Part 1 Delimitation of the Problem, One Human Rights in Comprehensive Context

Subject(s):

Civil and political rights — Collective rights — Right to health — Human rights remedies

This chapter describes a comprehensive set of goal values for postulation, clarification, and implementation of human rights in the largest community of humankind, first by discussing the rising common demands for such rights, namely: demands relating to respect, power, enlightenment, well-being, wealth, skill, affection, and rectitude. It then considers the responses of both transnational and national processes of authoritative decision to these demands, arguing that human dignity values are not being fulfilled and that large-scale deprivations of individuals and groups continue to prevail everywhere. It also examines conditions affecting deprivations and nonfulfillments of human dignity values, along with the intellectual confusion about human rights. In particular, it evaluates a number of jurisprudential approaches that contribute to human rights theory, including the natural law approach, the historical approach, the positivist approach, and the social science approach. The chapter concludes by proposing a policy-oriented framework of inquiry about human rights.