Human rights are easy to understand and it baffles me every single day that others don't share this opinion. What is complicated about the fact that if you are a human, you are guaranteed human rights? These rights are inalienable and universal, so even if your nonexistent neighbor Joe is an immigrant from China, he still gets the right to find work to get paid to make a living. Joe's nonexistent wife Sara has the same rights, because it doesn't matter what equipment is in your pants, your rights are worth just as much as anyone else's. (EQUALITY.) There have definitely been times where individuals have messed this very simple rule up (The Rwanda Genocide and The Holocaust are fairly obvious examples) but on the bright side, there are people in the United Nations and in nongovernmental organizations working to change this. Even better, strides are being made to rectify this problem.
First off, the thing to remember to clearly prove that there has been progress in the realm of human rights is that there are three agreed upon generations of rights, and arguably, a fourth. These were based off the examples of the French Revolution. If you haven't heard about the French Revolution, here's a sum up for you. A bunch of people were tired of being poor, and deemed losers, attacked the people in charge (the popular kids) and ended up killing them all through a device called the guillotine, which chopped off heads as quickly as freshmen's grades drop after they turn the legal age to drink. It was an efficient device, which made the streets literally run red with blood. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, right? Well, the entire point behind the whole revolution was their motto; "libertie, egalite, fraternite", a call for liberty, equality, and fraternity. But ignore the mass killing, okay? The first generation of rights builds off these qualities during the cold War, and focuses particularly on civil and political rights, which corresponds to the idea of liberty. Ideas like the freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of press, and participation in the political process. Second generation rights are like the equality ideal with economic and social rights, which were popular ideas in socialist countries. These would include education, health care, and housing. Now the third generation (that's right, fraternity, you go Glenn Coco) deals heavily in collective and solidarity rights such as self-determination (a fancy word for a state figuring itself out and instating a government and laws and such), development, cultural preservation, and a clean environment. The argument for the fourth generation of rights is that women's rights are its own generation because the previous rights are incomplete and omits other forms of rights. I could end my argument just with this alone, but I want to tell you more about how we came this far.
The world has come a long way in human rights. Let me break it down for you. Once upon a time (in 1215), in a faraway land of tea and crumpets, King John signed the Magna Carta, limiting the power of the throne. That seems like a good start. Then in 1689, the English Bill of Rights passed. Shortly after, famous philosopher John Locke wrote about natural rights (all humans are born free and equal). here's where it really gets interesting. In 1776 the US Declaration of Independence was signed, and things began to really snowball from there. The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen came into play in 1789. France abolishes slavery in 1794, and Britain follows suit 39 years later. The Geneva Convention began in 1864 and set the humanitarian standards for international law, The Hague Convention in 1899 dealing with laws of war and war crimes. Humanitarian law comes into play here. It is based on the idea that there are wrong and right ways to fight a war but that human dignity and rights should be kept preserved. The Nuremburg Charter invented the term "crimes against humanity" and first mentioned crimes against civilians. The League of Nations followed World War 1 to protect minority rights, which included the International Labor Organization (which outlasted the League of Nations). From there, we take a look at how the United Nations was established following World War 2 in 1945 and the International Bill of Rights. Women are given the vote in America in 1920, and in 1940, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was drafted by Canadian John Peters Humphrey. Also of note is the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, enacted in 1976 to encourage right to life (always important), freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and right to assembly. Another important thing to remember is the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, because the ICCPR, the ICESCR, and the UDHR, are part of the International Bill of Human Rights. International criminal tribunals were formed to try those accused of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The International Criminal Court was a thing beginning in 2002.
When the United Nations instated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it was supposed to strive for the recognition and observance of human rights. This group has some terrible commitment issues to this goal, because they are afraid of state sovereignty. This is basically a mind your own business rule, where the UDHR doesn't really have any legal rights to interfere, BUT they do have sanctions they can take against a state misbehaving. These sanctions can include trade sanctions, where they can petition other states not to deal with the misbehaving state for goods, trade, services, or any type of market. The more extreme version of sanctions that can happen is the law of just war, where the state in question is attacked as a last resort only.
Before any terrible action movie plots can happen to justify implementation or sanctions (I'm looking at you, James Bond), one of the points to recognize is that cultural relativism is a thing. Just because one thing is accepted by a society doesn't mean that a different society agrees with it. Commonly it's Eastern vs Western cultural values that butt heads, and compromises the "universal" aspect of human rights. There have been some occasions where values line up like in the example of mass genocides such as the Holocaust, or the Rwanda genocide, but on issues that aren't directly linked to murder, there can be differences of opinion. Not to mention there is the whole argument of one individual's rights versus a collectives' rights, but that's a whole other can of worms.
Society is told that hindsight is 20/20, and Canada is a great example of this concerning human rights violations. We take pride in our reputation as peace keepers, but we've messed up. We denied the vote to women (as a woman, I really disapprove of this), and made harsher laws concerning immigration such as charging Chinese head taxes just to enter the country. I could talk about how we jailed Japanese Canadians during World War II, or if we're really talking about Canadian pride, how we have treated Aboriginals (the people who were Canadian before the rest of us decided it was cool) but I'd prefer we focus on the positive. Like how we've improved!
Some of the work to improve human rights developments includes the American Convention on Human Rights, similar to the UN, the acknowledgment of sexual minorities in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Not to mention the impact that nongovernmental organizations such as Amnesty International, and social activists have had. Clearly we've learned from our mess ups, and we're still improving even now. If even a politician like Michael Ignatieff (a known critic of the era of "Pearson peacekeeping") can acknowledge our progress world wide, we must be doing great!
