Human rights and human responsibilities

Abstract

Large segments of humankind are so poor that their social and economic and often their civil and political human rights remain unfulfilled. Who bears what responsibilities toward solving this problem? A recently proposed ‘Universal Declaration of Human Responsibilities’ provides no answers. Against competing interpretations of the responsibilities entailed by the ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’, section 28 of this Declaration suggests that human rights give those subjected to an institutional order moral claims against those who impose it. This suggestion implies, plausibly, that the more powerful states imposing the international order must shape it so that (insofar as is reasonably possible) all persons subjected to it have secure access to the objects of their human rights. If those states lived up to this responsibility, much of the current vast underfulfillment of human rights would be avoided.