What Human Rights Are and Their Types

1Why this topic matters

Every child in Rwanda has the right to go to school. Every person has the right to life, to be treated fairly by the courts and to practise his or her religion. These are human rights. Knowing your rights, and the rights of others, helps you to live with dignity and to protect people who are treated unjustly. In this unit you will also see what the Bible and the Qur'an teach about these rights.

2Key terms

• Human rights: the basic freedoms and protections that every person should enjoy simply because he or she is a human being.
• Responsibility (or duty): what a person must do for others and for the community. Every right comes with responsibilities.

3Features of human rights

• Universal: they belong to every person everywhere, whatever the person's sex, ethnic group, religion, wealth or ability.
• Inherent: people are born with them; no government gives them as a favour.
• Inalienable: they cannot be taken away, except in limited cases set by just laws (for example, a convicted criminal may lose his freedom of movement).
• Indivisible: all rights belong together; people cannot enjoy one right fully if others are denied.

4Where human rights are written down

• The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948, after the horrors of the Second World War. It has 30 articles. Its first article says that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. 10 December is celebrated each year as Human Rights Day.
• The Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) protects the special rights of children, such as protection from abuse and from harmful work.
• The Constitution of Rwanda has a whole chapter on human rights and freedoms. Rwanda also has a National Commission for Human Rights that monitors how rights are respected.

5Types of human rights

In the 1970s, the Czech lawyer Karel Vasak grouped human rights into three "generations":

Children have all these rights, and some special ones: to be registered at birth, to be cared for by their parents, to play and to be protected from violence and exploitation.

6Rights and responsibilities

Every right brings a matching responsibility. Your right to education brings the duty to attend school and respect your teachers. Your right to be respected brings the duty to respect others. Jesus taught: "Therefore, whatever you desire for men to do to you, you shall also do to them" (Matthew 7:12). The Prophet Muhammad taught that none of you truly believes until he wants for his brother what he wants for himself.

Worked example

Question: Classify each right: (a) the right to vote; (b) the right to education; (c) the right to a clean environment. (3 marks)

Model answer: (a) civil and political right (1 mark); (b) economic, social and cultural right (1 mark); (c) collective or solidarity right (1 mark).

Practice