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Human Rights Law vs. Humanitarian Law (Part I of II)

© Jennie S. Bev

Do you know that Human Rights Law differ from Humanitarian Law? How does it vary in meaning and how are they being imposed? This article tries to answer these questions in the simplest way possible for those interested in human rights issues.

Since the beginning of human civilization, conflicts have been occurring everywhere and rights are violated everyday. From a tyrant ruling king to honor killings, from domestic abuse to children being sold for sex slave purposes, we cannot sleep well without having those nightmares of human rights abuse.

Recorded history of human rights movement started with the signing of Magna Carta in 1215, or Great Charter by King John of England. The most exceptional characteristic of the Magna Carta was its recognition of the "Law of the Land" as supreme, above even the king as the ultimate ruler in England at that time.

Later on, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the much-debated concept of "natural rights" was born. There were two important movements in late 1700s that drew heavily on this concept: the US Declaration of Independence in 1776 and 1789 French Revolution. Both have evolved significantly from its Magna Carta original concept.

The surfacing of human rights from the natural rights belief did not come without disagreement, as some philosophers and conceptors disputed that rights could only come from the law of a particular society and are not of inherent nature. To rebut the on-going opposition views on origins of rights, Thomas Paine wrote a thesis of the conception of natural rights and their connection to the rights of a particular society. In The Rights of Man Paine made a clear distinction between natural rights and civil rights, but he constantly viewed an indispensable connection between the two:

"Natural rights are those which appertain to man in right of his existence. Of this kind are all the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind, and also all those rights of acting as an individual for his own comfort and happiness, which are not injurious to the natural rights of others. Civil rights are those which appertain to man in right of being a member of society. Every civil right has for its foundation, some natural right pre-existing in the individual, but to the enjoyment of which his individual power is not, in all cases, sufficiently competent. Of this kind are all those which relate to security and protection."

Along the development of the definition, Henry David Thoreau was the first philosopher known to use the term, "human rights" in his essay: Civil Disobedience.