The Universality and Global Character of the Human Rights Principles

By Nika Chitadze

In the research paper “The Universality and Global Character of the Human Rights Principles” there are discussed and analyzed such important topics related to Human Rights protection on the global level as Human Rights within the world history, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Human Rights Law, Equality is a universal principle of the legal status of an individual, Equality of women and men, Democratic principles of securing and ensuring the rights and freedoms of individual and citizen, Classification of the rights and freedoms of individual and citizen, main principles of political, economic, social, religious rights etc.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9781447780793

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The Universality and Global Character of the Human Rights Principles

Nika Chitadze

Professor of the International Black Sea University

Director of the Center for International Studies

About the Author

Prof. Nika Chitadze is a specialist in Global and Caucasus geopolitics, World Politics, Human Geography, Democracy/Human Rights, Environmental Security, Combating Terrorism, Energy Security, and strategic affairs. He is currently (from October 2017) the Director of the Center for International Studies and Professor and coordinator of the Doctoral Program at the Faculty of Social Sciences (Direction: International Relations and Politics) at the International Black Sea University (IBSU). He is also President of the George C. Marshall Alumni Union, Georgia – International and Security Research Center.  Dr. Chitadze previously served as senior advisor on the National Security Council of Georgia and was Head of the Public Relations Division of the State Agency for Regulation of Oil and Gas Resources of Georgia. He has also held senior positions in the Department of Strategic and Military Policy at the Georgian Ministry of Defense and the foreign policy research and analysis center of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia. Dr. Chitadze has received his educational credentials in Georgia (Tbilisi State University and Diplomatic Academy of Georgia) as well as several international higher educational institutions, including the University of Oxford in the UK, George C. Marshall European College for Security Studies (Germany), and several other well-known European educational institutions. He is the author of more than 340 research/articles and nine books on Geopolitics, Human Geography, and International Relations.

Abstract

In the research paper "The Universality and Global Character of the Human Rights Principles" there are discussed and analyzed such important topics related to Human Rights protection on the global level as Human Rights within the world history, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Human Rights Law, Equality is a universal principle of the legal status of an individual, Equality of women and men, Democratic principles of securing and ensuring the rights and freedoms of individual and citizen, Classification of the rights and freedoms of individual and citizen, main principles of political, economic, social, religious rights etc. 

Keywords: Human Rights, Democracy, Freedom, Political Rights, Economic Rights, Social Rights, Liberalism, Pluralism, Equality

Introduction 

Human Rights - According to the UN, these are inherent rights of all human beings, regardless of race, sex, nationality, ethnicity, language, religion, or any other status. Human rights include the rights to life and liberty, freedom from slavery and torture, freedom of expression and speech, the right to work and education, and much more (UN, 1948).

The general scope of human rights is governed by international law as well as national and municipal law, as far as international law is concerned, as far as it is reflected in domestic law, although the fundamental legal umbrella is protected by international law, as far as human rights are concerned. On certain standards of human life and behavior agreed upon by international civilization. Human rights doctrine, in addition to international law and the activities of global or regional organizations, also operates and is regulated as a result of measures and policies of states and non-governmental organizations.

Human rights are universally understood as inalienable, fundamental rights that derive only from being human beings, hence they are universal and egalitarian in the sense that they are one for all. It is based on these principles that an understanding of human rights obliges states and individuals to respect the rights of other human beings, including the deprivation of these rights, even in the case of legal liability, as well as in circumstances such as unlawful detention, torture or Hanging.

The philosophy of human rights addresses existential, political, and legal issues such as the existence, essence, nature, universality, justice, and legal status of human rights. Evidence of the inalienability and universality of human rights, as well as the very definition of the concept of right, has often led to critical, skeptical, and contradictory philosophical assumptions. These doubts, reflections, and critical responses have created new dimensions of the political and legal philosophy of human rights over time. There is a consensus that human rights include a wide variety of rights, although it is a matter of debate which of these specific rights should be considered in the basic human rights framework. Part argues that the general framework of inalienable rights includes rights such as the right to a fair trial, protection from slavery, the prohibition of genocide, or the right to education, while part proposes that the human rights framework be kept to a minimum to avoid extreme manifestations of oppression.

The basic ideas that created the human rights movement developed after World War II, including its reaction to events such as the Holocaust. The culmination of these events was the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Paris in 1948 at the UN General Assembly (UN, 1948). Until then, such a universal concept did not exist - although the forerunner of the human rights discourse was natural rights, which was part of the medieval natural law tradition - these concepts became popular during the European Enlightenment, led by John Locke, Francis Hutcheson, Jean-Jacques Burlamac and other philosophers. Which later became the political discourse of the French Revolution and the American Revolution. Contemporary arguments in human rights discourse were developed in the second half of the twentieth century as a response to slavery, torture, genocide, war crimes, etc., as a recognition of human vulnerability to such actions and of taking restrictive measures for a more just society.

History

Human Rights within the world history

The Cyrus Manifesto is a clay cylinder on which Cyrus the Great ordered to engrave in cuneiform a list of his victories and merciful deeds, as well as a list of ancestors. The artifact was discovered during the excavations of Babylon in 1879 and entered the British Museum (Chitadze, 2016).

The cylinder became widely known after the last Shah of Iran in the 1960s proclaimed the text applied to it as the first-ever declaration of human rights: Cyrus spoke out for the abolition of slavery and freedom of religion. The Shah promised to build his policy following the precepts of Cyrus, the founder of Persian statehood.

Later, the concept of human rights in their modern sense dates back to the Renaissance and Reformation in Europe, the time of the gradual disappearance of feudal authoritarianism and religious conservatism, which dominated throughout the Middle Ages. During this period, European scholars attempted to form a kind of secular version of religious ethics. Although the ideas of individual rights and freedoms have existed in one form or another for a significant part of human history, they have not been characterized by a noticeable resemblance to the modern concept of human rights. As researcher J. Donnelly noted, in the ancient world, traditional communities usually had a developed system of duties ... concepts of justice, political legitimacy, and prosperity, which were an attempt to ensure human dignity, well-being and success in complete isolation from human rights. The relevant institutions and practices represent an alternative to these rights rather than a different formulation of them. More often than others, there is an opinion that the concept of human rights originated in the West; although other, earlier cultures had significant moral and ethical codes, it was the concept of human rights that they generally lacked. Some researchers, for example, are convinced that the word law itself does not occur in any languages until the 15th century. Medieval freedom charters, such as the English Magna Carta, were not inherently documents of human rights, but rather the basis and form of a limited political and legal agreement intended to regulate certain circumstances in the state. Subsequently, some of these documents, including the said Charter, were considered in the early stages of modern discussions about human rights. Some researchers, however, believe that the relevant rights were partly described already in the Kalisz Statute of 1265 (Levin, 1985).

The origins of the development of human rights in Europe can be