Topic 3: Review of Human Rights Categories

Let us look at the part that each of the categories of human rights we have looked at plays in creating a free and fair world.

Personal Safety Rights are the most immediate rights that people experience directly. If life in a community or country is dangerous (UDHR Article 3), or if discrimination is rife in the society (UDHR Article 2), the violations of human rights will be easy to spot. In this case, people need to investigate how the Rule of Law is operating (UDHR Articles 6 to 11) and do their utmost to correct it, either in the courts of law or (Legal Protection Rights) or by seeking to change the law or introduce new law, exercising the right to participate in public affairs (UDHR Article 21).

If they are frustrated in attempting to achieve legislative changes, they may have to have recourse to protest by gathering publicly (UDHR Article 20), even to rebellion (UDHR Preamble Paragraph 3). If matters deteriorate further, they may want to travel elsewhere in their own country or abroad (UDHR Article 13), and if they deteriorate still further, people involved in the protest may have to seek asylum in another country (UDHR Article 14). In extreme cases, they may be denied citizenship and become a stateless person (UDHR Article 15).

This demonstrates how all the rights link up with one another and combine to create what people think of as ‘the moral backbone of human rights on Planet Earth’.

The Social Needs and Development Rights (UDHR Articles 22 to 27) depend partly on the wealth of the country but also on the way the society is organised. Refer back to the Introduction to that Topic for more on this.