The Universal Declaration of Human Rights identifies a range of requirements that its authors agreed should be met for every human, out of respect for their inherent dignity (United Nations General Assembly 1948). Since the Declaration, the term “human right” has been used to identify particularly significant, normative requirements of universal concern that should be met for individuals everywhere, which should take priority over most other moral and political concerns. Yet many philosophical accounts of the concept of a “right” struggle to accommodate all of the requirement identified in the Declaration. These accounts take human rights to be Hohfeldian claim-rights: claims to action or omission owed by some agent (or agents) to the right holder, such that the fulfillment of the correlative duty (or duties) constitutes the fulfillment of the right (Hohfeld 1913, 32; O'Neill 2005, 430, Cruft 2012, 137, Collins 2016, 701). When understood to be interpersonal claim-rights, the difficulty comes in identifying which persons have the correlative duties (O'Neill 2005), whereas when understood to be claim-rights held by each individual against their own government, the problem is that many governments lack the ability to fulfill all of these claims for all of their residents (Cranston 1983). In response to these difficulties, this paper argues that human rights should not be understood to be Hohfeldian claim-rights (Hohfeld 1913) and instead proposes the adoption of an account of the concept that does not tie these rights directly to duties owed to the rights holder. According to this account, recognizing certain requirements to be a matter of human rights entails two things. First, that the importance of the individual interests that these requirements protect is sufficient to justify governing agencies prioritizing the social guarantee of these standards over most other concerns. Second, that the importance of meeting these standards equally for every contemporary person is sufficient to justify weighty pro-tanto duties on all moral agents to make considerable efforts to achieve and maintain a sociopolitical order in which they are socially guaranteed for everyone.1 1 Building on Shue (1988 and 1996). It is noted that such an approach can include social structural standards as human rights requirements: recognizing a subset of the requirements of structural justice that are of particular moral significance, warrant universal concern, take relative priority, and should be socially guaranteed equally for individuals everywhere due to their inherent dignity. The paper makes two points in favor of this understanding of human rights over Hohfeldian claim-right approaches. First, the approach recommended here can include all of the human rights recognized in the Declaration and thus does a better job of reflecting how the term is used in contemporary times. Second, the account does not lead to the exclusion of human rights that it will take collectivization to achieve for all humans in contemporary times.2 2 For a definition of collectivization, see Collins (2013). Thus, the account proposed here avoids restricting what can be recognized as a particularly significant, normative requirement of universal concern that should be socially guaranteed for individuals everywhere, and which should take relative priority over most other concerns (the role that human rights have come to play in contemporary discourse) on the basis of what can currently be achieved for every contemporary human without the development of new agencies. The paper challenges those who favor a Hohfeldian claim-right approach to human rights to take up one of the following options. First option: adapt their account so as to be able to recognize important individualistically justified priorities of justice that at present require collectivization to be fulfilled for all contemporary humans. Second option: come up with a justification for the prioritization of the individualistically justified requirements of justice their accounts do recognize over basic requirements of social justice, that should be secured for individuals everywhere, that currently require collectivization to be achieved for every contemporary human. This paper considers how the concept of a human right should be understood: what it means to claim that something is a human right and what role these claims should play in normative reasoning. The grounds on which something can be established to be a human right are deliberately left open: the paper does not seek to explain the form that a justification of a human right must take.3 3 Although the concept and grounds of human rights should be combined in full accounts of human rights, it is my contention that they can be disentangled (in keeping with Tasioulas 2012). The paper notes that the declaration appeals to the idea of “inherent dignity” to distinguish human rights. However, it does not explore how to identify which rights are a matter of inherent dignity. It is human rights as moral rights rather than legal rights that this paper is concerned with. The Universal Declaration is interpreted as aiming to identify pre-existing moral rights that are not dependent on a particular legal convention for their validity (in keeping with Raz 2010; Collins 2016). The criteria used to evaluate the concept of a human right in this paper will now be given. The aim of this paper is to come up with a morally appealing concept that can make sense of the Declaration and contemporary discourse, hence fidelity is identified as a virtue. However, this does not exclude the possibility that a philosophical conceptualization of the