Talk:Human rights

reworking of the "currently debated rights" issues

I would welcome any comments from other editors as to how we could improve or ameliorate this section of the article - at the moment there appear to be real issues within the section, it reads like a disparate list of controversial issues within the human rights context and i am not convinced that it really helps the article as it currently stands Ajbpearce (talk) 21:07, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Human right abuse

Human right abuse is an important subject and it isnt exactly covered well here.--Penbat (talk) 14:00, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Downgrade to C class

Currently this article has major formatting issues, it is FAR too long, and in many places is not coherent, as a consequence I am downgrading it to class C, it could really do with some work! Ajbpearce (talk) 08:41, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Article Length

As part of dealing with the article length I am creating a new article on Philosophy of human rights, using the essentially duplicated content on this page and the "history of human rights" page, the page is available in my userspace if anyone else would like to help develop it before I release it Ajbpearce (talk) 09:07, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Property and Value

this section seems to have no place in this article. nowhere in the body of this section does it ever link back to human rights. While a case can be made that conceptions of property and value effect the social and economic rights that we deem universal, this link is never drawn. Additionally such a link would be unfounded in this article unless a citation was provided. If no one objects I will delete this section in a few days... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.133.124.87 (talk) 18:32, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Universalism vs. Cultural Relativism

Cultural relativism is a self-detonating position; if cultural relativism is true, then universalism must also be true. Relativistic arguments also tend to neglect the fact that modern human rights are new to all cultures, dating back no further than the UDHR in 1948. They also don't account for the fact that the UDHR was drafted by people from many different cultures and traditions, including a US Roman Catholic, a Chinese Confucian philosopher, a French zionist and a representative from the Arab League, amongst others, and drew upon advice from thinkers such as Mahatma Gandhi.

This statement most definitely not from a neutral point-of-view, and should perhaps be altered.

enjoymoreradio (talk) 08:04, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Lede cleanup

I recently made an attempt to clean up the lede. User:Yorkshirian tonight reverted the whole thing but only mentioned disagreement to one part, so I'm coming here to discuss it, in the meanwhile I've reverted back to keep the things not explicitly objected to.

My edit summary said "human rights aren't a concept, rather there are concepts OF human rights; if they're universalist then they're not relativist; nobody calls it the Liberal Enlightenment; etc". Point by point, to elaborate:

• The first is just grammar, and I see mistakes like this all over wikipedia a lot. "Subject is the question about..." or "Subject is the concept of..." or "Subject denotes..." whatever. A human right is just a right that belongs to all humans; there are many different concepts about human rights and plenty of people disagree about what counts as a human right or if there exist any human right at all or if the concept thereof even makes any sense, but the answer to the question "What's a human right?" (a request for definition, as in, "what does it mean for something to be a human right?") is "a right belonging to all humans", or at least something along those lines, not "the concept of..." something. The concept of a human right is that of a right belonging to all humans (or something like that), but the rights themselves, whatever their objects may be or whether they exist at all, are not "a concept".
• The universalist/relativist thing: just because a right is not enjoyed by everyone everywhere does not make it "relativist". To say that someone has a right to something is to make an "ought" claim, not an "is" claim; if there really is a human right to X, then even if nobody anywhere actually has X, they still have a right to it. In other words, saying "everyone has a right to X" does not at all imply "everyone has X", so the negation of the latter can't impugn on the assertion of the former. Even more simply: if human rights really are universal, then they logically cannot be relative, as "universal" and "relative" (in this context at least) are each other's negations: something is universal if and only if it is not relative.
• The last bit is mostly my political troll senses tingling; I've never heard anybody call it the "Liberal Enlightenment", and the way that "Liberal" (especially with a capital L) is bandied about as an insult these days, it makes me very wary to see it there, like someone is trying to impugn the character of the Enlightenment by associating it with those "dirty liberals". Granted, classical liberalism and the Enlightenment have a lot of history together, but that's not my point. I'd like to see a reference to some reputable source calling it the "Liberal Enlightenment". This wariness is heightened by the use of "relativist" in the same edits, as it is often used as an insult by the same people who use "liberal" thusly.
• The rest of my edit was just grammar/organization/misc.

