Obinna Assigment
Obinna Assigment
Obinna Assigment
INTRODUCTION
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Human rights constitute a set of norms governing the treatment of
individuals and groups by states and non-state actors on the basis of
ethical principles regarding what society considers fundamental to a
decent life. These norms are incorporated into national and international
legal systems, which specify mechanisms and procedures to hold the
duty-bearers accountable and provide redress for alleged victims of
human rights violations. After a brief discussion of the use of human
rights in ethical, legal and advocacy discourse and some historical
background of the concept of human rights, this essay will examine the
tensions between human rights and state sovereignty, the challenges to
the universality of human rights, the enumeration of rights recognized by
the international community, and the means available to translate the high
aspirations of human rights into practice.
The history of social conflicts has often involved attempts to define and
redefine rights. According to the owed of people or owed to people
according to some legal system, social convention, or ethical
theory.Rights are of essential importance in such disciplines
as law and ethics, especially theories of justice and deontology.Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "rights structure the form of governments,
the content of laws, and the shape of morality as it is currently perceived"
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Human Rights: A brief introduction by Stephen P. Marks ( Havard University)
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Every person has dignity and value. One of the ways that we recognise
the fundamental worth of every person is by acknowledging and
respecting their human rights.
Human rights are a set of principles concerned with equality and fairness.
They recognise our freedom to make choices about our lives and to
develop our potential as human beings. They are about living a life free
from fear, harassment or discrimination.
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Human rights can broadly be defined as a number of basic rights that
people from around the world have agreed are essential. These include
the right to life, the right to a fair trial, freedom from torture and other
cruel and inhuman treatment, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and
the rights to health, education and an adequate standard of living. These
human rights are the same for all people everywhere – men and women,
young and old, rich and poor, regardless of our background, where we
live, what we think or what we believe. This is what makes human rights
‘universal’.Human rights cover virtually every area of human activity.
They include civil and political rights, which refer to a person’s rights to
take part in the civil and political life of their community without
discrimination or oppression. These include rights and freedoms such as
the right to vote, the right to privacy, freedom of speech and freedom
from torture.
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Human rights are rights we have simply because we exist as human
beings - they are not granted by any state. These universal rights are
inherent to us all, regardless of nationality, sex, national or ethnic origin,
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https:en//en.wikpedia.org
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United Nations Human Rights (office of the High Commissoner)
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color, religion, language, or any other status. They range from the most
fundamele of universality of human rights is the cornerstone of
internationalntal - the right to life - to those that make life worth living,
such as the rights to food, education, work, health, and liberty.
The principle human rights law. This means that we are all equally
entitled to our human rights. This principle, as first emphasized in the
UDHR, is repeated in many international human rights conventions,
declarations, and resolutions.
Human rights are inalienable. They should not be taken away, except in
specific situations and according to due process. For example, the right to
liberty may be restricted if a person is found guilty of a crime by a court
of law. All human rights are indivisible and interdependent. This means
that one set of rights cannot be enjoyed fully without the other. For
example, making progress in civil and political rights makes it easier to
exercise economic, social and cultural rights. Similarly, violating
economic, social and cultural rights can negatively affect many other
rights.
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Article 1 of the UDHR states: “All human beings are born free and
equal in dignity and rights.” Freedom from discrimination, set out in
Article 2, is what ensures this equality.
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Universal declaration of Human Right
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Every Nigerian has rights, duties, liabilities and privileges entrenched
under various existing laws. However, certain rights are constitutionally
guaranteed under Chapter IV of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal
Republic of Nigeria, these rights are referred to as Inalienable rights.The
Fundamental Right (Enforcement Procedures) Rules 2009 made pursuant
to 6Section 46 (3) of the constitution is the principal rule governing the
practice and procedure for enforcement of Human Rights in Nigeria. The
rule provides that any person who alleges that any of the fundamental
rights has been or is likely to be infringed may apply to the Court for
redress. The appropriate court is the High Court (State or Federal).
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Human right has been defined by a lot of eminent scholars and jurists.
According to Louis Henkin, it is: “those liberties, immunities, and
benefits which by accepted contemporary values, all human beings
should be able to claim as of right of the society in which they live”.