concept of a “human right” can require some reform of how the term is currently used (following Tasioulas 2012). In addition, an account of the concept must be consistent (not internally contradictory) and morally plausible (must give intuitive rulings with regard to what constitutes the violation of a human right, and so on). Finally, the concept must have some valuable role to play in our normative discourse and social practices (utility). The paper begins by offering evidence that the term “human right” is currently used to identify particularly significant, normative requirements of universal concern that should be met for individuals everywhere, and which should take priority over most other moral and political concerns. It then outlines how, in philosophical literature, human rights are often taken to be universal Hohfedian claim-rights. Sections 4 and 5 outline interpersonal and governmental Hohfeldian claim-right accounts of the concept, respectively, and note the difficulties they face in recognizing all of the human rights identified in the Declaration. Sections 2-5 together argue that, given the current usage of the term, accepting either of these Hohfeldian claim-right accounts results in the restriction of the list of particularly significant, normative requirements of universal concern that should be met for individuals everywhere (out of respect for their inherent dignity), which should take priority over most other moral and political concerns. These sections suggest that if having adequately specifiable correlative duties—the fulfillment of which constitutes the fulfillment of the right—is an existence condition for a human right (as the Hohfeldian Claim-Right account suggests), we must reject a large number of the human rights listed in the Declaration and Covenants.4 4 Unless we adopt a more complex Hohfeldian claim-right account that is different to the interpersonal and governmental approaches explored here. 5 5 Some constitutional and legal human rights as well as many socioeconomic human rights must be rejected under the interpersonal and governmental accounts. This point was helpfully drawn to my attention by an anonymous reviewer. In response to this problem, it is then proposed that instead of rejecting many of the human rights currently recognized (as O’Neill 2005 recommends) the idea that human rights must be Hohfeldian claim-rights should be rejected (contra Cranston, O'Neill, Tomalty, Cruft and Collins). The paper then suggests that we understand human rights to be particularly significant, individualistically justified, requirements of justice which take priority over most other normative concerns. According to this account, stating that meeting these standards is a matter of human rights involves two claims. First, it means that the significance of the interests that these requirements protect for every contemporary human is sufficient to justify governing agents prioritizing the social guarantee of these standards for everyone. Second, that meeting these requirements for every contemporary person is important enough to justify demanding that other moral agents make considerable efforts to secure and maintain a sociopolitical order in which these standards are socially guaranteed.6 6 The account endorsed here, has much in common with those proposed by Ashford (2006) and Shue (1996). Ashford’s suggests that we recognize positive and imperfect duties with regard to human rights. Adopting her account requires a different understanding of the relationship between rights and duties to the claim-rights approach. It is then noted that such an understanding allows us to include as human rights, standards that currently require coordinated action to be achieved for all contemporary humans. It is pointed out that the proposed account is not limited (in the recognition of what individuals should have as a matter of human rights) by the abilities of existing agents acting unilaterally. However, it is noted that it is restricted by what existing agents can be reasonably expected to achieve through coordination and collectivization in the medium term. It is then pointed out that the proposed account can include social structural requirements within human rights: recognizing a subset of demands of social structural justice that are of particular significance, are of universal concern, that should be met equally for individuals everywhere and should take priority over most other moral concerns.7 7 Elizabeth Ashford has proposed there can be structural human rights violations (Ashford 2007) The relationship between human rights and duties is then explained before the account is defended from objections. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that the “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,” and that “it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law.” This implies a need to secure human rights through law and links the denial of human rights to extreme forms of injustice. The NGO Amnesty International takes its central mission to be “campaigning for a world where human rights are enjoyed by all,” in focusing their humanitarian efforts around working toward the universal fulfillment of these rights they recognize the importance and priority of these rights (2015; 2017).8 8 This point was helpfully drawn to my attention by an anonymous reviewer. Article 2 of the Declaration states that “everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in the Declaration without distinction of any kind,” and notes that the nationality and jurisdiction in which an individual resides cannot be used to exclude them from having equal rights. This