Please discuss. --Pfhorrest (talk) 10:15, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

The current intro is from here here a pretty bold change by User:Yorkshirian that i had missed. I think that it has been improved in some ways but i have merged back in some of my old one where i think it is helpful. though feel free to to revert / improve on it ofc. The main problem is the body of this article is so looooooonngg and disconnected though, the best way to imporve this article would be to merge sections 5 & 6 into a new article, cutting down what is here and merge 7 & 8 into a new article about human rights debates or something, but that is a huge job and I just don't have the time to do it at the moment ;( Ajbpearce (talk) 11:25, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

The concept of "human rights" is specifically in implication legislative (ie - proposing a basis for legal rights, defended in courts) formed by ethical propositions of specific moral systems (pluralism, in which it is proposed that all people regardless of cultural, organisational or ethnic associations should be tolerated, based on the Liberal Enlightenment). This sytem and concept, isn't based on some sort of esoteric mystical automatic reception in the sense as proposed by Pfhorrest (do you have any scientific evidence from peer-reviewed journals to suggest otherwise?), this is gobbledegook. Such a presentation clouds the reality of the system and its real world application, taking the concept out of a grounded application and ethical proposal, transforming into something "all in the ether", in a sort of pretentious post-modern gas-letting which is not readable, comprehendable or mirrored by its application in legal practice (for instance in the legislature of the United Nations). As for the Enlightenment been Liberal and rationalist—this is in the classical sense—just because the term is used as an epithet by some in the United States doesn't change the fact that Locke, Rousseau, etc were classical liberals. - Yorkshirian (talk) 09:35, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm not even sure where to begin here... there are so many POVs and so much conflation of concepts implicit in the above.

• You seem to disregard the possibility of natural rights entirely (surprising given your Catholic heritage; Aquinas is one of the most famous supporters of natural law), which is largely the basis of support for human rights (e.g. that people have rights naturally, in virtue of being human, without anyone having to grant them those rights). To flatly deny that is POV and thus not appropriate for wikipedia; we should state what the claim is ("human rights are..."), and then that it is controversial, rather than stating a controversial position (which yours above is) as uncontroversial fact.
• You seem to be confusing pluralism with relativism, and further still, still confusing relativism with universalism, which you haven't addressed above. A relativist claim would say something like "people in China have different rights than people in the United States", which is true in the sense of legal rights, but not in the sense of natural rights which most human rights discourse is about. When someone claims "X is a human right", they mean "all humans everywhere have a (natural) right to X", or in other words "all humans everywhere are (morally) entitled to X". That is the complete opposite of a relativist claim, and doesn't really have much to do with pluralism at all. Pluralism is the claim that there are incommensurable but in some sense equal values; which does not entail relativism. To use a silly example, one could make the universalist claim that "everyone has a right to their favorite flavor of ice cream" without saying anything about what flavor is best, or even saying "also, no flavor is really objectively best", which would be a pluralist claim. Whereas a relativist claim would be something like "Mexicans have a right to vanilla ice cream, where that is the best flavor, but not chocolate; and Brazilians have a right to chocolate ice cream, since that is the best flavor there, but not to vanilla; and people of other places have rights to the flavors which are best there, but none is really better in any objective sense").
• You are still conflating is and ought or facts and values. When someone claims "liberty is a universal human right" they are not claiming "all jurisdictions grant a legal right to liberty to all humans" (which is clearly false); they are saying all humans are morally entitled to liberty (which is debated). This confusion is further evidenced by your request for "scientific evidence": ethics, morality, norms, values, "ought" problems, whatever you would like to call them, are not even within the domain of science; science doesn't even try to answer those kinds of questions; science is only concerned with what is. I'm not claiming anything about any kind of "esoteric mystical" metaphysical facts either; I'm saying that claims of human rights are not assertions of fact at all, but assertions of value, in particular of universal value; they are not claims about what is, but about what ought to be.
• Once again I'm not disputing the association of classical liberalism with the Enlightenment, I'm only questioning the constant conjunction of the terms, and particularly the capital L on "Liberal". The Enlightenment involved a lot of ideas about liberty; and, like you mention, rationality; and also equality; and democracy; and science, and technology... so should we say "the Liberal Rational Egalitarian Democratic Scientific Technological Enlightenment" every time we mention it, or just "the Enlightenment"? Aside from that, liberty is not the defining quality of the Enlightenment as far as it's relation to human rights goes; if anything, equality is. Human rights claims don't always say things about liberty, but they all say that people have equal rights.
• More procedurally, your reverting in the middle of this discussion (especially since the still-emerging consensus does not really seem to agree with your edits, see Ajbpearce's comment above and his edit summary here) is a violation of WP:BRD, and further still, your reverts are undoing a lot more than just what you're edit summaries comment on (undoing undoubtedly valuable minor edits such as this in the process); and in some cases (like this one), your edits seem to have nothing at all to do with your edit summaries.
• Also, on the subject of that last edit... well for one it's "ethical" not "ethnical", but that implication is "automatic" as you put it, since human rights are a kind of right and all rights have something to do with legal or ethical considerations. However, since you seem to think that is not so transparent, I'm happy to include that with... well, that's on to the next point:
• Since this is still under debate and your reverting behavior is somewhat reckless, I'm partially reverting back to Ajbpearce's last version, keeping your sisterlinks addition and adding something about law and ethics per your edit summary. Addendum: actually I can't find anywhere that a mention of law and ethics doesn't sound awkward, and Adbpearce's version already mentions both legal rights and natural rights anyway.

