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My diary today will delve into the intrinsic topic of human rights and where they derive from. I will talk in detail about this topic using academic books and journals to give my opinion competently. I will cover weeks one to five in this diary. My diary will have five sections, section 1 will delve into the history of human rights and how they came into being. Also, in section 1 I will take 3 opinions into account on forming my opinion on what human rights are. Section 2 of my diary will discuss the difference between a philosophical account of human rights and the international law of human rights. I will discuss this based off the question, what are human rights? Section 3 is based on the aspect of universality and diversity. I will also look into the cross-cultural approach, defining the human rights standard and investigating Asia’s human rights standards. I will look more into where human rights come from in section 4 looking into the sources of human rights. Treaties, Customary Law, Jus Cogen and more will be discussed in this section. In my last section I will discuss the UN Charter Bodies and Enforcement. I will critically analyse all of the readings forming my own opinion on the topic question, what are human rights and where do they come from?

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When discussing and forming an opinion on what human rights are and where they come from, one has to look into the history of human rights, when they first came into being and how they have been treated throughout history. Looking to ancient Greece we see the philosophy of “isogoria” which is the first time we as human beings have considered freedom of speech as a key part of society. Ancient Greece is well known as being a groundbreaking society and one of the first societies to shape future societies. Along with the ancient Greek, Stoic philosophers also discussed human rights drafting up the doctrine of natural rights which every human is entitled to, our first instance of universality (Maurice Cronston). These examples developed my opinion on human rights by showing that even in ancient societies where death was considered a sport, humans still were aware that human beings as a whole had rights they were entitled to from birth. Natural rights are rights that include right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. These rights are to have the effect of law; however, it subsists not only without law but against law (lecture notes 1). They are said to cut up law and legal rights. Natural rights show me that human rights is very much different to human rights law and that maybe they should be taken as philosophy instead of law.

When researching the first instance of human rights it is hard to ignore the US Declaration of Independence in 1776 (Lecture Notes). This declaration that states all men are created equal, however, I found this to be contradictory as slavery was only abolished in America in 1865. So, for nearly a century the US blatantly disregarded the human rights as slaves even with their declaration stating all men are born equal. Considering that is the very early history of human rights I cannot let that shape my entire view on what human rights are. In later history I consider the Nuremburg Trials to be very vital in shaping international human rights and how we view them today. Human rights were seen to belong to the domestic nation to determine and judge and that no foreign power had the right to interfere with them (Vattel). In the Nuremberg Trials, 24 Nazi war criminals were prosecuted with aggressive war, war crimes and crimes against humanity. This was the first time that there was international intervention dealing with human rights and individual criminality (Lecture 1). However, further contradiction occurs when deciding what human rights are when the UN charter state that the “UN cannot intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state” in article 2(7). This contradicted the Nuremberg trials. In my opinion, so far in my research, it is of my opinion that when crimes against human rights and humanity are drastic, the UN and other Nations should step in. In 1948 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was signed due to the rising tensions from the Cold War. This included two separate treaties, the international covenant on civil and political rights, negative rights and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural rights, positive rights (Lecture 1). The UDHR showed me that in an ideal rights human rights are something that every human, universally, are born with and they based on the likes of dignity, respect and liberty.

When writing this diary, I delved into the writing of Navanethem Pillay, UN high commissioner for Human Rights. He discusses the power of rights and our kinship in rights. So far, I agree that the power of human rights has made it possible for many people to claim freedom and equality (Moeckli). However, in my eyes, with the amount of vulnerable people whose rights are still being violated to this day, the universal aspect of human rights is not being met to a high enough standard. I will later consider the argument between universality and culture relativism in my diary. It is true that civil society promotes vigilance of the implementation of rights but with the lack of intervention into other states there is little that can be done. Giving effects to rights such as the freedom of expression and association are key. International partnership is very helpful in this matter and we can see this is going in a positive direction with the creation of the UN Human Rights Council in 2005. Furthermore, the Universal Periodic Review with assesses human rights worldwide is also a positive step (Moeckli). The International Criminal Court which deals with and the deters the most flagrant human rights violations such as torture and genocide is one of the key factors of protecting human rights worldwide in my opinion. Individually each state has to uphold and promote human rights to ensure that human rights is not just a job for the UN, which has multiple other tasks.

