HUMAN RIGHTS CLASSIFICATION

Classic and Social rights

Classic rights entail an obligation for the state to refrain from certain actions, and social rights to oblige it to provide certain guarantees. Lawyers often describe classic rights in terms of a duty to provide the means (obligations of conducts).

Civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights

Civil Rights

The term ‘civil rights’ is often used with reference to the rights set out in the first eighteen articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Political Rights

They include freedom of expression, freedom of association and assembly, the right to take part in the government of one’s country and the right to vote and stand for election at genuine periodic elections held by secret ballot.

Economic Social Rights

These rights provide the conditions necessary for prosperity and wellbeing. Economic rights refer, for example to the right to prosperity, the right to work, which one freely chooses or accepts, the right to a fair wage, etc.

Fundamental and basic rights

Fundamental rights are taken to mean such rights as the right life and the inviolability of the person. Basic rights include all the right which concern people’s primary material and non-material needs. If these are not provided, no human being can lead a dignified existence. Basic rights include the right to life, the right to a minimum level of security, the inviolability of the person, freedom from slavery and servitude, and freedom from torture, unlawful deprivation of liberty, discrimination and other acts which impinge on human dignity.

Other classifications

      Freedoms

      Freedom of speech and expression:

      Freedom of belief

      Freedom from want

      Freedom from fear

      Roosevelt implied that a dignified human existence requires not only protection from oppression and arbitrariness, but also Access to the primary necessities of life.

Civil liberties

Civil liberties refer primarily to those human rights which are laid down in the US Constitution: freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of expression, freedom of association and assembly, protection against interference with ones privacy, protection against torture, the right to affair trial and the rights of workers.

Individual and collective rights

Although the fundamental purpose of human rights is the protection and development of the individual (individual rights), some of this rights are exercised by people in groups (collective rights).

First, second and third generation rights

First generation rights are related to liberty and refer fundamentally to civil and political rights. The second generation rights are related to equality, including economic, social and cultural rights. Third generation or ”solidarity rights” cover group and collective rights which include inter alia, the right to development, the right to be, and the right to a clean environment.

The term human rights is used to refer to a wide range of rights ranging from the right to life, the right to cultural identity. They involve all elementary preconditions for a dignified human existence. At the international level, a distinction is sometimes made between civil and political rights have been classified into a number of different ways, it is important to note the international law of human rights emphasizes that all human rights are universal, indivisible and independent.