Discover the reasons to highlight children`s rights in their own human rights convention Political theorists would add a number of political roles or functions to the four defining elements proposed above. This kind of view may be plausible for the very important international human rights law that has emerged in international law and policy over the past fifty years. But human rights can exist and function in contexts that do not involve international control and intervention, such as a world with one state. Imagine, for example, that an asteroid impact kills everyone in every country except New Zealand, making it the only state in existence. To be sure, the idea of human rights, as well as many dimensions of human rights practice, could persist in New Zealand even if there were no international relations, laws or policies (for such an argument, see Tasioulas 2012). And if, in the same scenario, a few people were found who survived in Iceland and live without a government or state, New Zealanders would know that human rights dictate how these people should be treated, even if they are stateless. The depth of the idea of human rights must be deeply rooted in international law and international practice should not be regulated by decree by definition. However, we can allow the kind of political functions described by Rawls and Beitz to be generally fulfilled by international human rights today. The international human rights movement was strengthened by the holding of the United Nations General Assembly on 10 July. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted in December 1948. The Declaration, formulated as a “common standard of achievement for all peoples and nations”, establishes for the first time in human history fundamental civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights that all peoples should enjoy.
It has been widely accepted over time as the core human rights standards that everyone should respect and protect. Together with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and its two Optional Protocols and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the UDHR forms the International Bill of Human Rights. This section examines which rights should be included in the list of human rights. A seventh category, the rights of minorities and groups, was created by subsequent treaties. These rights protect women, racial and ethnic minorities, indigenous peoples, children, migrant workers and persons with disabilities. A child is any person under the age of eighteen years, unless the law applicable to the child reaches the age of majority earlier. United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child All human beings are equal as human beings and by virtue of the inherent dignity of every human being. All persons are entitled to the enjoyment of their human rights without discrimination of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, ethnicity, age, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, disability, property, birth or other status, as declared by the human rights treaty bodies. Should human rights be defined as minimum rights? A number of philosophers have argued that human rights are minimal in the sense that they are not too numerous (a few dozen rights instead of hundreds or thousands) and are not too demanding (see Joshua Cohen 2004, Ignatieff 2005 and Rawls 1999).
Their views suggest that human rights are more about avoiding the worst than getting the best. Henry Shue suggests that human rights are about the “lower limits of tolerable human behavior” rather than “great aspirations and lofty ideals” (Shue 1996). Where human rights are modest norms, they leave most legal and political issues to democratic decision-making at the national and local levels. This allows human rights to be a high priority, to take into account the major cultural and institutional differences between countries and to leave ample space open for democratic decision-making at the national level. Nevertheless, there is no contradiction in the idea of an extremely long list of human rights, and therefore minimalism is not a defining feature of human rights (for the critique of the view that human rights are minimum standards, see Brems 2009 and Raz 2010). Minimalism is best seen as a normative recipe for what international human rights should be. Moderate forms of minimalism have considerable appeal, but not within the framework of the definition of human rights. Other groups, such as indigenous peoples, have also received special protection at the international level through the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, although it is not yet a legally binding instrument. Not only do human rights violations contribute to and worsen health degradation, but for many, including persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples, women living with HIV, sex workers, drug users, transgender and intersex people, health care carries an increased risk of exposure to human rights violations – including coercive or coercive treatment and procedures.
