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I would agree that the U.N. has been of great importance in the proliferation of human rights. However, I feel that the proliferation has affected U.S. citizens to a lesser degree than other countries' citizens (as many of our most basic rights have spread through post-Soviet nations, etc.).
I agree with Wellman that rights can be categorized. However, I think the categories presented by Wellman overlap, a fact he acknowledges may occur. The third generation rights he refers to are actually those protected under the first generation rights. In fact, the rights of association, solidarity (which is group cohesiveness), self-determination, and peace are covered under civil rights (or, at least they are in the United States), so the third generation could be classified as a subsection of the first generation. Instead, could rights be categorized by economic, civil, and self-determination rights?
Mental Models of Purpose of College
2 years ago
While the proliferation of human rights might have impacted the United States to a lesser degree than other nations, I don't think the role the United Nations has played in the proliferation of rights can be downplayed.
ReplyDeleteI saw its influence most certainly in the section on solidarity rights in Chapter 2. The genocide of World War II did much to spur the global community into denouncing "ethnic cleansing" and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was meant to create a series of rights that would help prevent such a recurrence.
What undermines the explanation of the three generations of moral rights for me, is their inability to be enforced. In the fifty years since the U.N. declared the existence of these rights, the genocide has not stopped. While good in theory, these lofty declarations of international human rights have just been lip service to what is morally right, not what is the reality of the world.
Compounding my reluctance to support the three generations of moral rights is the idea of entitlement behind rights. Wellman even uses that terminology, that rights are what we think we are entitled to. I am much more comfortable with the idea of liberty rights, of the things I can do because there is nothing preventing me from doing them.
At the same time, I don't like to consider what it would be like to not have the three new civil rights focused on in Chapter 3. Because I have grown up in a society that has outlined these rights, it seems unfair to live in a society without them. I can't totally believe that all of these are basic rights, but I don't want lose the rights to which I am accustomed. Hypocritical, I know.