Human Rights
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Human Rights
"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood." - Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Human rights refer to the basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled. They include the right to life and liberty, freedom of thought and expression, and equality before the law.[1] They include civil and political rights, such as the right to freedom of assembly, to security and to freedom from torture, the right to a nationality and to freedom of movement. They also incude social, cultural and economic rights, such as the right to an adequate standard of living for the health and well-being of him/herself and his/her family, the right to work and the right to leisure, and the right to education. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948 and reaffirmed by UN member states many times since, outlines in detail the basic freedoms to which every person is entitled.
Progress In Human Rights - Treaties
Measuring Human Rights
There is no "one" method for measuring human rights or human rights abuses.
For a country-by-country analysis of Human Rights Issues around the world, view Human Right's Watch World Report 2009 or Amnesty International's State of the World's Human Rights 2008.
The Rights-Based Municipal Assessment and Planning Project (RMAP), a joint project between OHCHR and UNDP, develops and tests methodologies for human-rights based analysis and development planning. Read their Methodology and Tools for Human-Rights Based Assessment.
Examples of regional human-rights based indices include the South Asia Human Rights Index
The CIVICUS Civil Society Index and Civil Society Watch measure space for civil society and include a pilot for an Early Warning System against human rights abuses.
Metagora is a PARIS21 pilot project focusing on methods, tools and frameworks for measuring democracy, human rights and governance. Metagora gathers together North/South leading expertness and is conducted by a multi-disciplinary community of institutions and individuals committed in the implementation of selected activities in different regions of the world.
Measuring Human Rights - Issues and Criticisms
Human rights can be measured in terms of principle, practice, or as outcomes of government policy. Their measurement can involve the documentation and monitoring of human rights violations, their classification, mapping the violations and secondary analysis that looks for explanations and policy solutions for reducing them in the future.[2] However, despite the valid reasons for measuring human rights violations, there are important ethical, methodological and political problems. These include what some consider the dehumanisation of using statistics to measure violations of human rights and compare one to another (how to measure how one kind of violation compares to another) and that information available on human rights can vary. Politically, many international organisations have refused to rank countries on human rights for fear of recrimination. The United Nations Development Report in 1991 came under strong political criticism for ranking UN member states according to human rights derived from the UN Declaration.[3]
Development indicators such as the Millennium Development Goals have been used as a proxy measure for comparing economic and social rights. Indeed, there has been a strong movement to create clearer links between the Millennium Development Goals and human rights.
Further Reading
Read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
See also
Websites
United Nations Human Rights homepage
Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
Human Rights Data Analysis Group
Universal Human Rights Index of United Nations Documents
HURITALK: The UN Human Rights Policy Network
HURILINK: Webportal on Human Rights and MDGs
Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative
References
- ↑ The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Retrieved April 17, 2009, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/human rights
- ↑ Ladman, T (2004), Measuring Human Rights: Principle, Practice and Policy, Human Rights Quarterly 26 (2004) 606-931, John Hopkins University Press
- ↑ Ladman, T (2004), Measuring Human Rights: Principle, Practice and Policy, Human Rights Quarterly 26 (2004) 606-931, John Hopkins University Press
Page created by --Sarahgregory 14:45, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