With greatest respect, these definitions did not go far enough. They failed
to factor in some of the most fundamental characters of human rights:
inalienability, universality and imprescriptibility. They are inalienable
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Nigeria: Fundermental Rights under the 1999 CFRN (as ammended) by Dayo Adu & Esther Rande
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Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999
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Legal ideas Forum
Human Rights Abuses& procedures for enforcement in court: A pratical analysis by Justice Uche Ijeoma ESQ
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rights. That is they cannot be taken away from any individual without
harming or violating such individual’s humanity. Human rights are
inalienable because they are inseparable from the man, and they consist
part of the existence of human being. Human rights cannot be subjected
to the “accepted contemporary values” of any given society. Also, human
rights are universal. I call it a common denominator to all men. It inures
to all men irrespective of gender, race, creed or colour. Every member of
the human community has these rights attached to them. The rights are
inherent in man.
Furthermore, human rights are not just human rights because they are
prescribed by laws or constitutions of nations. The constitutions or other
codes mere declare it.The foregoing thoughts accord with the views of
other eminent scholars who have weighed in on the subject at one time or
the other. Professor U. O. Umozurike definition is apt in this regards.
He defined human rights as:
Our own Professor Osita Nnamani Ogbu explains that: “human rights
are inherent in human beings simply because of their humanity, and have
accordingly been defined as rights which are inherent in the human being.
They are enjoyed by all human beings of global village and not gifts to be
withdrawn or withheld or granted at someone’s whim or will. In this
sense, they are said to be inalienable or imprescriptible. If you remove
them from any human being, they will become less than human. They are
part of the very nature of human beings, and attach to all human beings
everywhere in all societies, just as much as do his arms and legs”.
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The Supreme Court in the popular case of8 Ransome Kuti v. A G
Federation, in its characteristic sagacity, stated thus:
“it is a right which stands above the ordinary laws of the land which in
fact is antecedent to the political society itself. It is a primary condition to
a civilized existence and what has been done by our constitution is to
have these rights enshrined in the constitution so that the rights could be
immutable”
From the above dictum of the Supreme Court, it is clear that fundamental
rights inure to all persons. These rights are held highly sacrosanct and are
jealously guarded and protected by the Constitution.
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Human rights are inherent and interdependent on each other and so there
are not many different kinds of human rights. All these rights are equally
important and inherent in all human beings, irrespective of their age, sex,
caste, creed, race, religion, location, or nationality. The Universal
Declaration of Human Rights did not precisely categorise human rights
but mentioned 2 kinds:
The rights that protect the life and personal liberty of a person are called
civil rights. They are necessary to maintain the dignity of a person. These
include rights like the right to life, liberty and security of a person, the
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(1985) LLjR_SC
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Classification of human right by Rachit Gary (Graphic Era University)
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right to privacy, the right to own property, freedom of thought, religion
and movement.
These rights are also called first-generation rights and are derived from
17th and 18th-century theories related to the American, English, and
French Revolutions. These form a part of negative rights because the
government abstains from doing such activities or forming policies that
violate these rights.
Fundamental rights
Some human rights are guaranteed to the citizens of the state through
constitutional provisions and cannot be infringed upon at any cost, even
by the state authorities. These are termed as fundamental rights. The
expression ‘fundamental rights’ is stated in declarations and
constitutional provisions of many states. The Virginia Declaration of
1776 states that men are free and independent and have certain inherent
rights. The French Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen, 1789
provides that men are born free and have equal rights.
Natural rights
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circumstances faced by society from time to time. Since human rights are
universally applicable to every person in the world it is similar to natural
rights. Natural rights have been derived from natural law which opines
that law must reflect moral reasoning and must be related with morals
imbibed in a person or set by the society. On the other hand, positivism
states that human rights are a result of enactments of statutes and orders
by law which comes with various sanctions attached to it.
Moral rights
Human rights that determine the spiritual and moral conduct of a person
are termed moral rights. They are primarily contained in moral rights as
they highlight various moral values that cannot be highlighted by any set
of institutional rights. They promote moral values like respect for
everyone, brotherhood, secularism, protection of life, peace in society, etc.
Human rights also put moral obligations on the state and people not to
violate and infringe on the rights of other people. If done so, it will be
punished as per the provisions of the set statute.
