III-c. The International Bill of Human Rights

By the middle of the twentieth century, extremes of despotism and tyranny in many countries of the world had become intolerable. The horrors of Nazi Germany, in particular, elicited a demand for new kinds of policy to apply not only to Germany but to all countries. The international community began speaking out and began acting in support of human rights. In the Charter of the United Nations, adopted in 1945, nations pledged to take action to achieve "universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion."

The key event launching the postwar human rights movement, however, was the approval, with no dissenting votes, by the United Nations General Assembly of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948. Eight countries—Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and the Soviet Union and its allies—abstained. By 1993 seven of them had renounced their 1948 abstentions. Only Saudi Arabia remains openly opposed to the declaration (Weiss, Forsythe, and Coate, p.116). December 10 is now recognized as global human rights day.

After that declaration was made, the number of international human rights agreements proliferated rapidly, and many new organizations, governmental and non-governmental, arose to make sure these rights were realized. Human rights became a major factor in global discourse.

The declaration was given binding effect in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. There are also two Optional Protocols to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The purpose of the first is to allow the Human Rights Committee (the UN treaty body overseeing implementation of the covenant) to receive complaints from individuals. The second is aimed at the abolition of the death penalty. This second Optional Protocol has not yet obtained enough ratifications to come into force. Ten are required. The two covenants and the first Optional Protocol were adopted in 1966 and entered into force in 1976.

The declaration together with the two covenants and the first Optional Protocol are commonly recognized as the International Bill of Human Rights. Some feel that the bill should be understood to also include the Charter of the United Nations, particularly the preamble and articles 1, 55, and 56 (Shue, p. 181). Most states are parties to the two covenants. The major rights covered in these documents are as follows.

Table III-1

INTERNATIONALLY RECOGNIZED HUMAN RIGHTS

� A social and international order needed to realize rights
� Access to legal remedies for rights violations
� Education
� Equal protection of the law
� Equality of rights without discrimination
� Food, clothing, and housing
� Free trade unions
� Freedom of assembly and association
� Freedom of movement and residence
� Freedom of opinion, expression, and the press
� Freedom of thought, conscience, and religion
� Health care and social services
� Hearing before an independent and impartial judiciary
� Humane treatment when detained or imprisoned
� Liberty and security of person
� Life
� Marry and found a family
� Nationality
� Own property
� Participation in cultural life
� Political participation
� Presumption of innocence
� Protection against advocacy of racial or religious hatred
� Protection against arbitrary arrest or detention
� Protection against arbitrary expulsion of aliens
� Protection against ex post facto laws
� Protection against slavery
� Protection against torture and cruel and inhuman punishment
� Protection of minority culture
� Protection of privacy, family, and home
� Protection against debtor’s prison
� Recognition as a person before the law
� Rest and leisure
� Seek asylum from prosecution
� Self-determination
� Social Security
� Special protections for children
� Work, under favorable conditions

Source: Jack Donnelly, International Human Rights (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1993), p. 9.

Article 28 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights provides for the creation of a Human Rights Committee to receive reports from States Parties on the actions they take to implement the covenant. For those states that accept it, the first Optional Protocol allows the committee to receive "communications from individuals claiming to be victims of violations of any of the rights set forth in the Covenant." In such cases the committee, having very limited powers, would act not as a court but more as a mediation service. Despite this limitation, this protocol represents an enormous step away from Westphalia principles and traditional understandings of the scope of international law in that it allows individual persons, and not just nation-states, to have direct access to an agency of international law. Proposals are being made for a similar Optional Protocol for the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

There have been numerous declarations, proclamations, and resolutions asserting human rights in different issue areas. However, because they do not require formal signature and ratification they do not have the status and binding character of international conventions. Six of the major international human rights conventions now available for signature and ratification are listed in the following table. These six are distinctive because they have actively functioning treaty bodies in the United Nations associated with them.

