International Law

Human rights are international norms that help to protect all people every where from severe political, legal and social abuse. Example of human rights are the right to reedom of religion, the right to a fair trail when charged with a crime, the right not to ne tortured, and the right to engage in political activity. These rights exist in morality and in law at the national and international levels. They are addressed primarily to overnments, requiring compliance and enforcement. The main sources of the contemporary conception of human rights are the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations, 1948b) and the many human rights documents and treaties that followed in international organizations such as the United Nation, the Council of Europe, the Organization of America States, and the African Union.

1. The General Idea of Human Rights:

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) sets out a list of over two dozen specific human rights that countries should respect and protect. These specific rights can be divided into six or more families: security rights that protect people against crimes such as murder, massacre, torture, and rape; due process rights that protect against abuses of the legal system such as imprisonment without trial, secret trial, and excessive punishment; liberty that protect freedoms in area such as belief, expression, association, assembly, and movement; political rights that protect the liberty to participate in politics through action such as communicating, assembling, protesting, voting, and serving in public office; equality rights that guarantee equal citizenship, equality before the law, and nondiscrimination; and social rights that require provision of education to all children and protections against severe poverty and starvation.

a) Human Rights are political norms dealing mainly with how people should be treated by their government and institutions.

b) Human rights exist as moral and /or legal rights

c) Human...