Another opinion I will take into account is that of Kenneth Roth, the Executive Director of the Human Rights Watch. Kenneth Roth discusses the glaring issue of corruption in countries that often have the worst standards for human rights. Judges are often bribed or intimidated and this leads to no protection of such basic human rights. Seeing that the UN or other countries can not intervene in domestic human rights issues, Roth speaks on the use of public shaming on these governments. Surrogate publics can be a source of pressure to these governments and they help to shine light on the human rights violations in certain countries (Moeckli). In my opinion, these ideas are positive in protecting human rights, however, if brutal dictators are committing mass genocide, I do not think that they will care if surrogate publics shame them. If human rights are so simple as the right to freedom, why is it so hard to uphold them universally? I think that even if 90 percent of the world’s population believed in and upheld human rights, there will always dictators or warlords, who will simply ignore human rights to benefit themselves. Roth mentions giving the victim a face and creating public outrage and I agree that these are very beneficial methods of promoting human rights. We often see these in campaigns that NGO’s, such as Trocaire, use (Moeckli)

Hina Jilani the Director of AGHS Legal Aid Centre and Advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan states that defining human rights seems obvious but when one connects it to concepts and everyday life it becomes complex. I thoroughly agree with this as the idea of human rights is simple but tying that in universally and competently to worldly life is challenging. Human rights defenders such as advocates and lawyers rely on public support. International Human Rights law helps people to compare and contrast their legal systems to other countries. If people do not have access to free information, how would they know how outside of their society lives? How would they know if they had human rights or even if their human rights were being violated? These questions in my opinion show that one of human rights activist main objectives should be to spread their information. She asks should human rights issues be dealt with legally, politically or morally? In my view, combining all three options will lead to the best outcome. Moral support will be needed to gain support for political action and political action would allow law makers to change a law that violates human rights.

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In section 2 of my diary, I will discuss the difference between a philosophical account of human rights and the actual human rights law. I will consider these topics in relation to what human rights are. The philosophical side of human rights deals with the justification of human rights. When reading James Griffen’s account of philosophical human rights I found that autonomy and rationality to be a key justification of human rights (Griffen). The normative agency theory states that the basic principle shaping human rights derives from the fact of our humanity (Lecture 2). I am not sure if I agree wholeheartedly that this is what human rights genuinely are. It made me question what is the fact of our humanity? One could say that our humanity is our moral compass, that we should treat everyone with respect and love, however this is not the case of the humans. I personally believe that we do not share a common humanity, each individual is so incredibly complex and abstract, one could not possibly believe that we all derive from the same humanity.

“Political scientists say there is a human rights regime”, this quote by Charles Beitz is one that I took great interest in. It is true that with the creation of the UDHR, some people could view that the people in charge of the UDHR are pushing their own agenda on the rest of the world. The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights deals with inherent dignity, meaning that we are all born with dignity, we do not need to earn it or buy it, we inherent it, just from being human. This, in my opinion, is one of the stronger arguments of philosophical human rights. I believe that dignity is inextricable in human rights philosophy, it is a core feature of our humanity and it creates and engages our moral compass. As Christopher McCrudden states that every human possesses an intrinsic worth that should be upheld, this is core factor in upholding modern-day societies and universality. In my opinion, this is a core basis of human rights. It can be used as a justification against torture of war criminals and terrorists. Even though they did horrific crimes, they still have an intrinsic worth that should be respected and upheld. Many people disagree with this arguing that their intrinsic worth and dignity should be revoked when they commit these atrocities. This would be disregarding human rights and would set an extreme bad precedent, a precedent that would only lead to more death and inhumanity.

In my opinion human rights are based on the autonomy, humanity and inherent dignity more than then the approach of capabilities and basic interests. The approach of capabilities is that every human can do and has a right to do what he or she pleases (Lecture 2). The central human capabilities are life, bodily health, bodily integrity and senses, imagination and thoughts. I believe that these can all fall under the category of autonomy, humanity and inherent dignity and I think that it would be better this way. I find the undertone that each human has a right to do what they want to be quite chilling and could lead to many problems. I find the theory of basic interests to be unsuccessful in deciding what human rights are also. Interests are indeed crucial to a good life but this can also be skewed in a more sinister way.

