Rights
 

Partly inspired by the abortion thread, but also a lot of things I've noticed around the place recently, I thought this could be an interesting discussion.

What rights do you think people should have?
Should everyone have the same rights, or should some people have more rights than others?
Is there any situations where it is acceptable to remove certain rights from people?
In a situation where two people's rights conflict, what should happen?

For example I have read a lot of opinions about people who want to scrap the human rights act, or who think it shouldn't apply to prisoners or immigrants. Here in the UK we take access to healthcare as a right, but from what I've read about Obama's healthcare plans there are quite a few people who don't believe that it should be a right.

http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml
That's a link to the universal declaration of human rights.

Tricky question.

The term 'human' rights to me dictates that they should apply to all those human.

That said, there are people who act in an inhumane way and I struggle to accept that they should be treated as such.

^ Maybe they've been treated as inhuman, without any rights, and that's why they behave as they do.
It can be a vicious circle, and how do we get out of that circle?

That's pretty much my mindset, Katie. I don't think that to show somebody how to act with compassion, you treat them with violence - that's just contradictory.

The term 'right' always bothers me. Are we owed any inherent right from our country just because we were born here, or currently reside here? I think a right from person to person is justified because that runs under the assumption that you are also given 'rights'. It's a difficult thing to ever argue that anybody is owed anything from anybody else, I think. Argh, I don't know if this makes sense - I'm trying to explain it in the best way possible but I'm struggling.

I think it's an individual right to be able to express yourself - but I don't know if I agree that universal, free basic healthcare is a right. It's something that everybody should have access to, without a doubt, but I don't know - I get a bit iffy about the word 'right'. I don't think it's a moral obligation, which is what I see a 'right' as being, but I think it's a something that a state should offer to the best of it's capacity. I think, for me, the difference is that a right is from person to person, whereas an obligation is from an institution. I know it's pedantic, and I don't know why I think that, but apparently I do.

But I'm really, really unsure about this so I'm totally open to persuasion. This isn't based on any real understanding of rights, just my gut instinct.

I think that, also, no individuals right should infringe directly upon another's. I think. If that makes sense?

To me, 'rights' implies that it is wholly universal and something that everyone agrees upon. Unfortunately that isn't the case. There will pretty much always be conflicting rights, and so one will always have to take precedence over the other, so can they both still be rights?

Maybe there's a hierarchy of rights and in cases of conflicting rights, the more important right should overrule. Hmm I'm trying to think of examples now.

Not really a 'right' as such, but the best (simple) example I can come up with just now. Cities are now being planned more and more with disabled access in mind, however, not all disabled people are the same. A kerb-cut which is pretty much essential to a wheelchair user can be a complete nightmare for a blind person. The wheelchair user will take precedence though, why is that? Because the wheelchair user is what most people think of when the word 'disabled person' is said? Or is it something else?

I don't really understand how a right can still be a right when there is a hierarchy in existence in which one can overrule the other.

I guess two conflicting human rights I can think of are:
and
And for example in those cases I think that whilst religious people should be allowed to believe what they want, they shouldn't be able to discriminate against people unless it's for a role in that specific religion. So for example Catholic adoption agencies shouldn't be able to discriminate based on the sexualities of prospective parents, but would be allowed to discriminate on the appointment of priests.

Well this one doesn't seem to apply considering I saw a man in stoke on trent town centre (hanley) be moved on by police, he was muslim & from what i heard with my own ears, was preaching racial hatred, saying if we didn't convert the east would come to the west & they'd be war.
niiiiiice

ActuAlly i sAw A prActicing... i think it wAS Buddhist preAching in my town centre. he wAs sectioned by the police And next seen on the wArd. he didn't speAk Any English And wAS dischArged the next dAy. strAnge times.

I'm not sure that human rights will ever be established. Hear me out, please! This is a complicated issue, like you've all already been saying. It's possible on paper to establish rights, but in practice arbitration is murky. For example, here in the US freedom from discrimination on any basis is supposed to be a right, and violating it merits punishment. But in practice discrimination is still going strong. Same-sex marriage is the biggest example I can think of.

The trouble with human rights arbitration is that the arbiters are humans. No person is perfectly objective; we've all got opinions dictated by our upbringing and our personal experiences. It would seem to make logical sense to choose governing bodies in groups, so that more opinions would be heard. That was the idea behind the US Congress. But again, no person is perfect. We are weak: we make bad decisions for money. We allow ambition and personal opinion to cloud our judgment, even when we have custodianship over one another. It's nobody's "fault" this happens; to paraphrase Stellata, everyone has a past. It's possible to trace any thought or behavior back to something else. The further one steps back from a situation, metaphorically speaking, the more apparent it is that causality is not a simple line. Where to draw the line of inclusion is one of the trickiest issues people face when making judgments.

Because so many factors play into a given situation, I believe it's impossible to actually have equal, objective human rights laws. I think as long as there is opinion, there will be discord. I'm not saying that's a good or bad thing, just that I don't think there's anything for it. It's a push.

here is the us bill of rights {link}

Having been through the declaration of human rights numerous times, those are the rights I truly believe every person should have, equal rights whether you are a wealthy westerner or asylum seeker with nothing.

I don't believe there is ever a situation where it is acceptable to remove anothers rights. I guess the current example for this is, is it right to torture someone for information which may potentially save a hundred lives (eg terrorism).
I still believe torture/removal of human rights would be wrong in this instance, I get the whole needs of the many outweigh the needs of the individual thing. But then I imagine being that one person unfairly tortured.
If two peoples rights conflict I believe you have to go by the hierachy of rights, for example the right to life will always trump the others.