--Pfhorrest (talk) 10:44, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Natural law and the modern concept of human rights are not the same thing (in the context that they are popularly spread today, as ensrined in the legislature of the United Nations, this derives from specifically from Enlightenment sources and concepts). I will reply in full to you later on, got a bit on at the moment. However, I would agree with Ajbpearce that the body of the article itself is a mess and highly disconnected. It needs a lot of work and effort put into it to tie up the the loose ends and achieve something presentable. - Yorkshirian (talk) 13:01, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Natural rights (not the same as natural law, but a closely related topic) are very much an Enlightenment-era concept; perhaps not originating there but certainly very important within the discourse of that period. See philosophers like Locke and politicians like Jefferson... both (the former indirectly via the latter) highly influential on the US Declaration of Independence and thence on the US Constitution and Bill of Rights and thence on the UDHR.

I eagerly await the rest of your reply. --Pfhorrest (talk) 19:34, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

LGBT rights section

There's been a lot of edit warring around the LGBT rights section lately, particularly between User:Dougcweho and User:Schrandit, with discussion happening in the edit notes, but it seems appropriate to open up a proper discussion section on it here.

My position: Doug (if I may call him that) seems to be editing in a good-faith fashion and not intentionally POV-pushing, but his POV does show through some, and his edits need some tempering. In general I agree with Schrandit that the section on LGBT rights in this article should be brief, and main'd to the main LGBT rights article for more information. This article is too long as it is already, and is supposed to cover human rights in general, so we don't want to go into too much detail on one particular area of it.

(As an aside: there doesn't appear to be a main "LGBT rights" article at the moment, which is something I noticed a while back when organizing the Right sidebar and Rights-related articles around Wikipedia. Instead there is a list of current LGBT rights by country or territory, which LGBT Rights presently redirects to, and a history of LGBT social movements, along with many other more specific articles on various LGBT issues. Perhaps Dougcweho could focus his efforts in pulling information from those articles to create a proper article on LGBT Rights in general, which could then be main'd from here?)

Regarding the most recent edits, I disagree with Schrandit's rationale for removing the phrase "human and civil rights" from the first sentence of this section, though not with the edit itself. He wrote in his edit summary "if they were human rights they wouldn't be in this section, maybe some day, not today". That statement has an obvious POV against a natural rights account of human rights, whereby something either is or is not a human right and things don't become them over time just by agreement or legislation. However as the entire article is about Human Rights in the first place, I don't think it's necessary to restate in the beginning of each section that the rights being discussed are (at least controversially as in this case) human rights. On that grounds I support the edit.

--Pfhorrest (talk) 06:11, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Pfhorrest's assessment and advice of the situation. I welcome his edits without reservation. Meanwhile, I will further edit the entry according to his advice.--DCX (talk) 09:10, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Howdy, I do believe in Natural Rights and Natural Law, but when they are contested how do we agree on where to put them? I am fairly pro-life and believe with all my heart that the section below (fetal rights) are human rights but at present that is a very contested opinion and much legislation weighs in against it. Maybe it is one of those Truth v. Verifiability issues. When a right is contested and not included in legislation like the UNDHR I am inclined not to lable it as a Human Right.

