Suchergebnisse

WHILE SOCIETY IS BECOMING MORE CONCERNED ABOUT THE WAY WE ARE USING UP OUR NATURAL RESOURCES AND DESTROYING THE ECOLOGICAL BALANCE OF NATURE, THERE IS A LACK OF DOING ANYTHING EFFECTIVE ABOUT IT. THE AUTHOR ASSERTS THAT THIS DIFFICULTY EXISTS BECAUSE ANY EFFECTIVE ACTION WOULD CONTRADICT THE CONCEPT AND INSTITUTION OF INDIVIDUAL PROPERTY. THIS WILL HAVE TO BE SOLVED BY OUR POLITICIANS.

The concept of human rights has always been a burning and one of the most significant concepts in the field of Social Sciences and Humanities. Human rights are the basic and birth rights of every individual. These individualistic rights are important in order to lead a dignified life in society. These rights guarantee to all round developments of an individual. The article Human Rights as Natural Rights, written by the American political theorist Jack Donnelly, is a depiction of the meaning and nature of human rights. In the article Donnelly tries to draw our attention to the theoretical premises of human rights. He basically discusses the concept of human rights from three premises- human rights as natural rights, natural rights and human rights and a social justice theory of human rights whereas the author emphasizes on the questions of what human rights are and how human rights work according to the existing theories of human rights and what the basic differences exist between these different kinds of theories.

Argues that Hannah Arendt's (1967 [1951]) claim that human beings have the right to have rights ought not to be read as the contention that there exists a universal abstract moral human right of state membership that compels states to afford individuals' basic rights. Such a reading implies that there are two fields of rights, the moral & the empirical, a position that does not square with Arendt's description of rights as inherently substantive & deriving from an individual's participation in the social production of a moral consciousness. For Arendt, the attainment of rights can only be based on contributions by actions to the production of those rights. However, this leads her into a paradox: for those who have not participated in the production of such rights, ie, refugees, there can be no basis for claiming that they have a right to have rights. Only by describing the right to have rights on a different moral plane as the substantive production of rights can Arendt move beyond this paradox, a move explicitly declined in her description of rights as wholly substantive. D. M. Smith

Examines the potential & limits of addressing women's rights issues in the larger realm of human rights. The positions of Amnesty International & Human Rights Watch on women's rights issues are outlined. It is argued that women's rights are often perceived as a private, domestic matter outside the realm of government policy. Addressing women's rights in the larger sphere of human rights would challenge this convention & make them a state issue. M. Nichols-Wagner