Human Rights – Universal Panacea? Some reflections on the so-called human rights of the third generation

Abstract

The UNESCO Courier of November 1977 carried an article in which Karel Vasak, the Director of the Organization's Division of Human Rights and Peace, called for the recognition of a ‘third generation’ of human rights: solidarity rights. The idea of solidarity rights was not new, but Vasak was the first to attempt to provide these rights with a conceptually valid place in the whole catalogue of human rights. For this purpose, he chose an attractive and, at first sight, an appealing formula. He took as his starting point three basic concepts and three types of revolution. The first revolution was the French Revolution of 1789, with its motto, ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’. In the course of this revolution it was, however, only the so-called freedom rights, the basic civil and political rights, which were actually realised. It was thanks to the Mexican and, in particular, the Russian Revolutions that a second generation of Human Rights gradually achieved universal recognition; these were the so-called equality rights: economic, social and cultural. We are currently experiencing a third revolution: the emancipation of colonized and dominated peoples, linked to total interdependence. One world or no world.