Noteblog

Some argue that there is little history of human rights before the establishment of United Nations in 1945 (Freeman 2004: 14). These claims base on the fact that international relations lacked the institutional language of human rights prior to the UN charter. Even brutal violations of human rights, such as the massacre of Armenians in Turkey or the harsh mistreatment of the Jew in Russia received only mild objections in international politics. (Donnelly 1999.) However, it is quite common to view that the modern concept of human rights has a much longer history. This view lets us investigate the origins of the human rights thinking, dating back to at least seventeenth century or further. (Freeman 2004: 14.)

This chapter provides a brief look at the history of human rights. It introduces the concept to the reader and puts it in historical context, this providing a preliminary overall understanding of the concept. This understanding of human rights history will help to follow the paths of thinking we are going to wonder in this study, but it also directly serves reaching the final goal, understanding the construction of the value of human rights: After all, the meaning of the concept derives in part from how it is used historically (Freeman 2004: 14-15), as human rights are a social, historical construction (Donnelly 1999).

Early development – from Classical Greece to the French revolution and beyond

Tracing the early history of human rights, we can go as far as the classical Greece. It is possible to say Athenians recognized the rights of individuals in the sense of providing protection against tyranny, but they did express this in the terms of rights of individuals, but rather as the corresponding duties. (Freeman 2004: 15-16.) Despite this the Athenians did have important influence for the development of the thinking about human rights. The Romans inherited the Athenian emphasis on reason and the distinction between the rational ideal world and the natural world and used these conceptions to build the Roman Law. Roman law was based on the idea of rational Natural Law, which would be applicable to all humans because it was derived from the ideal, rational world of ideas, shared by all human beings. (Vincent 1988: 21–23.) The idea of Natural Law, a set of universal moral principles that could be derived from the nature of things, became to be very important in the later philosophical development of human rights thinking.

The rise of human rights thinking can be placed in Europe to the seventeenth century. Medieval thinkers had developed rights-based thinking. However, these rights were not human rights: they were rights based on particular customs and legislation. They did not apply to all human beings (Freeman 2004; 16-18). Thinkers such as Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius and English Thomas Hobbes and Henry Parker advanced the ideas about natural rights of human beings. They reasoned that every man had property in oneself and thus a natural right to self-preservation. This right was not bound to particular status, but to the human nature. (Vincent 1988: 25; Freeman 2004: 18-22.)

John Locke has often been seen as the seminal figure of the development of human rights thinking. He claimed that every man had a right to life, liberty and property. These ideas were based on the idea of rational, equal men and the natural rights provided by God. Governments that continuously violated these rights became tyrannies and lost their legitimacy to rule. (Freeman 2004: 22; Donnelly 2003: 60.)

The Lockean principles became to fuel the revolutions of the century to come. The concept of natural rights was pervasive in America. The Americans saw the English rule as tyranny that had lost its legitimacy by violating their rights. The American Declaration of Independence certainly reflects Lockean ideals, as it claims it is self-evident that all men (sic) are created equal and thus have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In the Bill of Rights, the set of amendments to the US constitution, these rights are justified by appeal to natural rights grounded in the rights of God. (Freeman 2004: 22-23.)

In Europe, the ideas of equal rights empowered the French revolution. The victorious National Assembly Declared the Rights of Man, including the freedom of arbitrary arrest, the presumption of innocence and the freedom of expression and religion. The French revolution inspired Thomas Paine to form his ideas of universal and individual human rights for the use of radical reforms of the time. Paine claimed Rights of Man were rights that all men held by their status as human beings, and the individuals owed nothing to the society. The rights did not derive from history or legislation, but from the divine creation of human beings. (Freeman 2004: 24-26.)

But why did human rights gain the power to enter politics in the eighteenth century? The social disruptions and transformations of modernity had produced a rising middle class of individuals rather autonomous from the old local communal ties. These modern individuals, the modern bourgeois if you wish, found a powerful argument against aristocratic privilege in the ideas of natural rights. In the seventeenth century rights were first demanded only for propertied European males and against the aristocracy. Since then, the arguments of white men has been used more or less effectively against them by the poor, women and non-whites to expand the range of subject recognized to hold natural rights. (Donnelly 1999: 82–85.)

The ideas of natural rights became under heavy criticism already in the late eighteenth century. Conservatives saw the ideas too radical in their egalitarianism; radicals were concerned about the fact that natural rights ideas gave grounds for economic inequalities. The foundations of natural rights were undermined by fierce criticism and the doctrine of utilitarism took over the hegemony of individualistic rights. The concept of individual rights did survive through the 19th century, but the ideas were now defended as a conductive of utilitarian or Hegelian ideas. (Freeman 2004:26-31.)