I agree that at present the article "LGBT rights" is very lacking and thats why I put listed 2 other better articles as main on the top of the section. Doug pointed out that Sodomy Laws don't have the greatest connotations in the world and that they are mentioned later in the body of the section. I could go either way on that. - Schrandit (talk) 16:35, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

My general approach in philosophy articles (where there's rarely consensus in the field) has been to state a straightforward definition of the concept, sometimes with a qualifier like "supposed" or "purported" or "controversial", and then immediately state it's controversiality, then proceed to discuss the concept more, and then criticisms of it. So in the case you mentioned, I would write something like "Fetal rights are the supposed the rights of unborn children, including [right1, right2, right3, etc]. The existence of fetal rights is hotly contested by [parties X, Y, and Z]." for the beginning of the lede, then go on to discuss the concept in more detail for the rest of the lede and article, with a criticism section at the bottom. An alternate approach can be to say, for that second sentence, "[concept] is generally supported by [parties A, B, and C], yet is contested by [parties X, Y, and Z]". --Pfhorrest (talk) 19:12, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

I'd also like to bring up the Yogukarta Principles for a bit. They just don't seem to be that big a deal. They were written in 2006 and really havn't gone any where. They have not been adopted by any body at all. There were some displays of support near their release but that was 4 years ago and nothing has happened since. Is is really appropriate to lend them such, in my opinon, undue weight? - Schrandit (talk) 16:46, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

The importance of mentioning the Yog Principles it is the first international declaration to address LGBTI rights and to give background and relation to the French UN proposal. I do agree that the entry, as I originally wrote had too much information on the principles.--DCX (talk) 19:47, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Cool, perhaps some paring back is called for. Do we know that this was the first? And keep in mind, anybody can make an international declaration. - Schrandit (talk) 20:52, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

I should say it is the first charter to be presented to the United Nations and an important milestone. I have been researching this and my claim that it is the "first charter" may not be verifiable. Probably a group such as Amnesty INTL had made one earlier but I haven't come across anything in any research. There have been various declarations against discrimination and homophobia for European Union countries such as 1997 treaty of Amsterdam and 2000 Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, there was talk of a "Gay Magna Carta", but again it was intended for US state, perhaps federal law only.--DCX (talk) 03:20, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

If it is the first to be presented at the UN that would be worth noting. - Schrandit (talk) 18:47, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Redirection from "Rights of man"

The Rights of man page redirects to Human rights, but there is a different article called Rights of Man.

It can be confused too with Men's rights, looking like an androcentric redirect.

What can be done? Change the redirection of "Rights of man" to Rights of Man? Or put on the top of Human rights article the relatively long warning below?

"Rights of man" redirects here. For the book by Thomas Paine, see Rights of Man. For the rights of male people, see Men's rights. For the document of rights published on French Revolution, see Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

Robfbms (talk) 06:13, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Reality check

I had not seen this article until now, but it seems to be written like a visit to Disneyland. It seems to have been written by a PR agency. It misses that minor concept called REALITY. E.g. Are the Burakumin subject to human rights violations in Japan just because they manufacture leather? Sadly so. What did these people do that was so terrible? Their major crime is that their parents made shoes - really, read the article. Why no mention of that? And of course, the Caste system in India continues to date. Love the Tata Nano? - check the news on how they got the land for it. It is all in the news, but only if you read the news. So the case of Suu Kyi is highly visible, but there are huge issues beyond that. I was surprised to read that there are slave in Italy and even Wikinews carried that, but no mention of these things in the article. Of course there are big quotes from the UN, but then, that is just like posters for Disneyland. Time to fix the article, whoever maintains this article. History2007 (talk) 20:31, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

No set group of people "maintain" any Wikipedia article. If you think this article needs a section on contemporary, ongoing human rights violations (and you have reliable sources to back any claims made there), then please go ahead and make one. I'd actually be rather surprised if there wasn't such an article somewhere on Wikipedia already; perhaps you could find and improve said article and {{main}} it from here, since this article is already excruciatingly long and needs to be broken up into smaller articles anyway. --Pfhorrest (talk) 21:58, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

I do not know the topic well enough, but on most pages there are a group of locals who hang out and know the topic. None owns it, but they usually hang around. I was just really surprised to read this press release (...excuse me article) and thought I would make a comment. Making another article does not solve the problem here, for this page will continue to remain as unreal as Disneyland. It may need a NPOV flag I think anyway. 22:23, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