Legal rights
The rights that are recognised by the legal system of a country are called
legal rights. The two essential elements of these rights are:
Rights and duties are correlated to each other. A person cannot have a
right without any corresponding duty. A person having a right also has a
duty not to violate another person’s rights. Human rights are given to
every individual irrespective of any considerations, and the state has the
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corresponding duty to protect the rights of its citizens. 10Article 2 of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights lays down that it is the primary
duty of the state to promote, protect, and implement all human rights
through various measures and legislative provisions. The government of
any state should pass any such laws which infringe on the rights of the
people.
These rights are also called freedoms and guarantee a person the
minimum necessities of life. These are also included in the International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. These form a part of
positive rights as the state is required to frame policies and provisions to
implement such rights. These rights are based on the concept of social
equality and are second-generation rights. These rights include the right
to work, social security, physical and mental health, and education.
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Universal Declaration of Human Right
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CHAPTER 2
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Human rights are not a recent invention. Throughout history, concepts
of ethical behaviour, justice and human dignity have been important in
the development of human societies. These ideas can be traced back to
the ancient civilisations of Babylon, China and India. They contributed to
the laws of Greek and Roman society and are central to Buddhist,
Christian, Confucian, Hindu, Islamic and Jewish teachings.
In 1215, the English barons forced the King of England to sign Magna
Carta (which is Latin for ‘the Great Charter’). Magna Carta was the first
document to place limits on the absolute power of the king and make him
accountable to his subjects. It also laid out some basic rights for the
protection of citizens, such as the right to a trial.
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An introduction to Human Rights (Australlian Human Right Commission) https://humanrights gov.au
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The American Declaration of Independence (1776) was based on the
understanding that certain rights, such as ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness', were fundamental to all people. Similarly, the French
Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (1789) challenged the
authority of the aristocracy and recognised the ‘liberty, equality and
fraternity' of individuals. These values were also echoed in the United
States’ Bill of Rights (1791), which recognised freedom of speech,
religion and the press, as well as the right to ‘peaceable' assembly, private
property and a fair trial.
However, the atrocities and human rights violations that occurred during
World War II galvanised worldwide opinion and made human rights a
universal concern.
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During World War II millions of soldiers and civilians were killed or
maimed. The Nazi regime in Germany created concentration camps for
certain groups - including Jews, communists, homosexuals and political
opponents. Some of these people were used as slave labour, others were
exterminated in mass executions. The Japanese occupation of China and
other Asian countries was marked by frequent and large-scale brutality
toward local populations. Japanese forces took thousands of prisoners of
war who were used as slave labour, with no medical treatment and
inadequate food.
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CHAPTER 3
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A ‘right’, according to Hohfeld, is a legal interest that imposes a
correlative duty. “If X has a right against Y to keep off the latter’s land,
the correlative (and equivalent) is that Y has an obligation toward X to
stay off the place”, Hohfeld says. In the same way that a ‘privilege’
He points out that the term ‘right’ was frequently used to refer to a variety
of other legal interests such as powers, privileges, and immunities. This
issue was so common that Hohfeld was able to obtain enough court
support in his article to acknowledge it. As a solution, Hohfeld proposes
separating rights, privileges, powers, and immunities, all of which he
considers to be separate legal interests. Surprisingly, he tries to make this
distinction based on the legal duties that these interests place on another
organisation. Hohfeld’s definition methodology is based on the usage of
correlatives and opposites.
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Theories of right: an overveiw of Hohfeld analysis of rights by MS. Kishita Guptu
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Hofeld’s analysis is majorly based on Salmond’s earlier system.
According to Salmond, there are three categories of rights:
Rights in the strict sense, which are defined as interests protected by the
law by imposing its duties with respect to the rights upon other persons,
Jural relations
Hohfeld’s dissatisfaction with the premise that all legal relations may be
reduced to rights and duties led to the eight fundamental legal concepts.
This was identified as the most significant impediment to understanding
and successful resolution of legal challenges. His notion of jural relations
can be explained through the below-mentioned table:
The vertical arrows connect jural correlatives, or ‘two legal positions that
entail each other,’ whereas the diagonal arrows connect jural opposites, or
‘two legal positions that deny each other.’
