International Human Rights Law

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Prior to World II international law was simply the law of nations, and thus the rights of a human person were the rights granted by his or her government. No person, therefore, had any rights in a country other than her own, unless through a treaty her own country had secured rights for its citizens in that foreign country. In the first half of this century persons might claim "natural rights," such as those affirmed in the American Declaration of Independence, but these were only recognized and enforceable by the laws of individual countries. Up until the middle of this century legal rights were "citizen rights" rather than human rights.

This understanding of rights was supported by accepted theories of jurisprudence in the West, which defined laws as the decisions of governments and recognized no source of "higher law." Adherence to this theory, however, was shattered by the acts of Nazi Germany during World War II, because the Nazis attempted to exterminate the Jews by means of laws passed by the German parliament. Within the state of Germany, therefore, the arrest, detention, and murder of Jews was "legal." These Nazi laws were morally wrong, but the prevailing theory of law at the middle of the 20th century provided no standard for judging the acts of a state to be illegal.

The Nuremberg trials after World War II asserted a higher standard of law than the sovereign state, and the United Nations codified this as international human rights law. Since 1948 these laws have grown to include numerous covenants (treaties) and international regulatory mechanisms, such as the Commission on Human Rights of the United Nations. At the same time the number of nations in the UN has expanded rapidly, due to the liberation of peoples in Africa and Asia from colonial rule. The UN has become more prominent, if no less controversial, and assertions of human rights have continued to capture international attention.

In the last fifty years human rights have also expanded conceptually. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was dominated by notions of civil and political rights, which are most familiar to Westerners. But economic and social rights concerning employment, food, shelter, education and health care were also affirmed. More recently, accompanying the growing strength of formerly colonized peoples in the UN, cultural and peoples rights have been asserted. We see here a shift (at least in emphasis) from the individual to the group and from protection of the dignity of the individual from state intervention to providing for communities through state intervention the elements of life deemed necessary for human dignity.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was approved in 1948 without dissenting vote by the General Assembly of the United Nations. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) are the two main treaties developed by the UN to realize the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  These came into force in 1976 and with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights constitute the International Bill of Rights.

Information on human rights may be found by using the Links hyperlink above.

Faith in Human Rights: Support in Religious Traditions for a Global Struggle (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1991) may be ordered online. Revised chapters from the book are available on this web site.

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