Last301 - On Declarations, Bills and Human Rights in general

Hello all,

This post will be commenting on several bills and declarations of human rights that where assigned for reading for the course this week. These include: the "American Convention of Human Rights", the "English Bill of Rights", "The Magna Carta", "The United Nations Charter", "The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights", "The United States Declaration of Independence", "The United States Bill of Rights" and "The Vienna Declaration".

First of all, one of the things that strike me most while reading the documents is that all of them are very idealistic and in general, too generic in their vocabulary. This leaves a lot of room for different interpretations of the documents by different people where they can understand different things and find a variety of meanings to the texts.

Furthermore, all these documents concerning the defense and establishment of "Rights" for people reflect the exact concerns that where troubling the respective societies at the time the documents where written. I will point out some examples:

1. The Magna Carta refers specifically to the rights of the "Freeman", referring to free, English, white, male persons. The Magna Carta is not addressing every single person who would be nowadays entitled to those same rights.

2. The US Bill of Rights and Constitution have a somewhat strong emphasis on the right and importance for preserving and defending private property.

3. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms on the other hand, is concerned with language issues over the use of French and English as the two official languages to be used in this country.

4. Even the UN Universal Declaration of Human rights (conceived as a response to WWII genocide crimes), is geared towards the protection of people against threats to their lives specifically.

I don't think there is anything wrong in creating legal frames like these that intend to protect or create legal tools for people so they can use them to defend healthy and honorable lifestyles, respecting human integrity and life as such. But the question that I ask is whether the issues that need to be addressed in this Bills and Declarations are always going to remain the same? I think not... They will always be changing throughout human history. Just think about equality rights for homosexuals, who are right now struggling to be recognized as equal members of society all over the western world. In the future this will again change and new issues will arise beyond the recognition of rights for homosexuals and they will need to be addressed as well.

Personal note: I was not entirely aware of the rights and freedoms that I was entitled to. By reading these documents I realize how the vast majority of the people, myself included, are taking all of these for granted. The population is just not interested in knowing what their rights are and this translates into ignorance about the topic.

Good night everyone.

RuizSKBO


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