Grounds of human rights

It is understood that the human rights trace their root from the natural rights. Andrew Heywood maintains that ‘the idea of human rights developed out of the ‘‘natural rights’’ theories …’⁷⁷ Natural rights such as right to ‘life, liberty and property’ (Locke) or right to ‘life, liberty and pursuit of happiness’ (Thomas Jefferson, American Declaration of Independence) or right of ‘equality, liberty, security and property’ (French Declaration of Man and Citizen) right to ‘liberty, property and security’ (Thomas Paine) are considered as reflections of the fundamental inner human drive and basic conditions for leading a truly human existence. To this extent, these are rights of individuals as human beings that claimed recognition from political authority. They were also aimed at setting up limits on external interference on the actions of the individuals. Heywood maintains that due to secularization of natural rights theories in twentieth century, these rights were ‘reborn in the form of ‘human’ rights.’ In this way, human rights are treated as extension of natural rights and are claims of individuals by virtue of being human being.

These rights are universal claims of each individual irrespective of gender, caste, class, race, religion and cultures. The tenets of Universal Declaration of Human Rights [1948] that declares recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [1966] that declares inherent dignity of the human person support this view. As such, it tends to view human rights as inalienable rights emerging from human existence and the very dignity of human beings.

R. Dworkin (Taking Rights Seriously) upholds right as moral entitlements. This implies that ‘a person is both entitled to stand on his own right and to require others to be duty bound to respect it.’⁷⁸ For example, if a person seeks privacy, s/he has right to privacy and also that others are duty bound to respect. Dworkin’s idea of right as moral entitlement seeks to confer entitlement. One of the types of entitlement Hohfeld identifies is claim right, where one person asserts that s/he has a claim on another. He also identifies liberty right, right as power and immunity, which we have discussed above. Robert Nozick (Anarchy, State and Utopia) who argues from the perspective of natural rights and libertarian position maintains that one must not violate the right of others because an individual has exclusive rights in himself/herself and no rights in anyone else. This, in essence, means an individual has rights of ‘liberty and property’.⁷⁹ He uses this argument against the interference by the State in the actions and pursuits of the individuals. These theoretical positions are based on claim for rights of individuals on the basis of moral claims. Tom Paine and Thomas Hill Green also argued that certain claims for their self-development and moral realization inhere in a human being and these claims must be recognized as rights. Relevance and existence of the claim for rights on the basis of moral entitlements is not dependent upon the recognition of the majority in a democracy. Dworkin argues that moral rights should not defer to the will of the majority.