Human Rights

Rights as human rights are rights of the human beings. “The fact that we are human beings is a fact that entitles us to certain rights. “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) of 1948, as accepted and approved by the United Nations are only illustrative and cannot be said to be exhaustive and complete list, meant for ever. And yet, the Human Rights are important in their own right and need to be possessed by all the human beings. “They emanate from our nature, and as such, may be rightly described as having their origin from natural rights. “The United States Declaration of Independence (1776) and the French Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen may rightly be regarded as those, which prepared the ground for the Human Rights (1948), proclaimed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights through a Commission on Human Rights headed by Mrs Eleanor Roosevelt under the aegis of the Economic and Social Council.

“The UDHR has thirty articles and the Human Rights, covered by the Declaration, can be classified according to Karel Vasak into three generations: first generation: civil and political rights (right to life and political participation), second-generation: economic, social and cultural rights (right to subsistence) and third generation: solidarity rights (right to peace, right to clean environment) liberty’oriented rights, security’oriented rights, and the environment and culture’oriented right. “These rights have been described as indivisible, though such a view has been challenged by many scholars. Some other scholars have criticized the Declaration of Human Rights as purely ‘western’ oriented, opposed to the Asian values/culture. Charles Blattberg condemns these rights as abstract, subjective and non-universal. Alain Pellet criticizes ‘human rightism as denying the principle of sovereignty and termed it as a branch of international law. Alain de Benoist questions human rights premises of human equality while David Kennedy had denounced them as pragmatic worries.

A brief description of Human Rights may be given below:

1. All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights’as such all should act in the spirit of brotherhood (Article 1).
2. No distinction among human beings such as of race, colour, sex, language, religion, birth, status (Article 2).
3. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person (Article 3).
4. No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms (Article 4).
5. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (Article 5).
6. Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law (Article 6).
7. All are equal before law, and all enjoy equal protection of law (Article 7).
8. Everyone has the right to enjoy effective remedy by the competent tribunal (Article 8).
9. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile (Article 9).
10. Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him (Article 10).
11. Everyone has the right to be presumed as innocent until proved guilty and no one will be declared guilty on account of any offence which was not an offence at the time of commitment (Article 11).
12. Everyone has the right to privacy, family, home or correspondence (Article 12).
13. Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state, and everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country (Article 13).
14. Everyone has the right to seek asylum in other countries except on crimes committed in the violation of the laws of the leaving county (Article 14).
15. Everyone has the right to a nationality (Article 15).
16. All men and women have the right to marry and found family (Article 16).
17. Everyone has the right to own property (Article 17).
18. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion’right to freedom of holding any thought and of religion (Article 18).
19. Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression’right to seek and impart information and ideas (Article 19).
20. Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association (Article 20).
21. Everyone has the right to participate in government, to equal access to public offices, to express through periodic elections based on universal and equal suffrage (Article 21).
22. Everyone has the right to social security, and is entitled to economic, social and cultural rights which are indispensable for the dignity and development of one’s personality (Article 22).
23. Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment’equal pay for equal work, freedom also to join trade unions (Article 23).
24. Everyone has the right to rest and leisure’to reasonable working hours and periodic holidays with pay (Article 24).
25. Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health, food, clothing and housing, and medical care (Article 25).
26. Everyone has the right to education (Article 26).
27. Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of community, to protection of moral and material interests resulting from scientific, literary and artistic work (Article 27).
28. Everyone is entitled to a social and international order within which the rights can be fully realised (Article 28).
29. Everyone has the duty to the community in which his full development is possible, to observe the laws of the land and the principles of the United Nations (Article 29).’ No one has the right to act in a way that he/she does contrary to the rights/freedoms set forth herein. “The Human Rights situation, in India, has not been very encouraging. “The violations of the Human Rights have come to light.
30. “The Human Rights Watch, in 2010, had stated that India has its own human rights problems: there is a lack of accountability; police brutality is very common, torture and terrorism usually visit at numerous places in the country.