2nd generation Human Rights

Group II
3 generations of H.R.

■ Civil-political, socio-economic, and collective-developmental (Vasek, 1977).

■ Socio economic h.r. similarly include two subtypes:
– norms pertaining to the provision of goods meeting social needs (for example,
nutrition, shelter, health care, education) and;
– norms pertaining to the provision of goods meeting economic needs (for
example, work and fair wages, an adequate living standard, a social security
net).
Socio-economic h.r.

■ “socio-economic” human rights = equal conditions and treatment.

– Extrinsic in character
– “Positive right” from government
– Based on principles of social justice and public obligation
Empirical points (history)

■ After world war 2, embodied from Universal Declaration

■ Can be found in Articles 22 to 27 of the Universal Declaration and International
Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.
■ Before the declaration, President Roosevelt proposed a Second bill of rights,
covering much the same grounds, during his State of the Union Address on
1944.
■ Today, many nations, states, or groups of nations have developed legally
binding declarations guaranteeing comprehensive sets of human rights.
How it started?

■ Ground roots period:

Greek’s Universalism , Roman’s expansion of natural law which were brought up
during Medieval Ages which culminated some of Christian theories which was
formulated by St. Thomas Aquinas (1226-74).
■ Early modern development
Renaissance and enlightenment, An important strand in this thinking was that
there was a 'natural law' that stood above the law of rulers. This meant that
individuals had certain rights simply because they were human beings, which was
accepted by Luther, St. Augustine and St Paul.
How it nourished?

The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement that swept across Britain, America
and Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
They shared a common view that beliefs and practices ought to be subjected to
criticism and to the tests of reason and science, and ought not to be accepted on the
basis of attachment, habit, prejudice, superstition, custom, tradition, authority or
power. Among of the prominent figures were John Locke, Voltaire and Jean-Jacques
Rousseau
How it ended?

Modern Socio Economic Right Development

Provision of goods meeting economic needs
■ 1)The right to just and favorable conditions of work
■ 2)The right of protection against unemployment
■ 3)The right to equal work for equal pay
■ 4) The right to reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic paid holidays
■ 5)The right to rest and leisure as an employee
■ 1-2, Otto von Bismarck established the first welfare state in a modern industrial society, with
social-welfare legislation, in 1880s Imperial GermanyBismarck extended the privileges of the
Junker social class to ordinary GermansHis 17 November 1881 Imperial Message to the Reichstag
used the term "practical Christianity" to describe his program.
■ German laws from this era also insured workers against industrial risks inherent in the workplace.

■ 3, Workers’ Compensation Laws Enacted, Far more important were new laws that raised the cost
of accidents to employers. In 1908 US Congress passed a federal employers’ liability law that
applied to railroad workers in interstate commerce and sharply limited defenses an employee
could claim. Worker fatalities that had once cost the railroads perhaps $200 now cost $2,000.
Two years later in 1910, New York became the first state to pass a workmen’s compensation law
■ 4-5. Industrial revolution, British reduced it from 10 to 16 hours a day, by 1817 it was
changed to 8 hours.
■ The International Workingmen's Association took up the demand for an eight-hour day at its
Congress in Geneva in 1866
■ Karl Marx writing in Das Kapital (1867): "By extending the working day, therefore, capitalist
production...not only produces a deterioration of human labour power by robbing it of its normal
moral and physical conditions of development and activity, but also produces the premature
exhaustion and death of this labour power itself
How it ended?

Provision goods meeting social needs

■ 6)The right to free elementary education
■ 7)The right to higher education equally accessible to all via merit
■ 8)The right to education which promotes tolerance and understanding
■ 9)The right to food, clothing, housing, medical care, and necessary social services
■ 10)The right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability,
widowhood, old age
■ 11)The right to special care and assistance for mothers and children
■ 12)The right to enjoy remuneration and standards of living adequate for the health,
well-being, and dignity of citizens and their families.
■ 6-8. before the Enlightenment of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, education was the responsibility of
parents and the church. The 1849 Paulskirchenverfassung, the constitution of the German Empire, strongly
influenced subsequent European constitutions and devoted Article 152 to 158 of its bill of rights to
education. .
■ Socialist ideals were enshrined in the 1936 Soviet Constitution, which was the first constitution to
recognise the right to education with a corresponding obligation of the state to provide such education. The
constitution guaranteed free and compulsory education at all levels, a system of state scholarships and
vocational training in state enterprises
■ 9. In Switzerland, the Swiss Factory Act of 1877 . Some of the programs first adopted within the Cantons of
Switzerland were emergency relief, elementary schools, and homes for the elderly and children.
■ 10. The German system provided contributory retirement benefits and disability benefits as well.
Participation was mandatory and contributions were taken from the employee, the employer and the
government. Coupled with the workers' compensation program established in 1884 and the "sickness"
insurance enacted the year before, this gave the Germans a comprehensive system of income security
based on social insurance principles.
■ 11. In 1924 The League of Nations adopts the Geneva Declaration on the Rights of the Child,
drafted by Eglantyne Jebb, founder of the Save the Children Fund. The Declaration articulates
that all people owe children the right to: means for their development; special help in times of
need; priority for relief; economic freedom and protection from exploitation; and an
upbringing that instils social consciousness and duty.

■ 12. Most authoritarian/totalitarian European states during industrial age.

Observance; Domestic scale

Right Review
1)The right to just and favorable conditions of work Worker’s Basic Rights
2)The right of protection against unemployment Labor code A.3, 1987 Constitution Sec. 18, A. 2
3)The right to equal work for equal pay Wage Rationalization Act
4)The right to rest and leisure as an employee Labor code A.91
5)The right to reasonable limitation of working hours Labor code A.83 & 94
and periodic paid holidays
6)The right to free elementary education Governance of Basic Education Act
Right Review
7)The right to higher education equally accessible to all  Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act
via merit
8)The right to education which promotes tolerance and
understanding
9)The right to food, clothing, housing, medical care, and Universal health care act, Conditional cash grant, and
necessary social services etc.
10)The right to security in the event of unemployment, GSIS & SSS, T.P. benefits
sickness, disability, widowhood, old age
11)The right to special care and assistance for mothers Child and Youth Welfare Code, Children’s Emergency
and children Relief and Protection Act , and etc
12)The right to enjoy remuneration and standards of Improving based on GDP , reduced poverty line and
living adequate for the health, well-being, and dignity of several welfare acts.
citizens and their families