FOUR GENERATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS

Karel Vasak, a distinguished and very well-known human rights

scholar, introduced the idea of three generations of human rights,
which allows us to understand the types and evolution of human rights
better. The first generation of human rights is civil and political rights.
The second generation of human rights includes economic, social and
cultural rights and the third generation of human rights are called
solidarity rights.

The first generation rights i.e., civil and political rights are the initial
form of natural rights. These rights developed during the English
Revolution of the 17th century and the French and American
Revolution of the 18th century. The key theme underlying these rights
is liberty. The first generation rights include the right to life, the right to
liberty, and the right to property and have expanded to include non-
discrimination, freedom from arbitrary arrest, freedom of thought,
freedom of religion, freedom of movement etc. These rights are often
seen as a manifestation of negative rights since they can be enjoyed
only when there is a restriction upon others. The key documents to
understand the content of the first generation of human rights are
Article 3 to Article 21 of the UN Declaration and the International
Covenant of Civil and Political Rights of 1966 which came into force in
1976. First-generation human rights, sometimes called "blue rights", deal
essentially with liberty and participation in political life. They are
fundamentally civil and political in nature: They serve negatively to protect the
individual from excesses of the state. First-generation rights include, among
other things, the right to life, equality before the law, freedom of
speech, freedom of religion, property rights, the right to a fair trial, and voting
rights. Some of these rights and the right to due process date back to
the Magna Carta of 1215 and the Rights of Englishmen, which were
expressed in the English Bill of Rights in 1689. A more full set of first-
generation human rights was pioneered in France by the Declaration of the
Rights of Man and of the Citizen in 1789, and by the United States Bill of
Rights in 1791.
They were enshrined at the global level and given status in international
law first by Articles 3 to 21 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human
Rights and later in the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights. In Europe, they were enshrined in the European Convention on
Human Rights in 1953.

In the twentieth century, especially post World War II, second-

generation rights began to earn a greater prominence. The economy
of countries was torn by war and there was massive destruction as a
result of the world wars. Therefore, the effort for economic, social
and cultural rights developed during the twentieth century. The rights
rely on socialist assumptions and the underlying theme
is equality which is in contrast to first-generation rights and the notion
of liberty. The second-generation rights include the right to work, the
right to health care, the right to education, the right to social security
etc. Therefore, these rights are seen as a manifestation of positive
rights as they place a claim on the state and a duty to oblige for
action, for example, welfare provisions. The key documents to
understand the content of second-generation rights are Article 22 to
Article 27 of the UN Declaration and the International Covenant of
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966.

Second-generation human rights

[edit]
Second-generation human rights are related to equality and began to be
recognized by governments after World War II. They are
fundamentally economic, social, and cultural in nature. They guarantee
different members of the citizenry equal conditions and treatment. Secondary
rights would include a right to be employed in just and favorable condition,
rights to food, housing and health care, as well as social
security and unemployment benefits. Like first-generation rights, they were
also covered by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and further
embodied in Articles 22 to 28 of the Universal Declaration, and
the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.

In the United States of America, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed

a Second Bill of Rights, covering much the same grounds, during his State of
the Union Address on January 11, 1944. Today, many nations, states, or
groups of nations have developed legally binding declarations guaranteeing
comprehensive sets of human rights, e.g. the European Social Charter.

Some U.S. states have enacted some of these economic rights; for example,
the state of New York has enshrined the right to a free education,[3][4] as well as
"the right to organize and to bargain collectively",[5] and workers'
compensation,[6] in its constitutional law.

These rights are sometimes referred to as "red" rights. They impose upon the
government the duty to respect and promote and fulfill them, but this depends
on the availability of resources. The duty is imposed on the state because it
controls its own resources. No one has the direct right to housing and right to
education. (In South Africa, for instance, the right is not, per se, to housing,
but rather "to have access to adequate housing",[7] realised on a progressive
basis.[8])

The duty of government is in the realization of these positive rights.

The third generation of rights emerged post-1945 and are referred to

as solidarity rights. This is for the simple reason that these rights are
concerned with social groups and society on the whole rather than an
individual. They are therefore seen as collective rights. The underlying
theme of the third-generation rights is fraternity. Usually, these rights
are shaped by the difficulties faced by the countries of the Global
South. These rights include the right to development, the right to
environmental protection, the right to self-determination, the right to
peace etc. The Stockholm Convention of Human Environment of 1972
and the Earth Summit of 1992 at Rio can be analysed to understand
these rights. Third-generation human rights
[edit]
Third-generation human rights are those rights that go beyond the mere civil
and social, as expressed in many progressive documents of international law,
including the 1972 Stockholm Declaration of the United Nations Conference
on the Human Environment, the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and
Development, and other pieces of generally aspirational "soft law".
Also known as Solidarity human rights, they are rights that try to go beyond
the framework of individual rights to focus on collective concepts, such as
community or people. However, the term remains largely unofficial,[9][10][11][12][13][14]
[15]
just as the also-used moniker of "green" rights, and thus houses an
extremely broad spectrum of rights, including:

 Group and collective rights

 Right to self-determination
 Right to economic and social development
 Right to a healthy environment
 Right to natural resources
 Right to communicate and communication rights
 Right to participation in cultural heritage
 Rights to intergenerational equity and sustainability
The African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights ensures many of those:
the right to self-determination, right to development, right to natural resources
and right to satisfactory environment.[16] Some countries also have
constitutional mechanisms for safeguarding third-generation rights. For
example, the Hungarian Parliamentary Commissioner for Future Generations,
[17]
the Parliament of Finland's Committee for the Future [fi], and the
erstwhile Commission for Future Generations in the Israeli Knesset.

Some international organizations have offices for safeguarding such rights. An

example is the High Commissioner on National Minorities of the Organization
for Security and Co-operation in Europe. The Directorate-General for the
Environment of the European Commission has as its mission "protecting,
preserving and improving the environment for present and future generations,
and promoting sustainable development".

A few jurisdictions have enacted provisions for environmental protection, e.g.

New York's "forever wild" constitutional article,[18] which is enforceable by
action of the New York State Attorney General or by any citizen ex rel. with
the consent of the Appellate Division.[19]

Fourth generation
[edit]
Several analysts claim that a fourth generation of human rights is emerging,
which would include rights that cannot be included in the third generation,
future claims of first and second generation rights and new rights, especially in
relation to technological development and information and communication
technologies and cyberspace.[20]

However, the content of it is not clear, and these analysts do not present a
unique proposal. They normally take some rights from the third generation
and include them in the fourth, such as the right to a healthy environment or
aspects related to bioethics. Some of those analysts believe that the fourth
generation is given by human rights in relation to new technologies,[20] while
others prefer to talk about digital rights,[21] where a new range of rights would
be found, such as:

 The right to equally access computing and digital

 The right to digital self-determination
 The right to digital security
 The right to access one's own digital data (habeas data)[22]
Others point out that the differentiating element would be that, while the first
three generations refer to the human being as a member of society, the rights
of the fourth would refer to the human being as a species.