Human Rights and the Consequent Duties

Source of cartoon:
Gregor Ziolkowski

As the United Nations Commission on Human Rights was creating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, UNESCO asked leaders from many cultures to address the issue of whether there were indeed universally recognized human rights. A number of the experts replied linking rights to duties. This post focuses on that linkage.

According to the Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Rights are entitlements (not) to perform certain actions or be in certain states, or entitlements that others (not) perform certain actions or be in certain states.

Human rights are international norms that help to protect all people everywhere from severe political, legal, and social abuses.

The Organization of American States Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, which preceded the Universal Declaration by six months, states:

The fulfillment of duty by each individual is a prerequisite to the rights of all. Rights and duties are interrelated in every social and political activity of man. While rights exalt individual liberty, duties express the dignity of that liberty.

Duties of a juridical nature presuppose others of a moral nature which support them in principle and constitute their basis.

Dictionary.com defines duty:

An act or a course of action that is required of one by position, social custom, law, or religion.

I have been struck by the fact that these international declarations identify as "rights" conditions that do not exist and which can not exist for many of the people that they cover, since the social and economic resources do not exist to make them truly available. The use of the term "norms" helps. It is defined, according to the Dictionary of Public Health:

The terms "norm" and "normal" generally refer to what is customary or usual, or sometimes to what is desirable. In a technical sense, "norm" applies to standards or criteria, and may be applied to either a measurable variable, such as height or weight, or to a way of behaving.

I note that these early declarations did not carry the obligations of treaties, but were simply statements of common beliefs which have since been implemented by a series of conventions that do have the force of international law.

Thus it seems that the declarations of human rights express aspirations that people will be treated well. They also express aspirations that people will respect others and that governments will protect their citizens.

In U.S. domestic policy there are "entitlements" such as those provided by Social Security, and the government takes seriously the duty, as a legal obligation, to ensure that the rights implied by those entitlements are actually implemented. International "human rights" are of a much more theoretical and ephemeral nature. That seems obvious in practice, but it may also be inherent in the purposes of international declarations of human rights.