HUMAN RIGHTS

Terminology

Since 1948 and the promulgation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the term “human rights” has been in common use in most of the languages into which it has been translated. Nevertheless, in French, particularly in France, the expression "human rights" is consecrated by usage, notably in the founding text of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789, which does not distinguish men of women, but men of citizens.

The French name is sometimes perceived as sexist or unrepresentative. Indeed, the expression "human rights", inherited from the 18th century, is the only one among the Romance languages to convey the ambiguity of man "male" and Man "human being", although the word Latin homo from which it etymologically derives designates the human being (the male man being designated by the word vir). In 1998, the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights recommended maintaining traditional expression.

However, in 2018, the High Council for Equality between Women and Men called for an end to the use of the term “human rights”, which it considers to discriminate against women, and to prefer the expression “ human rights ". However, "human rights" is also criticized because of the connotations linked to the adjective (rights applied with humanity) and the very fact of using a qualifier (rights which are of a human nature) by erasing the reference to the subject while it is about expressing that these rights belong to an individual. In other words, “It is not rights that are human, it is Humanity that has rights.”

The term "women's rights" which is used when talking specifically about women (as we talk about "children's rights" and "foreigners' rights") can give the impression that women would have different rights than those men in general. To overcome these ambiguities, some, such as the French Movement for Family Planning (MFPF), propose to speak of “human rights”, as is done in Canada.

Amnesty International in France has explicitly chosen to speak of “human rights” as the Swiss section of this organization does in its publications in French. It should be noted that the Swiss authorities regularly use, at the highest level, the expression “human rights” rather than “human rights”.

Finally, the use of “human rights” with a capital “H” in “Man”, which gives the word the meaning of collective person, is hardly attested in French-language dictionaries. On the other hand, it is often used among lawyers and in French normative texts, such as official journals.

History

Cyrus Cylinder

“It is difficult to precisely identify the origins of the philosophy of human rights. The observer's gaze is in fact quite mechanically obscured by a form of historical pareidolia which pushes him to see retrospectively in ancient texts expressions of this philosophy. Thus, the Cyrus Cylinder is often referred to anachronistically as the "first charter of human rights".

Engraved in clay at the request of Cyrus the Great after his conquest of Babylon in -539, this document was rediscovered in 1879 and translated in 1971 by the United Nations into all its official languages.

The cylinder decrees the natural themes of Persian rule: religious tolerance, abolition of slavery, freedom of choice of profession and expansion of empire. It is located in the Mesopotamian tradition presenting the ideal of the just king, the first known example of which is that of King Urukagina of Lagash, who reigned in the 24th century BC. BC, and another illustrious representative of which is Hammurabi of Babylon, with his code dating from the 18th century BC. AD

Cyrus' inscription, however, presents some innovative features, particularly regarding decisions concerning religion.

This document retraces the events preceding the capture of Babylon, then sets out the decisions of Cyrus the Great for the Babylonians: he reigned peacefully, freed certain people from forced labor considered unjust, he granted deported people the right to return to their country of origin. origin and lets the statues of deities once taken to Babylon return to their original sanctuaries. He proclaimed total freedom of worship in his empire.

Other references in Antiquity

Natural or intrinsic human rights are already explicitly mentioned:

in the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle evokes the principle of dignity and the respect that the individual must show to others; in the Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius and the Tusculanes of Cicero (on the notion of jus hominum, “rights of men”) , taking up Plato; in religious texts (such as the Ten Commandments, which command the right to life, to honor, etc.); in Saint Paul, in the epistle to the Corinthians, which speaks of the inner man, totally virgin, granting it absolute dignity; in literary texts, such as the play Antigone by Sophocles or purely philosophical, as in the texts of the Stoic school of thought.

Edict of Milan

Human rights, as they appeared in European history and as they then became generalized throughout the world through international organizations, draw their origin more particularly, according to Mgr Mamberti, from the edict of Milan, concrete application of the teachings of Christ and Saint Paul.

