Encyclopedia > International human rights instruments
International human rights instruments can be classified into two categories: declarations, adopted by bodies such as the United Nations General Assembly, which are not legally binding although they may be politically so; and conventions, which are legally binding instruments concluded under international law.
International human rights instruments can be divided further into global instruments, to which any state in the world can be a party, and regional instruments, which are restricted to states in a particular region of the world.
Most conventions establish mechanisms to oversee their implementation. In some cases these mechanisms have relatively little power, and are often ignored by member states; in other cases these mechanisms have great political and legal authority, and their decisions are almost always implemented. Examples of the first case include the UN treaty committees, while the best exemplar of the second case is the European Court of Human Rights.
Mechanisms also vary as to the degree of individual access to them. Under some conventions – e.g. the European Convention on Human Rights (as it currently exists) – individuals are permitted automatically to take individual cases to the enforcement mechanisms; under most, however, (e.g. the UN conventions) individual access is contingent on the acceptance of that right by each state party, either by a declaration at the time of ratification or accession, or through ratification of or accession to a protocol to the convention.
These rights commonly include the right to life, the right to an adequate standard of living, freedom from torture and other mistreatment, freedom of expression, freedom of movement, the right to self-determination, the right to education, and the right to participation in cultural and political life.
The origin of modern positive rights in international law may be traced to the creation of the International Labour Organization in 1919 as a Western response to the socialist ideology of the Russian Revolution of 1917.
Rights may also be non-derogable (not limited in times of national emergency); these often include the right to life, the right to be prosecuted only according to the laws that are in existence at the time of the offense, the right to be free from slavery, and the right to be free from torture.
Humanrights are universal and inalienable; indivisible; interdependent and interrelated.
Thus, the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living cannot be compromised at the expense of other rights, such as the right to health or the right to education.
Interdependence and Interrelatedness: Humanrights are interdependent and interrelated.
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