8 From ‘Negative’ to Positive Duties—The Different ‘Generations’ of Human Rights

It has become commonplace to affirm that all human rights, of whatever type, form a coherent whole. No dissonant voices are permitted in the official rhetoric of the United Nations. All relevant resolutions on the issue stress that human rights must be seen as an interwoven, indivisible, and interrelated complex of core legal norms.1 It is certainly true that from the viewpoint of the beneficiary classic rights like freedom of speech have no greater importance than social rights like the right to food. When analysed from the viewpoint of the guarantor of such...