Hohfeld did not devote much attention to the relationship between rights
and duties. According to him, the term ‘rights’ is mistakenly applied to
something that may be a privilege, a power, or immunity in some cases,
but is not a right in the strictest sense. The correlative (and equivalent)
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‘obligation’ provides a method for limiting the word ‘right’ to its specific
and most appropriate meaning. Legal rights are always accompanied by
legal obligations. This pair of phrases convey the same legal relationship
but from two different perspectives. Hohfeld used the example of X
having a right against Y to keep off of X’s land. The invariable corollary
of this is that Y has a duty to X to keep off X’s territory. According to
Hohfeld, the word ‘claim’ is the most accurate and adequate synonym for
the word ‘right’ in terms of meaning. If necessary, state coercion is used
to enforce a valid right or claim.
The term liberty is preferred by the majority of future jurists over the
phrase privilege. These two terms occupy the same structural position in
Hohfeld’s theory, notwithstanding Hohfeld’s preference for the term
privilege. Privileges are permissions to act in a given way without being
held liable for the harm caused to others who, at the same time, are
unable to ask the authorities to intervene. “To the degree that the
defendants have privileges, the plaintiffs have no rights”, Hohfeld said.
There can’t be a conflict between rights (claims) and privilege. The
correlation of this legal relationship demonstrates that the person against
whom liberty is asserted has no right to the conduct to which liberty
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pertains. This does not, however, rule out the possibility of him
interfering with the action. Hohfeld agreed that under legal systems,
liberties that are not accompanied by responsibilities imposed on others to
avoid interference with legal action exist, and that there are often strong
political reasons for doing so. When someone is granted legal liberty,he
relieves legislators of the burden of imposing a duty on others. When
deciding whether or not to apply the above requirements in a specific
circumstance, a rational legislator may take advantage of political
concerns.For example, the fundamental rights mentioned in Part III of the
Indian Constitution, are in fact the ‘privileges’ mentioned by Hohfeld as
they provide that the State has a correlative ‘no-right’ to interfere in the
exercise of these freedoms.
Immunity refers to the state of not being able to have one’s rights altered
by another. A lack of power to change legal entitlements is defined as a
disability. The basic difference between powers and immunities is the
same as the general contrast between rights and privileges. A right is an
affirmative claim against someone else, whereas a privilege is someone’s
exemption from someone else’s right claim. Similarly, power is
someone’s affirmative control over a specific jural relation about another,
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whereas immunity is someone’s independence from another’s legal
power or control over some jural relations.
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according to Glanville Williams. Surely, he claims, no one owes him a
duty to help him with his speech, to provide a platform for him to talk
from, or to maintain silence while I speak. The responsibilities that may
be attributed to him as a result of his ‘right’ to free speech have nothing
to do with it. Persons must, of course, refrain from gagging him or
removing him from the podium while he was speaking.
These obligations, however, are not related to the ‘right’ to free speech,
according to Williams, but are merely part of the standard responsibility
not to commit a battery. As a result, no duties are owed to an individual
who exercises his ‘right’ to free speech that is not already assigned to him
under his other rights. As a result, Williams contends that describing
freedom of expression as a legal right is incorrect: it is only legal liberty.
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essentially categories of rights based on their content relationships with
other rights; notwithstanding these classifications, Hohfeld’s basic atomic
rights exist exclusively between two individuals.
The two correlativity arguments made by Hohfeld are crucial to his rights
analysis. While the focus of the main criticism of Hohfeld is on the
following section on his secondary correlativity thesis (that the
correlative of an active right is only the absence of a passive right in
another), others have questioned whether Hohfeld’s primary correlativity
claim (that the correlative of every passive right is a duty on the part of
others to perform the act that is the content of the passive right) is true.
This more radical critique of correlativity takes two forms. One approach
is to deny the universality of rights/duties correlativity in all viable moral
theories, and consequently the necessity of it.
Right
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Hohfeld's analysis because it does not account for the distinction between
rights in personam and rights in rem. This is a very weak line of argument
because Hohfeld, in defence, can insist, as he does, that a right held
against the whole world is, in reality, a set of various rights ad infinitum
and each of those rights is held against a particular person. The
importance of grasping Hohfeldian rights cannot be overestimated. For
instance, in ordinary parlance we refer to an individual having a right not
to be tortured. This is not a 'right' in the strict Hohfeldian sense because
the state (or any other person) is under no correlative duty to abstain from
torturing people. Instead, the person's 'right' not to be subjected to torture
is protected by the array of normative protections guaranteed by the state
through the general laws against assault, trespass etc. Therefore, the
general right not to be assaulted sets the protective perimeter within
which a person's legal 'right' to be free from torture can exist.
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CONCLUSION
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