignity is a natural human condition, not an acquired matter. In other words, human dignity is inherent in a person’s existence and is not the result of effort or merit. Consequently, a person’s physical and mental abilities cannot elevate their dignity relative to another person.
Today, human dignity in the constitutions of democratic countries is considered the supreme norm and is inviolable. This norm means according special value to the personality and honor of the human being. It is not without reason that many jurists and thinkers today derive human rights from it, because human dignity is neither transferable nor renounceable. To explain human dignity more precisely, it is linked with other values such as the right to life, freedom, personal autonomy, equality of humans, justice, solidarity, and peaceful and non-violent life.
Structural Features of Human Rights
Human rights are not just any right and possess features that create a kind of distinction and specificity compared to other rights. In reflections undertaken to explain the structure of human rights, the following features are considered:
The first feature of human rights is its universality. Universality means that human rights have universal validity and are binding on all humans and unconditionally belong to all people throughout the world. It should be added that the claim to the universality of human rights is one of the most controversial aspects of this concept. Its opponents are primarily illegitimate governments that violate the rights of their citizens. However, some critics also raise moral objections, arguing that the claim to universality ignores the cultural characteristics of different countries in the world. In response, supporters of the universal character of human rights argue that, for example, the events of the past one or two decades in Islamic and African countries clearly show that human rights are not a Western creation or “imported” to these countries, but rather an inseparable and natural part of the demands of the people there, which the respective governments prevent only through force and violence.
The second feature of human rights is their inalienability and indivisibility. In other words, an individual human right cannot be taken from a person. Furthermore, no one can transfer or renounce their human rights. Moreover, on no pretext of any “higher domain” can human rights be violated. Since human rights are personal rights, they cannot be abolished for the sake of the collective or made subject to government rule. The feature of the indivisibility of human rights emphasizes that these rights must always be realized in their totality.
The third feature of human rights is their egalitarian character. This means that human rights are valid for all humans regardless of nationality, descent, gender, religion, race, color, social origin, and level of wealth.
The fourth feature of human rights is their validity as moral rights. A right is moral when the norm it contains has moral validity. And a norm has moral validity when it can be justified against anyone who accepts rational argument. By combining the two features of moral validity and universality, it can be said that human rights are universal rights with moral validity that can be defended through argument against anyone who submits to rational proof.
The fifth feature of human rights is their fundamental nature. This fundamental nature relates to the legal subject matter. In human rights, the subject concerns the preservation and satisfaction of fundamental interests and needs. A fundamental interest or need is one whose violation or non-satisfaction results in death or serious harm or targets the core of human autonomy. There is a direct connection between the fundamental nature and the moral validity of human rights, but these two are not the same. This connection is based on the foundation that the more fundamental a right is, the easier it is to justify to others. Universal agreement on the right to human life is a clear example.
The sixth feature of human rights is their priority over positive law. This priority means that positive law is not a criterion for the content of human rights; rather, the opposite is true—human rights are the criterion for positive law. In other words, respect for human rights is a necessary prerequisite for the legitimacy of positive law, and that positive law which violates human rights is substantively incorrect and therefore invalid. This highlights the importance of observing human rights standards in the field of legislation and shows that human rights stand above positive law.
Democracy and Human Rights
These very features place the institutionalization of human rights through their transfer to positive laws and their transformation into basic and civil rights on the agenda, whether in the sphere of international law or within national law. The institution that can institutionalize human rights is the government. Therefore, one can conclude that establishing a government to protect human rights is itself a human right.
Of course, human rights in their contemporary sense are inseparable from democracy. In fact, it is respect for human rights that gives legitimacy to the government. Since the close relationship between the legitimacy of a political system and respect for human rights is undeniable, the claim that human rights have a universal character can only mean that any governmental system in the world that deprives its citizens of these rights cannot be considered a legitimate political system.
When a person is persecuted solely because of their beliefs, a refugee is driven from the border of a safe country, a peaceful protester is suppressed by police, an individual is tortured in prison, an ethnic or religious minority faces discrimination and injustice in a country, or an oppressive government executes a freedom-loving person, in all these cases we are facing a violation of human rights. These actions all occur despite a document that almost all countries in the world have signed and allegedly committed to respecting.
Human Rights and “Islamic Identity”?
Islamic countries, by relying on “Islamic identity” and “cultural particularities,” refuse to recognize the universal character of human rights. However, the struggle of many people in Islamic countries for equal rights demonstrates that the national and ethnic differences among the people of these countries and their so-called “cultural particularities” are relative concepts, and in reality, governments in these countries exploit the concepts of “culture” and “religion” as tools to consolidate their power.
One must not forget that almost all governments in Islamic countries are oppressive and lack legitimacy. Many people in these countries who demand respect for human rights standards are considered opponents of their governments and are therefore subject to government pressure and persecution. In Islamic countries, violations of human rights are often justified by reference to Islamic sources. Governments of these countries, to emphasize the need to respect “cultural differences” and preserve “Islamic identity,” among other things, claim that Islam possesses a cohesive and complete legal system. However, even within Islamic countries themselves, there is no uniform understanding of Islam. Islamic countries present different interpretations of Islam and Islamic law, and these interpretations are in many cases contradictory and conflicting with each other.
In the sphere of Islamic culture, regarding women’s rights, there exist widespread discrimination and restrictions, and the rulers of Islamic countries, in the name of “cultural autonomy,” impose discriminatory and regressive laws on women. In theocratic systems such as the Islamic Republic of Iran, due to the intertwining of religious teachings with governance, laws and norms arising from religion and tradition on the one hand and many modern fundamental rights inspired by human rights on the other are in a tense relationship with each other.
Today, in the age of “globalism,” as the inability of the United Nations to confront non-democratic governments, internal wars, homelessness and displacement, widespread migration, poverty and misery, climate change, and environmental destruction becomes increasingly apparent, the question arises more than ever: who should defend human rights; that is, the rights of those who, according to Hannah Arendt, the German thinker, do not even possess the right to have “rights”?
It must be remembered that when we speak of human rights, we are speaking of a complex web of philosophical ideas, legal reflections, human demands, political struggles, and economic compulsions, whose goal of achieving national and global realization, despite all existing obstacles, necessarily drives us toward the frontier of a “utopia.”
Source: DW
