Human Rights

Question 1

What is the basic premise of human rights?

Answer 1

‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights’

UDHR, 1948

Question 2

Why was the HR regime established according to Liberals?

Answer 2

In response to the bloodiest conflict known to man in which 66% of all deaths were civilians creating a need for an effective human rights regime

Question 3

How would Marxists view the HR regime?

Answer 3

An expression of the liberal capitalist ideology spreading across the globe
Use Lenin’s imperialism - highest stage of capitalism

Question 4

Which quote contradicts the UDHR?

Answer 4

‘Nothing should authorise intervention in matters especially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state’

Has to be a wider threat to peace and security

Question 5

What is a liberal understanding of Human Rights?

Answer 5

All human beings posses certain inalienable rights and the social contract between governments and individuals protect those rights

Question 6

How do liberals see history?

Answer 6

HR regime part of the wider progress of history

1926 - slavery outlawed
1948 - HE regime
Countless conventions protecting an enshrining individual and cultural rights

Question 7

How do realists view the HR regime?

Answer 7

The state is the highest authority not the individual
Therefore national interest and security is placed above individual rights
States will only follown HR regime up to their interests
US war on terror is an example

Question 8

Culture and individual rights?

Answer 8

P - Are HR regime an expression of western culture and privelage rather than universal rights in the interests of everyone?
E - clash with certain Asian values that place the primacy of paternalism and authority over the individual
E - Saudi rejecting UDHR on the grounds it does not agree with apostasy.