From individual to collective rights, to the rights of mankind : the historical evolution of the subject of human rights

Abstract

A glance at history shows that the progressive development of human rights has been considerably conditioned by the evolution of social relations, and the forms in which these relations were institutionalized. It was not in abstract that newly recognised human rights came to be defined, but in the context of the modern state and that of an industrial and technological civilization; in the context of the bitter experience of two World Wars and the social and political evolution after 1945. This evolution has been characterized by a process of decolonialisation, by a growing sense of solidarity among mankind, and by a widespread awareness of the delicate ecological balance of our one and only Earth which is limited in its natural resources. The remarkable thing about the evolution of human rights is that it appears to have followed in a given direction. In fact, we notice the widening of the concept of human rights which had originated in the eighteenth century. Throughout the whole development of human rights, a certain quality has come gradually in evidence, due to a progression in which continuity is much more marked than discontinuity. This can be seen in the conceptual evolution of the subject of human rights. In what follows, I intend to show that throughout the last two centuries, particularly since the beginning of this century, there has been a continuity in the progressive widening of the subject of human rights from the individual to a collectivity and now to mankind as a whole. As we shall see, this conceptual evolution has been the result of different historical currents during which the antecedent achievements in the field of human rights have been reinterpreted in the light of new ethical demands.