By the way, POV tag was also based on the rosy tone of the article. Please do not remove tags without discussion. History2007 (talk) 22:47, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

History2007, a dispute does not exist when one editor enters an article talk page, states that they have little knowledge of the subject and then decides that the article must violate "neutrality" because he considers it to be "as unreal as disneyland". If there are specific sections of this article or wording that is unsatisfactory, then feel free to bring it up however such vague broad-brush mere assertions are not sufficient grounds on which to base a dispute on the neutrality of the article.Ajbpearce (talk) 23:21, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Sadly, editing Wikipedia does not require an academic degree on the topic. I would like to see a change to that policy, but until that happens anyone can edit anywhere. A tag may be placed by any editor who thinks a subject is not being treated in the NPOV manner. I do think that this article looks at the topic with rose colored glasses. And I would like to see changes to its tone. Hence the flag. History2007 (talk) 05:34, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Heavens. If I understand you correctly, you are claiming this page is not neutral because you agree with the concept of human rights as the article explains it, but are upset because the real world doesn't seem to respect your high-minded ideals. Or are you a pragmatist who thinks that the idea of human rights is stupid because no one respects them anyway? Either way, this article seems to accurately portray the norm of human rights as it has played out in international law and philosophy - t might use some broadening to include events where human rights are not being respected, but that might risk a bunch of political battles on the page. what do others think? Either way, I see no real reason to keep the NPOV tags, so I'll remove them. --Ludwigs2 16:51, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Now that there are two people against it, it may come off for a while, unless someone else thinks it is needed. I do not think human rights are stupid, but I think the large style quotes etc. seems to imply that human rights are taken seriously in the world - they are not. So the article does seem like a press release to me. As for this article seems to accurately portray the norm of human rights as it has played out in international law and philosophy that is certainly your viewpoint, and given that Wikipedia is a "numbers game" its truth has almost no bearing on the POV tag, for the haphazard nature of consensus depends on who happens to look here on what day. I will gradually try to add facts and references to the article as time goes on. That is less of a numbers game. History2007 (talk) 16:57, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

I think user History2007 confuses crime with policy: slavery in Italy or caste discrimination in India do occur but are prohibited by local law and actively prosecuted and that's really all you can ask from a state. So these things should definitely not be filed under "human rights abuses by Italy and India", it's just crime. There could be a section about most forms of crime being a violation of human rights (that's why they're called crimes), but it should be separate from abuses by states or terrorists. A reality check would be nice though: specifically in the "Asia" and "Africa" sections it wouldn't hurt to state that many countries violate the treaties they signed and that a significant portion of the UN membership comes nowhere near living up to the charter. 213.93.101.238 (talk) 14:32, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for clarifying that "caste discrimination in India is actively prosecuted". Ignorant me was under the impression that the authorities looked the other way in most cases. And by the way, how do you spell lip service? Your comment is an example of how human rights get lip service around the world, but if you are from a lower caste in India, you would either laugh or cry if someone told you that caste discrimination in India is actively prosecuted. By the way did you know that some Burakumin in Japan just commit suicide because they are so fed up with discrimination against them? I guess they must also be misinformed. History2007 (talk) 14:40, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Has the following view been treated yet?

This article has a section about philosophers laying the foundation of human rights by coming up with "natural rights", while others (usually those who don't know what it's like to live in a state without human rights) contend that human rights are a Western invention. I propose the following view, but I do not know if it has already been thought of by philosophers or anyone else, so maybe someone on Wikipedia could tell me if it has.

1) It costs a society considerable resources to maintain the law, resources that could've been spent on something else.

2) People do not want their rights (whatever they may be) violated, more specifically people do not want to be harmed and they do not want other people to have more rights than they do.

3) Religion cannot be agreed upon through rational means: there is no way of proving a religion is right, or "more right" than another religion that may hold very different, even opposite, views.

4) Because of 1) and 2) it doesn't make sense to have laws that cause irrational restrictions, in other words: if there's no rational way to show a certain practice causes harm to the rights of people, security or the economy then there is no point in spending resources to maintain a ban on that practice. Because of 3) religious reasons don't count.

I believe that from this you can construct most, if not all, of today's human rights. Because this process excludes religious and cultural components (they cannot rationally be defended) it leads to a set of universal human rights. 213.93.101.238 (talk) 16:08, 22 June 2010 (UTC)