Human Rights - Constitutional Law

Human rights are fundamental to our existence. They are inalienable, inherent, indivisible and universal. They are inalienable as they cannot be taken away. They are inherent as they are permanent and essential. They are indivisible as they cannot be split up. They are universal as they belong to everyone.

There are many types of rights:

• Cultural rights

• Social rights

• Civil rights

• Political rights

• Economic rights

Human rights are rights inherent to all human beings that we are all equally entitled to without discrimination.

Religion brought early ideas of ethics and morals, development of democracy, magna carta and the US Bill of Rights are all ways in which human rights have been developed. It wasn’t until WWII when a pivotal moment in international human rights was taken.

Slavery was a commonly practiced human rights abuse from ancient to 18th century times.

An extremely effective anti-slavery campaign was led by British politician William Wilberforce which exerted pressure on the British Government to end the trade in slaves in its overseas territories. Importation of slaves to the colonies officially ended in the British Empire with the passing of the Slave Trade Act 1807 (UK).

Following the 1776 US Declaration of Independence, the northern states began to abolish slavery under the notion that ‘all men are created equal’. Yet due ot the economic benefit of slavery in the southern states, slavery continued. The US abolitionist movement campaigned vigorously against slavery, and it became one of the main causes of the American Civil War. All US slaves were freed by the end of the war in 1865 and slavery was abolished by the addition of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America 1787.

Efforts to ban slavery increased as seen in the General Act of the Brussel’s Conference in which many European states met to ban slavery. After the end of WWII, the member states of the UN made a clear statement that slavery was prohibited, under Article 4 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948).

In some parts of Africa, Asia and the Islamic world, slavery persisted as a legal institution further into the twentieth century, and later treaties addressed issues of ongoing slavery in more detail. Mauritania was the final country in the world to outlaw slavery in 1981.

Campaigns to improve labour rights and conditions were waged over the 1800s.

In Europe, labour laws as protection for workers arose with the industrial revolution. Major changes in the fields of manufacturing, agriculture and transport redefined society and acted as the catalyst for changes.

Trade unions first emerged during the Industrial Revolution in response to the appalling conditions, lack of safety, low wages and long working hours. This caused employers to improve conditions as if all workers strike they were forced to change to ensure production continued.

British Parliament passed the Trade Union Act 1871 (UK), under pressure, which secured the legal status of trade unions.

The unions in Australia joined together to form their own political party, the Australian Labor Party which was followed by a series of laws that passed in the late nineteenth century aimed at improving safety and working conditions in many of the primary industries, such as mining and textiles.

In 1919, following the end of WWI a group of scholars, social policy experts and politicians succeeded in creating the ILO to discuss social reforms and put them into practice. This was formed as an agency to the League of Nations.

Labour rights were finally enshrined in Articles 23 and 24 of the UDHR. Treaties such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, as well as the ongoing work of the ILO, have further defined those rights and sought to implement them around the world.

The right to vote was usually restricted by status, gender, race, age beliefs or nationality. The concept of universal suffrage is only a recent development in the world, but where it has been achieved it is now considered an essential human right.

Demands for all males began in world democracies in the 19th century. UK rights for males were only gradually extended to males who rented land, male householders, etc. Representation of the People Act 1918 (UK) was when the vote was extended to the whole adult male population.

Women who campaigned for the right to vote were known as suffragettes. In 1893, New Zealand become the first country in the world to give women an equal right to vote in which the Commonwealth followed in 1902.

Indigenous people were given the right to vote in 1967 after the referendum.

The right to vote was recognised as a universal human right in Article 21 of the UDHR. However was not seriously considered a universal right until the end of the Cold War.

By the end of WWII, free and compulsory education had spread throughout developed countries and was regarded as not only a desirable goal for all governments to pursue but also a basic human right.

The UN made education a major priority of its economic and social development programs. The right to free education for all human beings was included under Article 26 of the UDHR. Self Determination

The collective right to self-determination means that people of a territory or national grouping

have the right to determine their own political status: the group has the right to choose how it will be governed without undue influence from another country.

Self determination and its recognition as a right was influenced by the idea that nobody should arbitrarily interfere with other rights to run their own nations. This was enshrined in article 1 in the UDHR.

It is also highlighted in the first articles of both the ICESCR and the ICCPR.

In the 1960s, the UN formed the International Trusteeship Council to reverse the effects of colonisation and...