Sociology and Human Rights Education: Beyond the Three Generations?
Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 3-22 (20)
Author: FREZZO, Mark
This article examines the uses and limitations of the prevailing classificatory schema in the field of human rights—a tripartite framework that delineates first-generation civil and political rights ensuring liberty, second-generation economic and social rights promoting equality, and third-generation group and cultural rights supporting solidarity. When applied strictly, the framework runs the risk of reifying the three categories, exaggerating the impact of the European Enlightenment on contemporary norms, and overlooking the historical contexts in which rights-claims emerge. Though useful for analytic and pedagogical purposes, the existing paradigm fails to capture the full spectrum of human rights violations and solutions in the contemporary world. More precisely, it fails to account for the intersections among different types of rights. To the end of renovating the paradigm, this article advances the principles of holism, globalism, and historicism as tools for human rights educators.
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The use of the term “first generation” “second generation” and “third generation” to describe and classify human rights is no longer accepted in the field of international human rights law at either the international or regional level. I must inform you that the use of the those three generation terms does not now constitute the “prevailing classificatory schema”, nor is it the “prevailing paradigm.”
The use of “generation” is obsolete, even though one occasionally still hears the incorrect use of that term. It should not be used either within or outside of the human rights legal domaine. Indeed it caused a lot of theoretical and conceptual problems and its use has been discouraged for some years now. One now speaks of human rights as being “indivisible”, “inter-related” and “inter-dependent”. One can indeed still refer to human rights as “civil and political rights” or “economic, social and cultural rights” as classes of rights reflecting the two main international human rights covenants, but one does not use the descriptive of “first generation” etc. any more.
I am a long time international human rights lawyer and human rights educator (at MA and JD levels) and have taught basic human rights theory, concepts and terminology for many years now and am the author of “A Handbook of International Human Rights Terminology” (2005) and “Encyclopedia of Human Rights in the United States” (2011) and have made reference therein to this end of the use of the term “generation”.
Having said this, I appreciated your article and am excited to see your series on HRE which is so needed in the USA. You are to be commended. Keep up the good work.
H. Victor Conde Esq.
MA in Human Rights; Juris Dr, LLM in Intl and Comparative Human Rights Law
Diplome, Int’l Institute of Human Rights (Strasbourg)
Thank you for your valuable comments. In retrospect, I suppose that my point about the three generations could have been more nuanced. In essence, I wished to argue not so much that the idea of “generations” was problematic—a point that has been accepted for some time—but rather that the three categories (civil and political, economic and social, and group and cultural) may harbor some utility for analytic and pedagogical purposes. But the utility of these categories consists in their role as analytic and pedagogical stepping stones. An immanent critique of the framework suggests that human rights educators—especially those operating within the social science disciplines—should emphasize the connections among the three categories. This constitutes a challenge because the social sciences tend to treat the “polity,” the “economy,” “society,” and “culture” as separate spheres. Thus, the contributions of social scientists tend to be inflected by their disciplinary foci—a situation that has begun to change as human rights institutes have encouraged cross-pollination among the disciplines. In this light, social scientists interested in human rights have contributed to the literature on the indivisibility of human rights in the “real world.” This has opened more possibilities for teaching the concept of “rights bundling.” Thus, my central argument is that the concept of “rights bundling” manages both to build on and to move beyond the categories of civil and political, economic and social, and group and cultural–categories that remain ensconced in UN documents and other touchstones.
–Mark Frezzo
Mark:
I think understand. However , when you talk about generations that generation concept included a “third generation” of rights . They were claimed rights , the so called “solidarity rights”: right to peace, right to development, right to a clean environment, right to humanitarian assistance, to “solidarity”. This third generation of rights were not really generally accepted as human rights, which we jurists called lex lata. Only the right to development has arguably progressed to be deemed a lex lata, whereas the rest are called lex ferenda, a sort of suggested or claimed right in the process of gestation, but with no promise of live birth.
Besides the idea of trying to hierarchicalize human rights and claim some more important than others, the generation concept also suffered theoretically from this inclusion of these so called third generation. I did not see much reference to third generation rights.
for your information the second generation included econolic, social and cultural human rights. The third generation was not comprosed of “group and cultural rights supporting solidarity.” This is incorrect. While it is true the above third generation list of rights have a very group or collective feeling to them, they were largely pushed by the east bloc and some non aligned states in the cold war days, and they suffer primarily from not being theoretically based in individual inherent human dignity. IN any case third generation rights are those specific rights I listed above, such a the right to peace.
I am not trying to show off here Mark. I am trying to help you understand what has been the generally accepted human rights theory. I am trying to help you. There has been much confusion in this area, q.e.d.
