Human Rights in Other Countries?

Great Debates
1

I think this is a factual question. But someone along the lines will turn it into a debate, which is okay I guess.

I know a little about law in this country (US). I am always eager to read anything I get on law. And I got a law dictionary about 25 years ago, that I found very enlightening.

Anyway, the Bill of Rights doesn’t apply to private or individual conduct. I understand that part. But what about bills of rights in other countries?

I know the U N Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) was apparently meant to apply to private conduct too. What about other modern constitutions?

The reason why I ask is because I keep hearing people complain on Facebook and other forums that the First Amendment just doesn’t protect them like it should.

If you want me to be more specific than that, I am talking about European constitutions. But I was thinking about any modern constitution. (You do realize too that most modern constitutions are based [or at least are supposed to be] on the UNUDHR.)

:slight_smile:

2

The UN declaration of human rights has no bearing on the creation of a constitution. None.

3

The South African constitution is fairly recent, as it was created in the 1990s.

The Bill of Rights contains provisions that are not often found anywhere else, such as:

“Everyone has the right to fair labour practices. Every worker has the right to form and join a trade union; to participate in the activities and programmes of a trade union; and to strike.”

“Everyone has the right to an environment that is not harmful to their health or well-being.”

4

I’m not sure what your question is. Would you like to know whether and/or how human rights are protected in other countries, whether they apply to private conduct, whether they are based on the UN declaration on human rights?

5

Where did you find this tidbit of misinformation?

6

The ‘First Amendment’ only applies in the USA. It wouldn’t protect anyone in Europe (in most cases). So if people in Europe are complaining that it doesn’t protect them, then yes, it probably doesn’t.

Compared to other countries the USA has a robust human rights protection legal framework. Though, in practice, it isn’t working the best maybe at this current point in time. Race issues are still a huge factor in people’s lives. In the decades-term range the USA is currently in the process of deciding whether it is more important to let people prepare for killing others, than to let currently born people live. Something happening about unborn people too.

Compared with,

The present day government of Japan who detest human rights laws because neo-confucianism isn’t about everyone having equal rights it is about some people being better (elite legacies) than others, so everyone knows their place. That’s why the Japanese government keeps refusing to enact any form of racial discrimination laws. They need to have a racial hierarchy in their system, otherwise their system makes no sense. They stem from the divine line of the Japanese.

7

I think the OP was talking about Americans. People in Europe aren’t complaining about protections under the First Amendment because the First Amendment doesn’t mean anything to people outside the US.

In the UK we have the Human Rights Act (1998), which covers everything from freedom of expression, right to marry, rights to education, right to fair trial etc right up to not being put to death by the courts, and a lot more besides. Find the full details here.

8

Well we (Australia) doesn’t have one.
No codified right to free speech (though political free speech is an implied right), protections on the military being quartered in our own homes, means of personally firing ballistic missiles of any calibre, and other quaint 18th century constructs.

The Commonwealth has been around for about 120 years.
I’ve been involved for a little more than half that.
Despite being bereft of a Bill of Rights, generally things seem to be working OK. YMMV

What we do have:

Section 41 The right to vote
Section 51(xxxi) The acquisition of property by the Australian Government must be ‘on just terms’
Section 80 Trial by jury for some offences
Section 116 The freedom to practice any religion
Section 117 State parliaments can not discriminate against non-residents of that state
Implied rights Only courts have the power to find people guilty of an offence; the Australian Parliament can not pass a law that would impose a criminal conviction
Freedom of political communication because the Constitution created a system of government based on representative democracy

Australia is a signatory to the following international human rights treaties:

We have statute law

  • Sex Discrimination Act 1984
  • Racial Discrimination Act 1986
  • Disability Discrimination Act 1992
  • Age Discrimination Act 2004
  • Marriage Amendment (Definition and Religious Freedoms) Act 2017

Overseeing them we have
Australian Human Rights Commission
Human Rights (Parliamentary Scrutiny) Act 2011
and the representative governments and legal system.

Certain liberal elements periodically burned up about this blot on our national standing.
To my mind the argument rarely extends beyond “Others have one. We should too.” Not many specifics as to deficiencies of the current system. Nor examples of basic human rights being trammeled by unfettered government and corporations. Of course, we are not unblemished. But for the great unwashed the issue is a overwhelmingly collective meh.

9

GreenWyvern touched on this, but just to be explicit: the SA BoR applies to private persons where relevant. For instance, the discrimination parts apply to everyone (which is why we have a crimen injuria law that covers racist speech)

Our Bill of Rights is in some ways the most modern progressive one out there that I’ve ever encountered. For instance, it explicitly enshrines the right to reproductive choice, in addition to the stuff GW highlighted

10

South Africa isn’t Europe though.

11

…

12

Not from where we’re sitting.

13

The various human rights conventions of the UN and the council of Europe are referenced by a Norwegian law which state that where elements of Norwegian law is in conflict with the conventions the conventions overrule the national statute in question.

Norway also has a living constitution. Updates are somewhat more cumbersome than passing an ordinary law, but the process changes, removes or adds laws to the constitution rather than “just” tacking on amendments.