point is reiterated by the Commissioner’s office describing human rights as rights “that all are equally entitled to without discrimination” (United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner 1996–2020). Later in the Declaration, Article 28 outlines that everyone is entitled to a “social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.” Article 29 specifies that “in the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society,” implying that human rights are of relative priority: that they should only give way to other human rights or other extremely weighty common moral concerns (United Nations General Assembly 1948). This suggests that human rights are understood by the Declaration’s authors, international governance agencies and NGOS to be particularly significant requirements of justice, of universal concern, that should be fulfilled for individuals everywhere without discrimination, as a matter of inherent dignity, that take relative priority over other normative requirements, and should be protected by law. Many philosophical accounts of human rights take them to be Hohfeldian claim-rights: claims to action or omission owed by some agent (or agents) to the right holder, such that the fulfillment of the correlative duty (or duties) constitutes the fulfillment of the right (O'Neill 2005, 430, Cruft 2012, 137, Collins 2016, 701). This means that “whenever a claim-right is invaded a duty has been violated” (Hohfeld 1913, 32). In the sections that follow, two possible versions of the Hohfeldian claim-right approach to human rights are discussed. The first account (discussed in Section 2.2) identifies human rights as interpersonal claim-rights that correlate with duties for other individuals. The second account (discussed in Section 2.3) identifies human rights as claims that state governments must fulfill. These sections show how both accounts have difficulties accommodating the full set of rights recognized in the Declaration. Interpersonal accounts take human rights to be a subset of interpersonal moral claim-rights that are defined by some aspects of their nature. They recognize the primary correlative duties with regard to these rights as falling on other individuals. According to this approach, human rights are claims that every individual can make which correlate with duties that are owed to that individual by other individuals. Interpersonal accounts typically recognize governments as having secondary duties to enforce the primary duties that correlate with rights (O’Neill 2005). This approach is known as traditional when it is coupled with the idea that what justifies these rights is some empirical fact or facts about humans or humanity (Tasioulas 2012).9 9 The interpersonal account focusses on interactional violations of human rights by other persons (Pogge 1995; 2010). The following section identifies how interpersonal accounts restrict what can be recognized as being a human right in such a way as to exclude many of the rights identified in the Universal Declaration, and thus fail to reflect practice. It then argues that this approach, in combination with the way the contemporary discourse understands the term, leads to the prioritization of some requirements of justice over others. Interpersonal accounts can easily recognize human rights that correlate with negative duties to refrain from taking action, such as rights to be free from slavery, torture, and religious persecution, which correlate with universal negative duties not to keep slaves, torture, or persecute based on religion. Broader interpersonal models can also recognize human rights that correlate with positive duties to take action, as long as it is clear who must act and how they must act so as to fulfill the right. Such accounts require that we can identify duty bearers for each right and indicate what the right requires them to do (Tomalty 2014). Thus, it appears that such accounts can recognize the socioeconomic rights recognized in the international Declaration. However, on closer investigation it becomes clear that some of these rights cannot meet claimability requirements for all contemporary humans (Tomalty 2014; Collins 2016). To see why, consider the human right to health. When an individual suffers from a health problem, it is not always clear who should fulfill their claim to healthcare, how they must fulfill the claim, nor the extent to which they must do so. This is in part because how an outcome should be achieved depends on concrete circumstances: what healthcare facilities exist in the local area, who has the requisite skills to provide treatment, and what the cost of taking the action required is for different agents (O'Neill 2005). In some cases, it can even be sensible for some conveniently placed individual to take immediate action, and then for others to compensate that individual later in order to prevent them being unfairly worse off as a result (Barry and Øverland 2009). These complications make it difficult to specify duty bearers and duties in advance (Shue 1988). The existence of some identifiable duty bearer and identifiable duties (the fulfillment of which constitutes the fulfillment of the right) are necessary for there to be a human right according to the interpersonal claim-right account. Thus, it restricts what can be identified as a human right. This means that interpersonal accounts cannot reflect contemporary human rights discourse and practice in recognizing a broad range of rights. To resolve this problem, governments could be recognized as needing to allocate duties to various individuals to educate, sanitize, provide healthcare and contribute to the