When considering international human rights law instead of the philosophy, I noticed when reading Charles Griffins writing that international human rights law is helped by the philosophy of human rights, it does not play against it. International Human Rights law is built of natural law, philosophy and treaties such as the UDHR. The UDHR gives legality to the human right of inherent dignity without justification. This may be seen as controversial in some eyes but as I have stated previously, I believe dignity to be inextricable with human rights law. It is hard to distinguish which human rights laws can be protected legally. In an ideal world all human rights could be protected legally but without international interference many humans’ basic human right to freedom or free speech are being impeded. Another issue is that “There is no inference from something’s being a matter of justice or fairness to its being a matter of rights”. There is no reasoning behind a legal case being based on justice and fairness instead of it being dealt with as a matter of rights. The creation of international human rights laws such as the UDHR are very beneficial in my eyes. They were created to create a list of human rights while also upholding and creating peace. The UDHR was created after two horrifying world wars so it is fair that they were focused on peace. However, I believe that new treaties being formed should be based more on the philosophy of what human rights are, instead of mainly aiming towards keeping the peace. If the fundamentals of what human rights are being upheld universally, I believe that the peaceful aspect will soon follow.

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Through writing this diary I am slowly coming to terms of what human rights are. The issue of human rights is a universal one and that is where it starts to become even more challenging. We live in a diverse world with numerous different societies, genders, religions, cultures and landscapes and that is what makes the world we live in today so vibrant, beautiful and thriving. Now comes the question of, is it possible to uphold diversity at the same time as universality (lecture 3). A big part of human rights is morality, and the morality of a person is often shaped by the society they grew up in. Someone living in a small town in Texas will have a much different set of morals to someone who grew up in Mumbai. Many people believe that complementary morals clash and that the world should be segregated. However, in my eyes if we look at clashing morals as just different perspectives, the human race will become much more knowledgeable and equal. The American Anthropological Association questions how can human rights represent all humans across the face of the globe without just being values of the west? Is it possible for human rights to be an objective matter? More than likely not as there simply is no overarching culture in my eyes.

Universality has been a stumbling block of human rights from the very start. The traditional approach of universality has been treaties such as the UDHR, however, that has come under great criticism in recent times. As stated by Conor Geary, the traditional approach of universality is a “new form of imperial aggression” (Lecture 3). I agree with this statement and in my eyes the traditional approach of universality is too westernised. It has a western construct to it and many countries will push against human rights because of this. Many countries who have fought for freedom against colonialism that western powers brought upon them.

While researching human rights and universality I formed my opinions based off the writing of Abdullahi Ahmed An-Nadm. He discusses the cross-cultural perspective on human rights and the cultural legitimacy which is to “accept existing international standards while seeking to enhance their cultural legitimacy within the major to of the world through internal dialogue and struggle to establish enlightened perceptions and interpretations of cultural values and norms”. I thoroughly agree with this quote from An-Nadm, I believe that international human rights law needs to make mistakes and go through struggle to become more universal and complete. We need to accept different cultures and learn how to manipulate the UDHR to fit all different religions and societies into human rights. It is key to take universality as an “on-going” process as this will help us shape the way international human rights law will be for future generations. A constructive element is needed to tackle this problem. Alison Rentein believes that for cross-cultural human rights, people need to be happy with the least common denominator between different cultures human rights. In my opinion, I believe that for universality to work, each culture needs to be represented at UN human rights meetings. From there we can discuss the most important and basic human rights such as access to freedom, food, water and information. We can build a platform from the basic human rights and could come to a compromise about human rights that go against some cultures and religions.

Some theorists believe that human rights cannot be universal, that there is no universal standard to measure a cultures norms, beliefs, religion and values by. This is the theory of cultural relativism. I somewhat can agree to cultural relativism but seeing how far humans and societies have come even since the 19th century, I believe that there is definitely a way to find the balance between cultural relativism and universality.

I read Asia’s Different Standard Bilbari Kausikan while researching for this diary and it brough many pressing issues and arguments about universality to my mind. Asia have always challenged western values as the cultures are both so different and alien to each other. Individualism is seen as alien in Alien cultures (Lecture Notes). Non communist countries Japan, South Korea and the Philippines are the only countries in East Asia that signed the UDHR (Kausikan). This shows how much Asia does not agree with western human rights. It would be extremely difficult if not impossible to find human rights that would suit all of Asia with Buddhism, Islam and Hindu each being so unique. Many people from Asia see international human rights as neo colonialism. These people would have to change their societies norms which have been formed over thousands of years just to fit in with the western idea of human right. I believe that to be simply unfair. Also, when Asian people feel like they are being discriminated in the west, then they will most definitely not comply to their human rights standards. Take for example the “burqa ban” in French schools in 2023. I believe that is religious discrimination and it is creating an unnecessary tension. I think that tolerance is needed on both sides to try and come to an agreement.