This edict of tolerance was promulgated in 313 by the Roman Emperor Constantine I to authorize freedom of worship for Christians. Freedom of religion and conscience are indeed the first of human rights.

Other references in Africa

In the 13th century, in Africa, see the oath text of the Manden charter (listed by UNESCO as the intangible heritage of humanity), which already sets out very modern formulations of the principles of equality before the law and -discrimination.In the 15th and 16th centuries, the great Islamic jurisconsults of the Mali Empire established principles very similar to those which would be established later in the "modern" declarations of human rights (see in particular the manuscripts of Timbuktu).

Modern era

The notion of minimum rights due solely to the quality of being human, or “natural rights”, is both old and general.

What characterizes the idea of human rights is the desire to explicitly enshrine them in law (oral or written), to recognize their universal application and a legal value superior to any other norm. We then often go through a form of proclamation, rather than through the ordinary rules for enacting legal norms; the terms used are those of pre-existing and indisputable evidence, which we discover and recognize, rather than a simple debatable convention.

Unanimity is implicitly invoked as the source of the legitimacy of these rights. Even if references to the divine or religious influences may be found, they appear as accessories, and the application of rights is intended to be independent of any religious affiliation. This independence constitutes the main difference between the philosophical basis of human rights and that of divine right, knowing that both have in common the belief in the existence of universal and permanent rules. Not including reference to any particular religion, except to the “Supreme Being”, for the French declaration of 1789, human rights are intended to apply independently of different religious sensitivities.

Great texts (13th – 17th centuries)

With this definition (not of content, but of form), we can go back at least to the Middle Ages to find the first manifestations, concrete and with real effects in practices, of the idea of human rights , united under the name of first generation human rights:

the Magna Carta (1215). This text is important but was only really used from the 17th century as an instrument against the royal absolutism of the Stuarts; the Twelve Articles in 1525; the Petition of Rights in 1628; the Act of Habeas Corpus, 1679 (foundation of criminal law); the Bill of Rights in 1689. It is considered in the English-speaking world as the basis of current concepts of human rights.

During the 16th century, in the West, the discovery of the indigenous peoples of America by Europeans and the first practices of deportation of Africans to the "New World" were at the origin of Bartolomé's human rights activism. de las Casas and certain sectors of the Catholic Church, such as the papacy itself, which manifest themselves with the acts Veritas ipsa and Sublimis Deus.

An approach to human and citizen rights based on the ancient model appeared in 1755 with the Constitution of the Generalate of Pascal de Paoli in Corsica (the first democratic state of the Age of Enlightenment for Voltaire and Rousseau), subsequently taken up by Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson for the United States (Lodge of the Nine Sisters).

The Corsican constitution contains the beginnings of human rights in a democratic society, such as the separation of powers and universal suffrage.

In The History of the Two Indies, the expression "human rights" appears in chapter 4: "The man who claimed human rights would perish in abandonment or infamy."

First declaration of human rights (1776)

The first Declaration of Human Rights was that of the State of Virginia (United States), written by George Mason and adopted by the Virginia Convention on June 12, 1776 (called in English the American Bill of Rights).

It was widely copied by Thomas Jefferson for the declaration of human rights included in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of July 4, 1776, by the other colonies in the drafting of their declarations of human rights, and by the French Assembly for the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, as well as it largely inspired the Universal Declaration of Human Rights voted by the UN in 1948.

Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789)

The French National Assembly, as soon as it declared itself constituent, decided to draw up a declaration. The discussion began on July 9 and led to a vote on August 26, 1789, under the influence of the leaders of the third estate and the liberal nobility. Ratified only on October 5 by Louis XVI under pressure from the Assembly and the people who rushed to Versailles, the declaration of 1789 will serve as a preamble to the first Constitution of the French Revolution, adopted in 1791.

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was promulgated by the king on November 3, 1789: it is a universalist philosophical (human rights) and legal (citizen's rights) declaration.