costs of providing these services.10 10 Goodin suggests that morally important imperfect duties often should be turned into perfect duties by 'institutionalizing' them so they become perfect duties (Goodin 2017). This institutionalization makes them claimable. However, this cannot resolve the issue with the interpersonal account of human rights because it means that in the absence of government allocation there will be no correlative duties and subsequently there will be no rights. Currently, in some regions of the world, duties to provide these things have not been allocated by authorities (O'Neill 2005). From this, it follows that not all contemporary humans have these rights. This is both inconsistent with the meaning of human rights identified in Section 2.1 and morally problematic. We could attempt to solve the problem by identifying governments as having the correlative duties with regard to human rights (Nickel 1993; Beitz 2009; Tomalty 2014). Adopting such an approach moves us away from the interpersonal account and toward a governmental account (the subject of Section 5). As shown in Section 2, in contemporary times, human rights are understood to be significant normative requirements of universal concern that should be met for individuals everywhere (out of respect for their inherent dignity), which take priority over most other moral and political concerns. This understanding, coupled with the interpersonal claim-right account, means that the list of normative priorities worthy of universal concern that should be fulfilled for individuals everywhere without discrimination, as a matter of inherent dignity, are restricted on the basis of a technical requirement regarding the form these requirements must take. This is done without substantive argument being given as to why only these requirements should be recognized as priorities of justice that should be fulfilled for individuals everywhere that are of universal concern. In response to this problem, supporters of interpersonal claim-right accounts need to give a substantive argument regarding why it is that only requirements that can fulfill the interpersonal claimability requirement can be recognized as particularly significant requirements of justice, of universal concern, that should be fulfilled for individuals everywhere without discrimination, as a matter of inherent dignity, that take relative priority over other normative requirements. In response to this challenge, they could argue that, in moral discussion, we need to distinguish threats to inherent dignity that result from impermissible actions and omissions from those that do not result from some individual not fulfilling duties they owe to particular others. However, recognizing this fact does not mean that addressing threats to individuals that result from the impermissible action or omission of another agent should always take priority over addressing threats that do not originate in duty violation by some identifiable individual. Nor does it give us any reason to think that only these sorts of problems are of universal concern.11 11 For a defense of the strength and priority of some imperfect duties (that are taken to not correlate with rights) over perfect duties, see Goodin (2017). Another response open to the defender of an interpersonal approach is to suggest that human rights do not outline all of the demands of justice owed equally to individuals everywhere that are of international concern, are required as a matter of inherent dignity, and take priority to some extent over other aims and ideals. Along these lines, O'Neill calls on people to recognize that the demands of social justice that are not a matter of human rights are important and can be global in scope (O'Neill 1986; 2016). Similarly, Griffin explains that the term “human right” does not capture all priorities of justice owed to individuals of international concern but instead specifies a set of demands that fall into a category historically understood to be important (Griffin 2001). Such approaches are morally plausible and internally consistent; however, they require us to diverge significantly from dominant contemporary understandings of what human rights are. These accounts do not recognize human rights as outlining all the particularly significant, normative requirements of universal concern that should be met for individuals everywhere (out of respect for their inherent dignity), which should take priority over most other moral and political concerns. In doing so, they exclude many of the internationally recognized human rights listed in the Declaration and covenants. Thus, they betray fidelity: they are not accounts of the concept appealed to in contemporary documents, discourses and practices.12 12 Buchannan argues that we should not assume that our favored account of moral human rights should dictate how the contemporary international practice of human rights must be, suggesting the current legal concept need not mirror a traditional moral concept at all (Buchanan 2013). In contrast to my approach, Buchannan takes human rights to be legal rights created by international covenants, declarations, and practices rather than taking the Declaration and covenants as seeking to outline pre-existing moral rights. In response to these problems, an approach that recognizes states as the correlative duty bearers with regard to human rights could be adopted (as recommended in Tomalty 2014).13 13 Tomalty suggests they are claims against states—this proposal is interpreted here as recognizing human rights to be claims against state governments. Alternatively, it could be that the citizenry rather than