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I will now finally investigate not what human rights are, but where they come from. As I said in the opening of my diary, human rights came into being around the time of ancient Greece. Ancient Greek philosophers considered ideas of freedom of speech and other basic human rights. Stoic philosophers drafted up their own doctrine of natural rights. In modern day times, human rights are mainly derived from formal sources, treaties, customary international law, Jus Cogen or judicial decisions. A source of law tells us what constitutes law and it provides us with the basis of legal obligation. Human rights offer us a vision of the “good life” (Lecture 4).

Reading Christine Chinkin’s engrossing book, International Human Rights Law 4th Edition, really helped write this diary and formulate my own thoughts on where human rights are coming from. Human rights are often derived from formal sources such as the UN Charter made in 1945. The problem I have with this is that the UN Charter was made after two of the most devasting wars the world has ever seen. It is more focused on just keeping the peace instead of upholding international human rights in my opinion. Natural Law, religious creed and the nature of society are all other formal sources where human rights are founded. In my eyes religious creed and nature of society are too precise as there are so many different societies and religions. Treaties, in my view, are where most of human rights derive from. Human rights treaties are unique to other treaties as states can choose whether to sign them or not. State consent is needed and this creates a huge problem when discussing universality. The most influential human rights treaties are the UDHR, (International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) (Chinkins). There are many more human rights treaties and these all have committees who overview and make sure that the treaty is being implemented in states that signed the treaty. These treaties are key to where human rights come from as they are legally binding and they attempt to spread human rights universally. In Chinkins readings she states that a negative of treaties is that consent is necessary. Personally, I do not believe that is a negative. I believe it is a positive as it shows that countries are willingly consenting to this treaty even though it may go against there culture. This will encourage other states to do the same and human rights will become more universal. When additional protocols are added to these treaties they also have to be consented as they are essentially creating a new treaty. General comments made by the committee of the treaties can also be a source where human rights come from but they are not enforceable. Overall, treaties are a useful tool where human rights are derived from and in my opinion, enforcement of human rights laid out in these treaties should be taken more seriously.

Customary International Law is made up from regulations that come from a general practice of law and exist independently of treaty law (Red Cross). It fills the gaps left by treaties and helps protect the victims of human rights violations. It is binding upon all states with limited exceptions (Chinkins). When looking to investigate a human rights issue using customary international law, people look to reports to UN treaty committees and also to material gathered by the Human Rights Universal Periodic Review (UPR). Researching for this diary has shown me that human rights come from many places and each individual may believe in some human rights and not others. However, treaties and customary law have the ability to form these rights and also protect them which I find to be hugely beneficial. An example of customary international human rights law in practice is the case Filartiga v Pena-Irala. This case dealt with prohibiting torture and the US judge called from the UDHR, previous judicial decisions and the work of lawyers and judges to come up with his decision (Filartiga v Pena-Irala). This case added torture into the rules under customary law. Customary law deals with intricate human rights and it is a good tool in creating new human rights.

I believe that some human rights cannot be ignored no matter the cultural difference and these human rights originate from Jus Cogens. A Jus Cogens norm is a rule that is accepted and recognised by the international community (Chinkins). It is the highest source of international human rights law and it deals crimes like torture and genocide. I agree that jus cogens are necessary in forming international human rights but it can become controversial when deciding which human rights are serious enough to fall under the jus cogens category. Human rights can also emerge from judicial decisions. I agree that it develops international law but the fact that is binding on only the states that were involved in the case is quite troublesome. I think that if it could be seen as precedent and all states that in a legal case concerning human rights should have to use it as precedent, then, in my eyes it would be more beneficial to human rights.

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When I first considered what are human rights and where do they come from, I was not nearly aware of how many details and contrasts could be found in the answer. What are human rights? This question still troubles me slightly but after extensive readings and through writing this diary I have a more concise answer. Human rights are based are the core elements of what make us human. Inherent dignity, access to freedom, the pursuit of happiness and much more are just elements of humanity and they are ever changing. Different cultures will always be present and human rights may never be fully universally accepted. However, I believe that is what makes the human species alluring and enthralling. Where are human rights from? I have more specific thoughts on this question. I believe that human rights come from humans making mistakes and learning from them. They are written down in treaties, customary law, jus cogens and judicial decisions but they truly derive from the development on the human race in my opinion. Human rights is an on-going topic and I believe it will never stop developing and moving forward.