Abstract
In the late 1970s, when Karel Vasak offered his concept of the three generations of rights, it was inclusive enough to embrace the whole spectrum of existing human rights. Forty years later, this paper explores the nature of contemporary human rights discourse and questions to what extent Vasak’s categorization is still relevant. Our work discusses the evolution of the concept of human rights, the changing dichotomies of national and international, individual and collective, and positive and negative rights. This paper uses qualitative methods of content analysis and quantitative frequency analysis method to explore the nature of scholarly discourse presented in human rights journals. Our research findings highlight the dynamic evolution of contemporary human rights discourse. The paper specifically illustrates the increasing emphasis on collective and internationalist rights and the enhancement of human rights matters that are difficult to categorize using Vasak’s approach. In doing so, the paper calls for the clarification of the language of contemporary human rights.
Highlights
It’s been over four decades since Karel Vašák has introduced the three generations of rights
In order to find out what is the framework of the contemporary human rights narrative, we sought to categorize articles published in the three human rights journals according to types of rights most frequently discussed in the abstracts
If to look at relative unigram (Table 2) and bigram (Table 3) frequencies, it is evident that words and word combinations “international,” “global,” “international human,” and “United Nations,” are more numerous and precede in frequency words such as “state,” “national,” and “domestic.” It demonstrates that within the three journals, human rights tend to be discussed within the international context more frequently than in the context of nation states
Summary
It’s been over four decades since Karel Vašák has introduced the three generations of rights. Subject to severe criticism since the outset, his division of rights into generations has offered scholars, activists, and pundits a useful tool to organize the human rights discourse to the extent that it is difficult to run across a book or article that does not refer to Vašák’s conceptualization directly or indirectly. Similar to Vašák, Micheline Ishay sees the history of human rights as the chronological development of the liberal and secular, socialist and eventually international institutionalization, and the right to self-development (Ishay 2008). Hannum recognizes the importance of the 1970s as a period of clear delineation of the particular groups of rights, their roles, mechanisms, and place in the political structures Hannum recognizes the importance of the 1970s as a period of clear delineation of the particular groups of rights, their roles, mechanisms, and place in the political structures (Hannum 2019, p. 171)
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