6/23/2021 A Short History of the Human Rights Movement

A Short History
of the Human Rights Movement
Early Political, Religious, and Philosophical Sources
The concept of human rights has existed under several names in
European thought for many centuries, at least
since the time of
King John of England. After the king violated a number of
ancient laws and customs by which
England had been governed, his subjects forced him to sign the Magna Carta, or Great Charter,
which
enumerates a number of what later came to be thought of as
human rights. Among them were the right of the
church to be free
from governmental interference, the rights of all free citizens
to own and inherit property and
be free from excessive taxes. It
established the right of widows who owned property to choose not
to remarry,
and established principles of due process and
equality before the law. It also contained provisions forbidding
bribery and official misconduct.

The political and religious traditions in other parts of the

world also proclaimed what have come to be called
human rights,
calling on rulers to rule justly and compassionately, and
delineating limits on their power over the
lives, property, and
activities of their citizens.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe several

philosophers proposed the concept of "natural
rights," rights belonging to a person by nature and because he was a human being, not by virtue of his
citizenship in a particular country or membership in a particular religious
or ethnic group. This concept was
vigorously debated and
rejected by some philosophers as baseless. Others saw it as a
formulation of the
underlying principle on which all ideas of
citizens' rights and political and religious liberty were
based.

In the late 1700s two revolutions occurred which drew heavily

on this concept. In 1776 most of the British
colonies in North America proclaimed their independence from the British Empire in a document which still
stirs feelings, and debate, the U.S. Declaration of Independence.

We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by
their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness.

In 1789 the people of France overthrew their monarchy and established the first French Republic. Out of the
revolution came the "Declaration of the Rights of Man."

The term natural rights eventually fell into disfavor, but the
concept of universal rights took root. Philosophers
such as Thomas
Paine, John Stuart Mill, and Henry David Thoreau expanded the
concept. Thoreau is the first
philosopher I know of to use the
term, "human rights", and does so in his treatise, Civil Disobedience. This work
has been extremely influential on individuals as different as Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma
Gandhi, and Martin Luther
King. Gandhi and King, in particular,
developed their ideas on non-violent resistance to unethical
government
actions from this work.

Other early proponents of human rights were English

philosopher John Stuart Mill, in his
Essay on Liberty, and
American political theorist Thomas
Paine in his essay, The Rights of Man.

The middle and late 19th century saw a number of issues take center stage, many of them issues we in the late
20th century would consider human rights issues. They included slavery, serfdom, brutal working conditions,
starvation wages, child labor, and, in the Americas, the "Indian Problem", as it was known at the time. In the
United States, a bloody war over slavery came close to destroying a country founded only eighty years earlier on

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the premise that, "all men are created equal." Russia freed its serfs the year that war began. Neither the
emancipated American slaves nor the freed Russian serfs saw any real degree of freedom or basic rights for
many more decades, however.

For the last part of the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century, though, human rights activism remained
largely tied to political and religious groups and beliefs. Revolutionaries pointed at the atrocities of governments
as proof that their ideology was necessary to bring about change and end the government's abuses. Many people,
disgusted with the actions of governments in power, first got involved with revolutionary groups because of this.
The governments then pointed at bombings, strike-related violence, and growth in violent crime and social
disorder as reasons why a stern approach toward dissent was necessary.

Neither group had any credibility with the other and most had
little or no credibility with uninvolved citizens,
because their
concerns were generally political, not humanitarian. Politically
partisan protests often just
encouraged more oppression, and
uninvolved citizens who got caught in the crossfire usually cursed
both sides
and made no effort to listen to the reasons given by
either.

Nonetheless many specific civil rights and human rights

movements managed to affect profound social changes
during this
time. Labor unions brought about laws granting workers the right
to strike, establishing minimum
work conditions, forbidding or regulating child labor, establishing a forty hour work week in
the United States
and many European countries, etc. The women's
rights movement succeeded in gaining for many women the
right to
vote. National liberation movements in many countries succeeded
in driving out colonial powers. One of
the most influential was
Mahatma Ghandi's movement to free his native India from British
rule. Movements by
long-oppressed racial and religious
minorities succeeded in many parts of the world, among them the
U.S. Civil
Rights movement.

In 1961 a group of lawyers, journalists, writers, and others, offended and frustrated by the sentencing of two
Portugese college students to twenty years in prison for having raised their glasses in a toast to "freedom" in a
bar, formed Appeal for Amnesty, 1961. The appeal was announced on May 28 in the London Observer's Sunday
Supplement. The appeal told the stories of six "prisoners of conscience" from different countries and of different
political and religious backgrounds, all jailed for peacefully expressing their political or religious beliefs, and
called on governments everywhere to free such prisoners. It set forth a simple plan of action, calling for strictly
impartial, non-partisan appeals to be made on behalf of these prisoners and any who, like them, had been
imprisoned for peacefully expressed beliefs.