Table III-2

SIX MAJOR TREATIES AND TREATY BODIES

TREATY NAME Date adopted by UN    Date entered into force	COMMITTEE NAME Date of first meeting   Number of members	MEEETING SITE	AUTHORIZED TO HANDLE INDIVIDUAL COMPLAINTS?
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights December 16, 1966 March 23, 1976	Human Rights Committee (HRC) 1976 18	Geneva	Yes
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights December 16, 1966 January 3, 1976	Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) 1985 18	Geneva	No
International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination December 21, 1965 January 4, 1969	Committee on Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) 1970 18	Geneva	Yes
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women December 18, 1979 September 3, 1981	Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) 1982 23	Vienna to 1993; New York since 1993	No
Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment December 10, 1984 June 26, 1987	Committee Against Torture (CAT) 1988 10	Geneva	Yes
Convention on the Rights of the Child November 20, 1989 September 2, 1990	Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) 1991 10	Geneva	No

Table III-3 lists the other major international human rights conventions, none of which have actively functioning treaty bodies. The year of adoption is shown in parentheses. Declarations, recommendations, proclamations, UN resolutions, statements of principles, and protocols elaborating the conventions are omitted from this list.

Table III-3

OTHER HUMAN RIGHTS CONVENTIONS

• Slavery Convention (1926)
• Forced Labour Convention (1930)
• Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention (1948)
• Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948)
• Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining Convention (1949)
• Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field (1949)
• Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of Wounded, Sick and Shipwrecked Members of Armed Forces at Sea (1949)
• Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War (1949)
• Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Times of War (1949)
• Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others (1949)
• Equal Remuneration Convention (1951)
• Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (1951)
• Convention on the International Right of Correction (1952)
• Convention on the Political Rights of Women (1952)
• Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons (1954)
• Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (1955)
• Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery (1956)
• Convention on the Nationality of Married Women (1957)
• Abolition of Forced Labour Convention (1957)
• Discrimination (Employment and Occupation) Convention (1958)
• Convention Against Discrimination in Education (1960)
• Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness (1961)
• Convention on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage and Registration of Marriages (1962)
• Employment Policy Convention (1964)
• Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity (1968)
• Workers’ Representatives Convention (1971)
• International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (1973)
• Labour Relations (Public Service ) Convention (1978)
• International Convention Against Apartheid in Sports (1985)
• Convention (No. 168) concerning Employment Promotion and Protection against Unemployment (1988)
• Convention (No. 169) concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries (1989)
• International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (1990)

Source: Centre for Human Rights, Human Rights: A Compilation of International Instruments, Volume 1 (Second Part) Universal Instruments (New York: United Nations, 1994), pp. 945-950.

A more thorough list of international human rights agreements, including not only conventions but also declarations and other sorts of documents, may be found on the website of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. The list there is organized by topics rather than chronologically.

Human rights are sometimes grouped into three broad clusters. First-generation rights are civil and political rights. These are the types of rights found in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and in the United States Constitution’s Bill of Rights. Second-generation rights are socio-economic rights such as those articulated in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Third-generation rights, or solidarity rights, are the rights of groups rather than individual persons. Minority rights, and rights to peace, development, or a healthy environment are regarded as solidarity rights because they are rights associated with the community rather than with individual persons. The right to national self-determination is a solidarity right.

At times first generation rights have been called negative rights on the ground that they are intended to block governments from taking actions that interfere with rights such as freedom of thought, speech, religion, privacy, and assembly. Second generation socio-economic rights have been thought to be different because they require positive action by government. Now, however, most leading human rights scholars reject this distinction because the realization of both kinds of rights require positive action by government.  This point is discussed again in Subsection VII-c, in point (1).

Even the division into three clusters or generations is questioned because it suggests distinctions that may not be warranted (Eide, Asbj�rn 1995, pp.16-17). It is now widely accepted that all human rights are intimately interconnected, as recognized in paragraph 5 of the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action set out at the conclusion of the World Conference on Human Rights held in Vienna in June 1993:

All human rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent and interrelated. The international community must treat human rights globally in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing, and with the same emphasis. While the significance of national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds must be borne in mind, it is the duty of States, regardless of their political, economic and cultural systems, to promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms.

Mary Robinson, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, often lists the rights in alphabetical order--civil, cultural, economic, social, and political--to make the point that the traditional groupings are quite arbitrary.

Continue to III-d. Children's Rights

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Subsection III-c last updated on September 26, 1999