Part 3 Trends in Decision and Conditioning Factors: Claims Relating to Respect, Seven Claims Relating to Fundamental Freedom of Choice

Subject(s):

Equality before the law — Freedom from slavery or forced labour — Freedom of association — Freedom of expression — Freedom of thought, conscience, and religion — Apartheid — Enslavement and forced labour — Persecution

This chapter considers claims relating to fundamental freedom of choice, focusing on three three practices that are incompatible with the basic policies of freedom of choice and equality of opportunity essential to human dignity: slavery, caste system, and apartheid. It first provides a factual background on slavery, caste, and apartheid before discussing the basic community policies that condemn them as well as trends in the formulation and clarification of prescriptions designed to end each one of them. In particular, it discusses international efforts to eradicate all forms of slavery (for example, the Economic and Social Council’s Resolution 1695 [LII]) and to eliminate caste (for example, Article 2 of the United Nations’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights). It also examines the various sanctioning measures designed to eradicate apartheid in South Africa.