WWII and new coming human rights

The World War II had moral overtones especially for the US, even though the politics of the time lacked even the language to challenge the horrors of holocaust. Neither utilitarism nor scientific positivism, the philosophies that had undermined the natural rights concept, could address the problems. The dominant political paradigm, realism, could not find national interest violated. The language of human rights seemed more appropriate. After the war, the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal introduces the subject of gross human rights violations to the international relations. The individual German soldiers were charged of crimes against humanity. (Donnelly 1999: 72; Freeman 2004: 32-33.) The revival of the concept of human rights can thus be seen as a reaction to the horrors of the War. During the next decades, human right movement saw three waves of activism.

The first wave got its momentum from the horrors of the WWII. In the aftermath of the war, the United Nations Charter included promotion of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms among the principal purposes of the organization. The UN moved quickly to formulate international human rights norms. In 1948 the Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. (Donnelly 1999: 72–73.)

The second wave of activism was influenced by the newly independent states of Africa and Asia. There were some important conventions and covenants established during the decade: the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966). Together with the Declaration the Covenants form the essential written core of international human rights norms. (Donnelly 1999: 73.)

The third wave was triggered by the revulsion against the overthrow of the Allende government in Chile in 1973, the fact that Covenants of 1966 entered into force and the beginning of the Carter presidency in the US. In the 1970's the US foreign aid was linked to the human rights performance of the recipients. The middle of the 1970's saw also the rise of the human rights non-governmental organizations such as Amnesty International. (Donnelly 1999: 76–78.)

Although the latter half of the 20th century saw a rapid development of human rights norms-setting in international venues, the political agenda of the Cold War did not favor the issue. The human rights issues remained highly polarized and politicized, as the East and West had countering opinions and the South its own views.

The new world order

The ending of the Cold War in the beginning of 1990's has meant changes in the activity and functioning of the human rights regime. Human rights have become more visible in the political language and the institutions are now more active. It seems there is a new wave of human rights activism going on.

The ending of Cold War the United Nations has vitalized its human rights instruments. Both the General Assembly and Human Rights Commission have become more active. Most importantly, the UN goals of peace-keeping and human-rights protection have become increasingly combined. During the Cold War, genocide in places such as Burundi, East Pakistan and Cambodia were met only by verbal expressions of concern. Now, peace-keepers in El Salvador, Haiti, Guatemala and Rwanda have explicit mandates to investigate human rights violations. Rwanda and Yugoslavia have international tribunals to handle the charges against human rights criminals, first time after Nuremberg. (Freeman 2004: 48-51; Donnelly 1999: 88-91.)

International human rights commitments is still enmeshed with the complex patterns of international politics, and it is easy to point out cases of janus-faced will to act in some cases and withdraw in some other. The war in Iraq, which was partly justified by human rights claims and the international unwillingness to interfere in Sudan's genocidal civil war is a good example.

However, after the end of the Cold War the international willingness to use the human rights language in international power politics has become larger. Even if this rhetoric hides the true intentions, it tells something about the accepted values of our times.

I would also like to say this development has something to do with the spreading idea of broad security concept, where the idea of security overlaps economy and human rights. The globalization also has some influence here, but as I know too little about it at the moment, I have to restrain to say anything about it - yet.

Conclusion

Looking at the historical development of human rights thinking, we have described three waves of development. The human rights philosophy developed to fuel the popular revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, claiming greater equality between the noble men and common people. The human rights thinking, however, did not enter the venue of international affairs at large scale until at the mid-twentieth century. The international human rights system, the so-called human rights regime started to develop in the aftermath of the Second World War. This meant the setting of the international norms, but not enforcement that could have been taken seriously. Even though human rights entered the international politics, it remained in the background during the Cold War and its struggle between the worlds of capitalism and communism. After the end of the Cold War, for the past fifteen years, the significance of human rights issues has gained new power in world politics. Reason for this can be seen in new ideas about the nature of security and interconnectedness of the respect for human rights and sustainable political stability. There is, today more tendency to actually enforce the international norms set during the latter half of the twentieth century.

[Interestingly enough, I had analytically divided the concept of human rights like this earlier: the philosophy, the broad concept of security, the international human rights regime as a system. I'm not sure if concluding to same sort of a division thought the analysis of history tells that my interpretations is badly biased or does it support my idea? Anyway, I'm going to continue from here to inroducing the philosophy of human rights to the reader. From there to the analysis of human rights as a utilitarian tool (broad security, democracy, etc) and finally to describe the international normative system. And then I'm going to say that human rights is a social construction, that combines these different discourses (grod, i hate the word for its over packed emptiness).]

[This entry is a sketch to be the first chapter of my thesis.I hope this is the body text that will not need to be rewrited totally, but just modified on the basis of comments and further reading. ]

References

• Donnelly, J. (2003): Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice. 2d Edition. United States of America (sic): Cornell University Press.
• Donnelly, J. (1999): The social construction of international human rights. In Dunne, T. & Wheeler, N.J. (eds.): Human rights in global politics. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press: 71–102.
• Freeman, M. (2002/2004): Human Rights. An interdisciplinary approach. Cornwall: Polity Press.