- Introduction HR Toolkit
- Module 1
- Module 2
- Module 3
- Module 4
- Module 5
- Module 6
- Annexes
International law & Human Rights Standards
Human Rights and International Law
- International law refers to a set of international treaties and norms that define States’ legal responsibilities to each other. There are various bodies of international, as well as regional law.
- Human Rights are most widely understood today by reference to the legal catalogue of human rights we find developed through international texts, and the continued reaffirmation of the obligations that stem from them, since the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948. This set out the fundamental human rights to be universally protected, and together with two Optional Protocols (on the complaints procedure and on the death penalty) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and its Optional Protocol, form the so-called International Bill of Human Rights.
- The Declaration’s list consists of six families of rights:
(1) Security rights that protect people against murder, torture, and genocide;
(2) Due process rights that protect people against arbitrary and excessively harsh punishments and require fair and public trials for those accused of crimes;
(3) Liberty rights that protect people’s fundamental freedoms of belief, expression, association, and movement;
(4) Political rights that protect people’s liberty to participate in politics by assembling, protesting, voting, and serving in public office;
(5) Equality rights that guarantee equal citizenship, equality before the law, and freedom from discrimination;
(6) Social rights that require that governments make work, education, health services, and an adequate standard of living universally available. - A seventh category, minority and group rights, has been recognised by subsequent treaties. These rights protect women, racial and ethnic minorities, indigenous peoples, children, migrant workers, and the disabled.
Rights deriving from these families can be either negative or positive in nature, obliging either inaction (negative rights, such as the right to life, private property, free expression, religion, a fair trial etc.) or action (positive rights, such as the right to food, education, housing, health care, police protection of person and property etc.).
Key Human Rights Standards for Platforms
The Human Rights charters in the below table apply to platforms as ‘responsibilities’, as suggested by the UN, and, as voluntary commitments through the Global Network Initiative and Santa Clara Principles, which are designed to help tech platforms understand how Human Rights standards might work in practice.
We have highlighted those commitments most relevant to tech platforms in undertaking counterterrorism work. Below the table, we have provided further supplementary information.
For a summary of International Human Rights law articles most relevant to online counterterrorism work, see TAT’s Knowledge Sharing Platform
Regional conceptualisation of human rights
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Regional human rights institutions include:
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