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Human Rights and Rights of Peoples
Theo van Boven 1
Full text available: PDF format *
I. Introduction
This paper pencils in a sketch and does not endeavour to draw a comprehensive picture. It draws attention to the evolution of concepts of rights of men and women and of rights of peoples as they evolved during the life time of the United Nations. The membership of the Organization progressively increased over the years and created new contexts and new impulses but did not change the essential notion of human dignity and the ensuing human values. The universality, the indivisibility and the interdependence of all human rights is the leading theme that runs through the wide spectrum of United Nations' efforts to promote and to protect human rights and peoples' rights. It is the notion and principle of inclusion as opposed to the practice of exclusion which is the basic thrust of this paper and which is to be regarded as a core idea of United Nations' approaches to human rights.
Another principal notion of this paper is that of responsibility. In the United Nations Charter all Members have pledged themselves to take joint and separate action in cooperation with the Organization for the achievement of the promotion of universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all.2
As Members of the Organization and on the basis of this Charter commitment, States can be held accountable for their policies and practices regarding the realization of human rights. In addition, as principal subjects of international law, States are bound by the implications of State responsibility which arise in cases where States fail to comply with their obligations pursuant to treaties or general international law. With the recognition of individuals as emerging subjects of international law, perpetrators of serious violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law carry international criminal responsibility. The United Nations is now in the process of establishing mechanisms to enforce international criminal responsibility of individual persons. This paper underscores this development and, in addition, expresses the wish that all necessary measures be taken, as a requirement of justice, to provide reparation to victims of gross violations of human rights. It is an imperative demand of justice to sustain and enforce the criminal responsibility of persons who gravely offend the laws of humanity and to afford reparation to those who have suffered personal injury.
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1 Professor of International Law at the University of Limburg,
Maastricht, The Netherlands.
2 UN Charter, Articles 56 and 55c.
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