KEEP THE DISCUSSION GOING;
victor
The blog was aulelbtosy fantastic! Lots of great information andinspiration, both of which we all need!b Keep 'em coming… you all dosuch a great job at such Concepts… can't tell you how much I, forone appreciate all you do!
A link to an interesting e-learning course, “Introduction to International Human Rights Law (Foundation Course),” offered by Frank Elbers and Mihir Kanade through hrea.org:
http://www.hrea.org/index.php?base_id=1147&language_id=1
Week 2 examines the debates on the supposed “three generations” of human rights.
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Week 1: History and Normative Foundations of Human Rights and the Emergence of International Human Rights Law
Week 2: The Politics of Human Rights and Beyond (Debates on Generations of Human Rights and Universality)
Week 3: They are Humans Too? (Human Rights of Vulnerable Groups)
Week 4: Collective Identity and Collective Human Rights
Week 5: Compliance and Enforcement of Human Rights
Week 6: Civil Society and Human Rights Advocacy
Personally, I do not subscribe to the idea of “generations”—not least because it presupposes a linear and mechanistic conception of how rights are claimed and brought to fruition (whereas different societies have followed different pathways). For expositional purposes, I found it useful to work through the antiquated “three generations” in order to better illustrate how different types of rights converge in the real world. Similarly, I do not believe in a “hierarchy of rights.” It may be true that political scientists tend to emphasize civil and political rights; sociologists tend to emphasize economic and social rights; and anthropologists tend to emphasize group and cultural rights. But social scientists have found plenty of common ground—in part under the auspices of human rights institutes.
Concerning the ostensible “third generation” of human rights:
Doubtless, it was the least defined and most highly contested of the supposed “generations.” But there is no doubt that many scholars and activists took it seriously. A relevant quotation from Micheline Ishay’s The History of Human Rights: From Ancient Times to the Globalization Era (2008):
“Drawing on the battle cry of the French Revolution, Cassin identified the four pillars of the [UDHR] as ‘dignity, liberty, equality, and brotherhood. The twenty-seven articles of the declaration were divided among these four pillars…a first pillar, constructed out of the first two articles, stands for human dignity…a second pillar, composed of articles 3-19 of the declaration, invokes the first generation of civil liberties and other liberal rights that were fought for during the Enlightenment; a third pillar, consisting of articles 20-26, addresses the second generation of rights, those related to political, social, and economic equity and championed during the industrial revolution; the fourth, representing articles 27-28, focuses on the third generation of rights, those associated with communal and national solidarity, as advocated during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century and throughout the post-colonial era” (3-4).
According to Ishay, the idea of three generations was latent in the UDHR and extrapolated in the ICCPR, the ICESCR, and other documents. Ishay is aware of the inconsistencies built into these documents. As a political and social historian, Ishay is interested in illuminating the role of past struggles in bringing different forms of rights into widespread recognition. In effect, Ishay challenges both teleology (or the idea that rights magically and inevitably unfold over time) and the opposite idea that there has been little progress in human rights. In an effort to combat Eurocentrism, other scholars have emphasized the contributions of non-Western cultures to human rights. I am very receptive to this approach.
It is clear that the so-called “third generation” is often a hodge-podge that includes “aspirational rights” and “soft law.” For example, some authors have placed environmental rights in this category.
In any case, in proposing “rights bundles”—such as longevity, peace, and the full development of the person—I am deliberately moving beyond the three generations and cutting across the categories (civil and political, economic and social, group and cultural). In asserting that rights bundles can be invented, I presuppose (a) that rights are created by a process of claim-making by exploited or marginalized people (and the organizations they produce or support) and claim-recognition by authorities (especially government officials), (b) that the discourse on human rights is malleable and subject to competing interpretations, and (c) that what is “thinkable” in terms of human rights varies across historical time and geographic space. Other authors have proposed different rights bundles. It seems to me that the construction of rights bundles can be a useful exercise for human rights educators. I like the idea of encouraging students to propose and defend packages of rights. At the very least, this is a useful form of skills training.
In a similar vein, I would encourage students to think through the distinction between “negative” and “positive” rights, the distinction between individual” and “collective” rights, etc. These distinctions can form a useful basis for dialogue even if they do not withstand various tests for defensibility and utility.
There may be an ontological foundation of human rights. Bryan Turner and others have pointed to human vulnerability as a possible basis for universalism. But I did not see the need to address this issue in my article. Whether or not one finds an ontological grounding for human rights may have an influence on whether one believes in the possibility of universalism. For my part, I do believe in the possibility of a non-Eurocentric or global universalism that provides for cultural specificity. But that question leads one into global governance (and the institutions that would comprise it)—an area that falls well beyond the purview of my article.