Human Rights

Question 1

What are human rights?

Answer 1

• They are essential norms to help protect everyone from severe political, legal and social absues
• They are inalienable

Question 2

What are the three generations of human rights

Answer 2

1. Civil and political (legal protection/freedom of speech)
2. Social and economic (food/housing/healthcare/education)
3. Group and environmental (women + children/people who are at a disadvantage)

Question 3

Slavoj Zizek’s view on Human Rights

Answer 3

“Human rights are part of the common sense of our modern world; to be against human rights - and the associated values of freedom and equality - is to be against humanity”

Question 4

4 powers of human rights

Answer 4

1. They constrain and delegitimise state power (Obama signing executive order in 2009 banning torture)
2. Turning old/new advocacy issues into human rights issues (women who wear the hijab)
3. Enabling and legitimising the use of state/military power
4. HR norms are not powerful/respected enough VS HR norms construct the proliferating problems they seek to address (increase in abuses the more we address them?)

Question 5

Liberals view

Answer 5

• desirable as it empowers the weak and constrains the strong
• universal in theory and practice
• promotes order for moral and security reasons (HRs trumps sovereignty)
• liberals were central figures in the practice of economic + social rights that shined in Universal Declaration

Question 6

When was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights made and what did it establish?

Answer 6

• 1948
• Extended human rights to a global scale
• moves the concept of rights beyond the rulers and ruled of one particular state

Question 7

Realist perspective

Answer 7

• ambivalent + problematic as interests and will always trump rights
• good in theory but fails in practice

Question 8

Critical perspective (Marxist/post-colonial)

Answer 8

• Merely seek to empower the strong => sustains the hegemony of West/liberal and capitalist ideology
• generates new hierarchies + enables (neo)colonial practices
• particular in theory and practice
• HRs are not universal but are products of specific histories and conceptions of humans and specific interests (capitalism) => making the West culturally arrogant + ignorant