As early as 1790, in his work Reflections on the French Revolution, Edmund Burke denounced the French Revolution and more precisely the abstraction of human rights. The following year, James Mackintosh (1765-1832) in his Vindiciae Gallicae, a work which constitutes a response to Burke's book, expresses the philosophical point of view of a liberal on the events of the French Revolution until the spring of 1791. He defends human rights and his book is an interesting testimony from the point of view of a cultured Whig at that time, representative of the liberal philosophy resulting from the Age of Enlightenment. The excesses of the Revolutionaries and the Terror, however, led him a few years later to join Burke in his criticism. As for Jeremy Bentham, rejecting the idea of natural rights, he criticizes human rights from a utilitarian perspective.

Thomas Paine responds to Edmund Burke's attacks in Reflections on the French Revolution, as well as in Rights of Man, January 29, 1791 (published 1791-1792), a work in which he criticizes the monarchy British.

In 1791, Pope Pius VI condemned the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in his encyclical Adeo nota. According to him, its purely philosophical nature cannot claim to replace natural law as well as the law of the Church.

The notion of "human rights" remained practically stable for almost a century, then in 1948, taking into account the reality of social problems, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UN) added, to the Declaration initial, the so-called “second generation” rights (or “claim rights” guaranteed by the State over other human beings). It should be noted that the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789 excluded women. It was not until 1948 and the intervention of Eleanor Roosevelt that the notion of equality between the sexes appeared explicitly in an international convention.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)

The place of the United Nations body in the legitimization and promotion of human rights is essential. The term universal was included in the title of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 at the UN at the initiative of René Cassin. This Declaration has no binding aspect, unlike international Covenants or Conventions when the latter are ratified by the countries concerned.

European Convention on Human Rights (1950)

Later developments

Since the Charter of the United Nations (1945) and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the notion of human rights has been extended, legislated and mechanisms have been created to monitor violations of these rights. Let us cite some notable events:

1966: adoption by the UN of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. 1967: creation of investigative mechanisms by the UN Commission on violations of human rights rights of member countries. 1991: first international meeting of national institutions for the promotion and protection of human rights, organized by the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights (CNCDH), in Paris, under the aegis of the United Nations.December 1993: adoption by the United Nations General Assembly of the Vienna Declaration and Program of Action, which gives a large place to democracy and development, considered as an integral part of human rights, and which calls on all States parties to create national institutions guaranteeing human rights and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. 2006: creation of the United Nations Human Rights Council during the adoption by the General Assembly on March 15, 2006 of resolution A/RES/60/251.

For American historian Samuel Moyn, human rights have only become the world's preferred vocabulary for talking about justice in recent decades. Specifically, he dates the birth of human rights, as an ideology and movement, to the mid-1970s. He argues that it was not until the 1970s, when other ideologies (utopian socialism, anti-colonialism , and anti-communism) fell into disuse as human rights assumed a status as the ultimate moral arbiter of international conduct.

Thus, “it is from the implosion of previous utopias that the “last utopia” was born: human rights as the supreme norm supposed to bring about a better world”.

The main purpose of human rights, namely to impose limits on the activity of the State, is according to Moyn an idea foreign to human rights "which aimed to define citizenship and not to protect humanity ". After the Second World War, human rights remained confined solely to the diplomacy of States within the framework of the United Nations and were hardly claimed except by currents of Christian personalism which were "rapidly identified with anti-communism and only defense of the Western world.

Concept en extension

The philosophy of human rights never ceases to question their existence, their nature and their justification:

Human rights are prerogatives enjoyed by individuals or groups. The State and institutions are required to respect them and ensure they are respected; they are inalienable (no one can lose them, temporarily or permanently, voluntarily or not); they are universal because they are based on reason and not on cultural particularisms .

For certain contemporary human rights activists, international standards, valid for all countries and all peoples, must be decreed and supported - where appropriate - by the right of intervention, but the affirmation of their universality meets many objections in a world tempted by relativism. This is a particularly important question in contemporary political philosophy.

The extension of the concept of human rights has led to the identification of several “generations” of Rights.

Magali Lafourcade, a lawyer specializing in the subject, underlines the “elasticity” of the concept to account for the movement to enrich the body of human rights.