Human rights

Human rights issues and conflicts of human rights

“If we destroy human rights and rule of law in response to terrorism, they have won.” Joichi Ito

What are human rights issues? By definition, they could be understood as whatever activity/action which in any way violates dignity, integrity or equality of a human beings. And what about the situation when one right seems to be “higher” than the other? Which of them is it? How to solve the dilemma when one right limits another, when there is a conflict of rights?

Conflicts of rights are sometimes explained by the example of the Titanic tragedy. While the ship was sinking , there were other vessels present in the area. However, they did not intervene much until ship sank completely. Only afterwards, they saved those who stayed on the surface of the water (just Kate Winslet, Leonardo di Caprio headed to the sea bed minutes ago). Although, it seemed really cynical, this was an obvious conflict of rights of those at the vessels around, and those from sinking Titanic. If they decided to intervene immediately, the lives of the passengers on board of the other ships would be in high risk. As this example is little bit torn out of our reality, please see particular examples of more familiar situations.

SARS quarantines

At the beginning of the Millennium, the severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemic (known as SARS) spread from mainland China into a number of countries around the world. Responsible institutions responded by imposing wide quarantines, which ought to restrain the movement of people in order to control the spread of the infection. In this example there is a conflict of rights included - a conflict between the freedom of those who had contacts with patients infected by SARS and between public health and public safety (which also comprises of the right to life and health of others). The result was that the rights of the first group were thus limited.

Gender equality vs. Traditional cultures

One of the most usual examples of human rights conflict or dilemma related to the cultural specifics and the universality of human rights in regards to that is conflict between women’s rights and rights arising from culture specifics. As the most obvious included in this, we could mention such issues as arranged marriages, female circumcision and other issues concerning gender equality and fair treatment of women and girls. According to some, rights arising from traditional points of view should prevail, however it is highly questionable whether these issues should really prevail over the universality of human rights. To be honest, we should not forget to mention that it pays for our societies as well, as women are still dominantly culturally perceived as child bearers and men as breadwinners, they are generally getting lower salaries for the exactly same jobs and are seen as incapable to hold high managerial positions due to their womanhood as such.

As we have mentioned, there are often efforts to limit the universality of these rights in particular countries, even at the field of UN. It is symptomatic that these ideas are dominantly proposed by men representing these countries. Actually, usually no women represent them. On the other hand, there are some countries which are the pioneers in this field and try to put gender equality in front of social interest. EU belongs to the most advanced constellations in the world, Scandinavian countries are probably the most advanced ones.

Rights of criminals vs. rights of the public

Foreign criminals, who are imprisoned in other than their homeland for more than a certain time, may be deported to their home countries. In some cases, however, these foreign criminals may be given the right to stay in the country where they are jailed if deportation would breach their human rights. If they were, for example, threatened by possible torture or death sentence in their home country. This would cause a conflict of rights between these criminals and the rights of the public in the country where they were imprisoned.

As other examples, we can mention terrorism threat vs. restricting certain liberties while combating it or even military attacks in order to protect human rights of certain citizens, e.g. minorities as it was in Serbia in 1999 when NATO bombarded the country to help the local Albanians or in Libya 2011, when NATO bombarded to protect human rights of Al Qaddafi opponents (at least it was officially promoted like that).

And what is the solution? It is definitely not easy to say. The human rights definition, their conflicts and related dilemmas are an ongoing discussion. However, it can be said that the most obvious issues such as children rights or question of slavery were universally understood and agreed. Nonetheless, some other issues such as the death penalty or gender related rights, are still in question, even though they are also proceeding positively.

Questions to reflect on

• Can you think about the position of women and men in your surroundings? Ask other people as well.