14

Canada has a “Bill of Rights” written right into the constitution. I put it in scare quotes because it can overridden by a provincial legislature and often is in Quebec. One recent example was a law outlawing the wearing of religious symbols by anyone in the “public sector”, which goes as far down and day-care workers. An exception is made for a cross as that is deemed not religious but a link to Quebec history.

15

Just to reiterate, I am wondering what foreign Constitutions protect people from private citizens violating their rights. Perhaps I should have made that more clear.

And @Telemark I did read somewhere that all modern constitutions are based on the U N Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In fact that is what gives the UNUDHR its force of law, in a round about sort of way (I am certain I read that some place too).

I’m sorry I can’t produce the cite just at this time. But I have to tell you all, you’ve got to read and compare the UNUDHR and (for example) the European Union Charter of Fundamental Rights. It’s clearly the exact same language. Pretty much word-for-word in fact.

Even the recent Canadian Constitution from the early 1980’s borrows some of the language, I believe.

The US Constitution doesn’t obviously because we rarely even talk about the UNUDHR in this country. (That and the fact the US Constitution is 230 years old :wink: .) But hey, we could amend it with some of the rights from it. And we don’t.

16

The US Bill of Rights is substantially expressed in negative terms, and addressed to the government. (”Congress shall make no law abridging . . .”, etc.). This is a relatively conservative approach to the question, by contrast with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, which dates from around the same time, and starts out with more positive language (“Human beings are born and remain free and equal in rights . . . The goal of any political association is the conservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man”). But the Declaration moves fairly quickly to provisions directed at what the government may or may not do (“The law has the right to forbid only actions harmful to society . . . No man can be accused, arrested nor detained but in the cases determined by the law . . .”)

I think the idea of defending persona rights by restricting the power or capacity of the government is a natural reaction to the fact that, government having so much power, the greatest threat to human rights comes from government actions. Hence earlier human rights instruments were focussed on limiting the government even if, like the Declaration, they started out with positive affirmation of human rights.

Modern human rights instruments tend to follow the French, not the US, approach, and start by asserting positive human rights, from which limitations on the power of government are derived, rather than by starting from limitations on governmental power. And this approach is more open to a legal culture in which rights can be asserted against the world, and not merely against the government, even if the practical focus is mostly on infringements by government agencies.

The Irish constitution dates from 1937, and so predates the UN Declaration on Human Rights. The constitution recognises that citizens have “personal rights” and requires the state not only to respect these itself but, by its laws, to “defend and vindicate” them. Thus the state is obliged not only not to attack your life, person, good name, etc, but also to provide a legal system which prevents, or at least provides a remedy for, such attacks by others. Which, of course, implies that others are obliged to respect your personal rights.

But, if they don’t, and if the law doesn’t provide you with any adequate remedy for that, then in the constitutional framework in most cases your complaint is not against them for infringing your personal rights but against the state for failing, by its laws, to defend and vindicate your personal rights.

But not in all cases — there have been cases e.g. in the area of labour law in which employers or trade unions have been sued for doing things which were said to infringe the constitutional personal right to earn a livelihood. But in most cases if someone else infringes your personal rights you will have a remedy under “ordinary” law - you sue him for assault, or for infringing the equal treatment legislation, or for defamation, or whatever - and the ordinary law is seen as the means by which you assert your constitutional rights against him.

17

The operation of human rights to protect citizens against infringement by other citizens is in Europe usually called the idea of horizontal effect.

In countries that adhere to the Rome Treaty aka European Convention of Human Rights, the Convention requires states to observe those fundamental rights (as is nowadays the preferred term instead of human rights). That means the state must not infringe. But this also imposes so-called positive obligations on the state, i.e. duties to protect citizens against infringements by other citizens. The extent of such obligations is subject to intense debate, in particular as such protection may itself amount to violation of the rights of the would-be perpetrator (for example incarceration of a stalker).

Besides the Convention, countries usually have a written constitution that also recognizes fundamental rights. The way in which those are enforced differs greatly between countries.

But ultimately many cases where a person would infringe another’s human rights have for a long time been protected by criminal law and tort law. Thou shalt not kill protects the right of life, but of course predates the notion of human rights by several millennia. Dressing it up as human rights does not in itself improve enforcement.

18

The biggest problem with modern analogues to the Bill of Rights is that many of them have weasel words that vastly water down the alleged protections. The US Bill of Rights contains phrases such as “shall not be abridged” which is pretty stark, and takes a lot of effort to circumvent.

By contrast, the UK’s Human Rights Act, which was linked to above, contains gems such as this:
In Article 9: Freedom of thought, conscience and religion–

  1. Freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

This is marvelously vague, and marvelously ripe for abuse! Don’t like something that a conservative Christian or conservative Muslim does? Simple–just pass a law forbidding it under the guise of “protection” or “democracy” or “freedom.”

19

While its hard to hold the US up as a good example anything democracy-wise right now. I do think laws passed in other countries have shown that a small well defined bill of rights, such as the one in the US constitution, is actually better at protecting citizen’s rights than the huge complex tomes that make up things like the European Convention on Human Rights.

It is demonstrated by this things like this would not stand up to constitutional review by a judge in US, regardless of the political leanings of the judge invovled:

And this:

and this:

20

Yeah totally this. Short unambiguous bills of rights are better than than the longer ambiguously worded ones with lots of “get out” clauses.