the government is the agent obliged to act. Many of the critiques of the government approach discussed below also apply to this alternative interpretation. Doing so reflects important aspects of contemporary human rights practice (Beitz 2009): UN institutions hold governments responsible for the state of human rights in their territory, requiring them to meet many human rights standards, and criticizing any regression on human rights under their rule (Brems 2009), while NGOs use human rights standards to hold authorities to account (Amnesty International 2015).14 14 I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for bringing this to my attention. It may appear that an account that recognizes the government of a jurisdiction as holding the correlative duties with regard to the human rights of residents can include more of the rights recognized in the Declaration and thus better reflects the concept appealed to in contemporary discourse. We can require governments to socially guarantee a range of interests. We often expect governments to protect people from threats, organize society so as to secure certain goods are available to everyone under their jurisdiction, provide decent social conditions and opportunities for all residents, and ensure that individuals are not vulnerable to being treated by other agents in ways that undermine their inherent dignity. 15 15 These agencies can be connected to accounts of individual duties by recognizing individual duties to promote and support justice-ensuring institutions (Rawls 1972). The connection between collectives, institutions, and individual duties will be discussed later in the paper. However, once we move away from an idealized understanding of government to examine the political reality, we can see that this approach (insofar as it insists human rights are Hohfeldian claim-rights) must either restrict what can be recognized as a human right in a way that excludes many internationally recognized human rights (undermining fidelity), or lead to morally implausible conclusions that conflict with key elements of the concept recognized in international practice (undermining fidelity and moral plausibility). The key problem with understanding human rights to be Hohfeldian claim-rights, which correlate with governments’ duties, is that many governments lack the ability to fulfill all of the requirements outlined in the Declaration and covenants for all their residents (Cranston 1983). A government’s power is always limited by internal and external factors; due to the level of restriction they face, the governments of many states are unable to fulfill all of the rights recognized in the Universal Declaration and claimed across the world. Some governments lack the ability to effectively fulfill any human rights: for example, since 1991, Somalia's central government has lost the ability to enforce law and thus has little chance of securing any rights (Menkhaus 2003; 2007). When it comes to socioeconomic human rights such as health and education, many lower income governments face immense difficulties in fulfilling these rights for every person under their jurisdiction. In 2016, 40 countries had a Gross National Income per capita below 7,500 dollars, and 22 below 2,000 dollars (World Bank 2017). These low national incomes make it impossible for governments to run adequate basic health and education systems for their population without outside assistance. Even when state populations have sufficient income to provide basic healthcare and primary education for all residents, doing so may still be impossible for their governments. Research indicates that only 25% of countries collect tax payments effectively, due to: having few resources and personnel, the informal nature of their economies, tax competition between states and difficulties attracting sufficient investment (Dietsch and Rixen 2014; Carnahan 2015; Dietsch 2015; Laborde and Ronzoni 2015; Van Apeldoorn 2018). This suggests that state governments are unable to collect sufficient taxation to fulfill human rights. In these states, residents could directly pay for health, education, and sanitation services, but this would require the existence of suppliers selling these services at affordable rates and all residents having sufficient income to purchase such services. This is unlikely without redistributive taxation and widespread education (Gustafsson and Johansson 1999), which in turn requires a state able to tax and redistribute income. An advocate of a governmental account could recognize a severely truncated list of human rights requirements that every government can reasonably be expected to comply with, sacrificing many of the rights outlined in the convention on economic, cultural, and social rights.16 16 Rawls' account of human rights includes only a short list of demands and does not include many of the socioeconomic human rights recognized in the Declaration or conventions. His theory gives an account of what to do with burdened societies which cannot fulfill these rights (Rawls 1999). This involves a substantial shift away from the existing use of the term, undermining fidelity (Valentini 2012). Worse still, it involves restricting what can be required as a matter of human rights on the basis of the limits of what all existing governments can reasonably be expected to achieve through unilateral action. In response to the problem of inability, we could instead adopt an account of human rights that includes the concept of “progressive realization”: recognizing that state governments which are unable to fulfill human rights in the short term should just work toward their full reali