The dark side of human rights

International Affairs

Volumn 81, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 427-439

  O'Neill, Onora ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 15844371615     PISSN: 00205850     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2346.2005.00459.x     Document Type: Article

References (19)

1. This is a revised version of the Martin Wight Lecture given at the London School of Economics on 14 October 2004. I am grateful for a number of helpful comments at and following the lecture, especially from Conor Gearty, Nick Rengger and Chris Brown.
2. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the revolution in France, Conor Cruise O'Brien, ed. (London: Penguin Books, 1984), pp. 151-2.
3. Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, 1789, http://www.magnacartaplus.org/french-rights/1789.htm
4. Note also Article 17 of the Declaration of 1789: 'Property, being an inviolable and sacred right, no one may be deprived of it; unless public necessity, legally investigated, clearly requires it, and just and prior compensation has been paid'
5. Set out in the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1966 (CCPR). This Covenant also 'recognizes' various rights that are not liberty rights. See http://www.magnacartaplus.org/uno-docs/covenant.htm.
6. CESCR, Art 11. See http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/a_cescr.htm.
7. See the FAO website atn http://www.fao.org/UNFAO/about/index_en.html.
8. CESCR, Art 12. The two Articles expand on rights proclaimed in Article 25 if the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 (UDHR), which runs 'Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control'. For the text of the UDHR see http://www.bee-leaf.com/universaldeclarationhumanrights.html.
9. The WHO's objective, as set out in its Constitution, is 'the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health', defined expansively as''a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity', http://www.who.int/about/en/.
10. See recently James Griffin, 'Discrepancies between the best philosophical account of Human Rights and the International Law of Human Rights', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, CI, 2001, pp. 1-28.
11. The text can be found at http://www.imcl/biz/docs/humanrights.pdf. For further comments on some confusions about obligations and agency in UDHR, see Onora O'Neill, 'Agents of Justice', in Thomas W. Pogge, Global justice (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), pp. 188-203.
12. The text can be found at http://www.imcl/biz/docs/humanrights.pdf. For further comments on some confusions about obligations and agency in UDHR, see Onora O'Neill, 'Agents of Justice', in Thomas W. Pogge, Global justice (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), pp. 188-203.
13. Article 2 CESCR at http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/a_cescr.htm.
14. The nature of States parties obligations, Art. 2, para. I of the Covenant, Fifth session, 1990, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, CESCR General comment 3, http://www.unhchr.ch/tbs/doc.nsf/(symbol)/ CESCR+General+comment+3.En?OpenDocument.
15. Michael Moran, The British regulatory state: high modernism and hyper-innovation (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 2003). Moran argues that the new regulatory state is neither liberal nor decentralizing, despite its commitment to human rights. Rather it is both interventionist and centralizing in ways that colonize hitherto relatively independent domains of civil society -including those of the farmer and the physician.
16. See Albert O. Hirschmann, Exit, voice and loyalty: responses to decline in firms, organizations and states (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970), for a classic analysis of these options.
17. The United Kingdom government established a Better Regulation Task Force in 1997. It promotes the 'five principles of better regulation' which are said to be Proportionality, Accountability, Consistency, Transparency and Targeting (consistency is a nice touch!). See the task force's website at http://www.brtf.gov.uk/.
18. Friedrich Nietzsche, The genealogy of morals, Part III, Section 15. This translation, which draws on earlier received versions, can be found at The Nietzsche channel's website at http://www.geocities.com/thenietzschechannel/ onthe3.htm#3e15.
19. Bernard Williams, Ethics and the limits of philosophy (London: Fontana, 1985), p. 177.