Dude, Where's My Rights ?
Blast from the past
We hear a lot of talk about basic human rights in the media, by politicians, activists and the like. They use terms like “inalienable rights”, “natural right”, and “God-given freedom” to make a point about the importance of their struggle. If we were to take their word for it, we would believe that we were all born with a policy book in our hands, outlining all our individual demands for freedom and security.
Of course, this isn’t the case. We are all born naked, wet and gooey like all the other creatures on the planet. And yet, who wouldn’t agree that everyone on this planet is entitled to some basic freedom to live as they choose, so long as they don’t hurt anyone else? This idea is so entrenched in our culture it would almost seem natural.
In fact, the concept of human rights, like so many good ideas, has developed over a long time. Almost from the beginnings of civilisation philosophers have pondered and debates have raged about human rights issues. The language may have been different but thoughts about what is just and who deserves to be treated with dignity and what that means anyway have occupied people throughout time. Yep, Babylonians, Greeks, Christians, Muslims, Romans, Chinese, Indians – basically anyone who ever had debates contributed to this one.
Unfortunately a lot of the developments in human rights issues have occurred after some people with power have treated other people without power very inhumanely. These actions make very clear the need to somehow try to prevent them happening again and have led to declarations of rights in various forms over time. Unfortunately, history shows us that we often wait for very hard lessons before we do anything about protecting human rights. Many of the important developments in human rights throughout history have come about as reactions to crimes against humanity of monumental proportions. In fact, the United Nations, the current universal protector of human rights, was formed in the wake of the Second World War where the scope of atrocities had been enormous and included civilians as well as armies.
Where are we now?
Because of all the interest ideas have changed over time so that we are now at the point where we have international agreement on what our basic human rights are. This was done through the United Nations and most countries have signed the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
We also have a special UN Declaration protecting the rights of children, known as the Convention on the Rights of the Child, or CROC.
You may be surprised that all these important-sounding UN Declarations actually have no legal power in themselves. It is up to each member state to put into place laws and systems of their own in order to enforce human rights within their borders.
In Australia, we have the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Act 1986. This set of laws is overseen by the imaginatively named Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission.
In Victoria, the Equal Opportunity Commission takes care of our state laws set out in the Equal Opportunity Act 1995 (Vic).
Where to now?
- To follow developments of human rights through time have a look at the Human Rights Timeline.
- To find out about the UN Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, click here.
- To find out about Australian and Victorian protection of human rights, click here.
- To get web resources on the issue of Human Rights and Students’ Rights, go to our Resources.
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