The response to this appeal was larger than anyone had

expected. The one-year appeal grew, was extended
beyond the
year, and Amnesty International and the modern human rights
movement were both born.

The modern human rights movement didn't invent any new principles. It was different from what preceeded it
primarily in its explicit rejection of political ideology and partisanship, and its demand that governments
everywhere, regardless of ideology, adhere to certain basic principles of human rights in their treatment of their
citizens.

This appealed to a large group of people, many of whom were

politically inactive, not interested in joining a
political movement, not ideologically motivated, and didn't care about creating "the perfect society" or perfect
government. They were simply outraged that any government dared abuse, imprison, torture, and often kill
human beings whose only crime was in believing differently from their government and saying so in public.
They (naively, according to many detractors) took to writing letters to governments and publicizing the plights
of these people in hopes of persuading or embarrassing abusive governments into better behavior.

Like the early years of many movements, the early years of

the modern human rights movement were rocky.
"Appeal for
Amnesty, 1961" had only the most rudimentary organization. The
modern organization named
Amnesty International gained the
structure it has mostly by learning from mistakes. Early staff
members
operated with no oversight, and money was wasted. This
led to establishing strict financial accountability. Early
staff members and volunteers got involved in partisan politics
while working on human rights violations in their
own
countries. This led to the principle that AI members were not,
as a matter of practice, asked or permitted to
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work on cases in
their country. Early campaigns failed because Amnesty was
misinformed about certain
prisoners. This led to the
establishment of a formidable research section and the process
of "adoption" of
prisoners of conscience only after a thorough
investigation phase.

The biggest lesson Amnesty learned, and for many the distinguishing feature of the organization, however, was
to stick to what it knew and not go outside its mandate. A distinguished human rights researcher I know once
said to me that, "Amnesty is an organization that does only one or two things, but does them extremely well."
Amnesty International does not take positions on many issues which many people view as human rights
concerns (such as abortion) and does not endorse or criticize any form of government. While it will work to
ensure a fair trial for all political prisoners, it does not adopt as prisoners of conscience anyone who has used or
advocated violence for any reason. It rarely provides statistical data on human rights abuses, and never compares
the human rights records of one country with another. It sticks to work on behalf of individual prisoners, and
work to abolish specific practices, such as torture and the death penalty.

A lot of people found this too restrictive. Many

pro-democracy advocates were extremely upset when the
organization dropped Nelson Mandela (at the time a black South
African anti-apartheid activist in jail on
trumped-up murder
charges) from its list of adopted prisoners, because of his
endorsing a violent struggle
against apartheid. Others were
upset that Amnesty would not criticize any form of government,
even one which
(like Soviet-style Communism, or Franco-style
fascism) appeared inherently abusive and incompatible with
respect for basic human rights. Many activists simply felt that
human rights could be better served by a broader
field of
action.

Over the years combinations of these concerns and others led

to formation of other human rights groups. Among
them were
groups which later merged to form Human Rights Watch, the first
of them being Helsinki Watch in
1978. Regional human rights
watchdog groups often operated under extremely difficult
conditions, especially
those in the Soviet Block. Helsinki
Watch, which later merged with other groups to form Human Rights
Watch,
started as a few Russian activists who formed to monitor
the Soviet Union's compliance with the human rights
provisions
in the Helsinki accords. Many of its members were arrested
shortly after it was formed and had little
chance to be
active.

Other regional groups formed after military takeovers in Chile

in 1973, in East Timor in 1975, in Argentina in
1976, and
after the Chinese Democracy Wall Movement in 1979.

Although there were differences in philosophy, focus, and

tactics between the groups, for the most part they
remained on
speaking terms, and a number of human rights activists belonged
to more than one.

Recognition for the human rights movement, and Amnesty International in particular, grew during the 1970s.
Amnesty gained permanent observer status as an NGO at the United Nations. Its reports became mandatory
reading in legislatures, state departments and foreign ministries around the world. Its press releases received
respectful attention, even when its recommendations were ignored by the governments involved. In 1977 it was
awarded the Nobel Peace prize for its work.

Unfortunately, the Nobel Peace Prize didn't impress the governments Amnesty most wanted to get through to.
That year the Argentine military dictatorship reportedly claimed that Amnesty was a front organization for the
Soviet KGB. This supposedly occurred the same week that the Soviet government claimed Amnesty was run by
the U.S. CIA, to the amusement of human rights activists and, presumably, embarrassment of certain people in
Argentina and the Soviet Union.

(To be continued)

Created on July 14, 1994 / Last edited on January 25,

1997

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