Abstract
The Human Dignity Principle is not the entirety of the Ethics of Human Rights. This Chapter presents other values and rights, with their legal and doctrinal bases, possessing the normative strength of ethical principles from which other rights and duties derive.
In light of International Human Rights Law and other international normative documents, the following principles may be highlighted that, together with the Human Dignity Principle, may be considered as constituting the general framework of the Ethics of Human Rights: life, liberty, equality, diversity, non-discrimination, tolerance, solidarity, democracy, development and peace.
The Ethics of Human Rights—and some dimensions of it in particular—are a Common Responsibility of Humankind.
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The earliest-known written appearance of the word ‘liberty’ or ‘freedom’ was found in a document written about 2300 BC in Lagash, Summeria (amagi) (see first pages of Passmore 1970).
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For Latin text: http://web.upmf-grenoble.fr/Haiti/Cours/Ak/.For English translation: http://classes.maxwell.syr.edu/His381/InstitutesofJustinian.htm#Book I.
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Et libertas quidem est, ex qua etiam liberi vocantur, naturalis facultas eius quod cuique facere libet, nisi si quid aut vi aut iure prohibetur.
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Ib.
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The term ‘metarights’ was used by Amartya Sen, Nobel Prize winner in Economics (1998), and taken up by Arjun Sengupta, Independent Expert on the Right to Development, in note 4 of the Fifth report of the independent expert on the right to development—Frameworks for development cooperation and the right to development, presented to the CHR (E/CN.4/2002/WG.18/6, 8 September 2002). According to the UN Independent Expert:
A metaright to something x can be defined as the right to have policies p (x), that genuinely pursues the objective of making the right to x realizable. […] The outcomes of the process of development are human rights while the process of development that leads to these outcomes are also human rights. […] Therefore, the right to the process of development can be regarded as a metaright.
[…]
It is probably much better to describe the right to development, as the right to a process of development, as a ‘basic right’ in the sense in which Henry Shue used this term (See Shue 1980). A basic right is one the enjoyment of which is essential to the enjoyment of all other rights.
[…]
The right to a process of development can in that sense effectively be described as basic relative to all the other rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural. Without the realization of the basic right, none of the other rights can be enjoyed effectively and in a sustained manner. (See Sen 1984)
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The UNESCO Constitution, adopted the same year, mentions “democractic principles” in the Preamble.
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The Charter Article 4 provides the statement:
1. Membership in the United Nations is open to all other peace-loving states which accept the obligations contained in the present Charter and, in the judgment of the Organization, are able and willing to carry out these obligations.2. The admission of any such state to membership in the United Nations will be effected by a decision of the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.
According to Article 1 of the Montevideo Convention on Rights and Duties of States (1933), adopted in the Seventh International Conference of American States:The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications:a. a permanent population;b. a defined territory;c. government; andd. capacity to enter into relations with the other states.Same Varayudej (2006) observes: “There are some who suggest that these criteria have been supplemented by the requirements that statehood must be achieved in accordance with the principle of self-determination and the fundamental human rights norms outlawing apartheid or racist policies” (p. 4, note 11).
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www.unhchr.ch/huridocda/huridoca.nsf/(symbol)/e.cn.4.res.1999.57.en?opendocument.
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See: Koen De Feyter (Ed.), Globalization and Common Responsibilities of States, 2013, Ashgate, p. 576.
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Reis Monteiro, A. (2014). Other Principles. In: Ethics of Human Rights. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03566-6_6
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