Universal Declaration of Human Rights

U Thant the Burmese United Nations Secretary General from 1961 to 1971 spoke on the Declaration of Human Rights:

This great and inspiring instrument was born of an increased sense of responsibility by the international community for the promotion and protection of man’s basic rights and freedoms. The world has come to a clear realization of the fact that freedom, justice and world peace can only be assured through the international promotion and protection of these rights and freedoms.

The prescient quotation above is a succinct summation of both the purpose and goal of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It was set out not as a lofty set of utopian ideals, but rather a basic structure under which nations should accord expressing the rights of which all people of the world are entitled. Yet the declaration is not without its detractors. Key among them are philosophers Maurice Cranston, Robert Nozick and Henry Shue which each according to their unique outlook opposes rights listed within the declaration, specifically the economic rights listed.

The distinction between political and economic rights can be tricky to distinguish because there are different uses of each term. For the purposes of this essay I will use political and economic rights as used in the context of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. Political Rights are defined in articles 3 to 21 of the Declaration such as right to life and freedom from slavery while Economic Rights are in articles 22 to 27. In this framework both political and economic rights are human rights that nations ought to equally respect and protect.

The first portion of rights mentioned in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is Political and Civil which serve to pr...

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...that is supposedly protected by society if he or she lacks the essentials for a reasonably healthy and active life. Deficiencies in the means of subsistence can be just as fatal, incapacitating, or painful as violations of physical security. The resulting damage or death can at least as decisively prevent the enjoyment of any right as can the effects of security violations.”

Subsistence Rights are not a means to an end, but fundamental in benefitting from all other rights. Henry Shue that human rights “lower limits on tolerable human conduct….rather than great aspirations and exalted ideals.”

Shue uses the terms basic rights and human rights in much of the same fashion. Shue argues to assert the existence of human rights is to insist not simply that it is wrong for people to violate fundamental human interests but that such interests must be protected.