The meaning of �human rights’

What do we mean by �human rights’? Given the high profile of the idea in today’s world, one might look for a contemporary answer. But this is true to only a limited extent.

(i) The right to life, liberty, security of person, equality before the law, fair trial, asylum, and freedom from torture and inhuman punishment;

(ii) the right to privacy, reputation, opinions, religion, mobility, nationality;

(iii) the right to marry, own property, take part in government, choose one’s occupation, receive an education.

A number of these categories can be matched by Roman parallels. But not all the categories have the same importance—or perhaps the same sense of urgency. For us, and indeed for the Declaration itself, the main focus is on the first group. The struggle against brutality- driven assaults on the human person and human dignity is the central core. On the ancient scene an apposite illustration is supplied by Cicero in his defence of C.Rabirius:

Scourging, the executioner’s hook, the dread of the cross— these things have long been obsolete. The credit belongs to your ancestors who expelled the kings and left no trace of their cruel ways among a free people. Many brave men followed them and protected our liberty by lenient laws rather than by savage punishments.

(Cic. Rab. perd. 10)

Cicero here stresses the negative side of humanitas, he cites examples of what should not be done. Seneca makes even more extensive use of the same approach. The negative and the positive sides are not often covered in one and the same passage, but Flavius Josephus comes close to it. Although based on the Laws of Moses, his exposition reflects Graeco-Roman thinking:

The Laws of Moses promote piety, communal friendliness and philanthropia to the world at large. The Laws furnish a lesson in gentleness and philanthropia: food for all who ask, guidance on the road, no unburied corpses, and clemency to declared enemies by not burning their land, cutting down their trees, outraging prisoners, especially women, or ill-treating their animals.

(Jos. Ant. Iud. 2.146, 211-14)

On the negative side a damning condemnation comes from the Greek historian Polybius, writing in the mid-second century BC. He describes how, in the previous century, rebellious Carthaginian mercenaries had butchered 700 Carthaginians, cutting off their hands and other extremities, breaking their legs, throwing themalive into a trench, and refusing to hand over their bodies for burial. Polybius throws up his hands in despair:

Tumours become savage, brutalized and incurable. If treated they spread more rapidly, if neglected they continue to eat into the flesh. Similar malignancies grow in the human psyche. If we treat the disease by philanthropia they become suspicious, if we try to cure it by retaliation they react violently, stopping at no atrocity or abomination. In the end they are totally brutalized and can no longer be called human beings. The prime cause of the evil is bad manners and wrong training, but there are contributory causes like habitual violence and unscrupulous leaders.⁴

Latin writers are also highly critical of brutality. According to the annalists, the Alban leader Mettius Fufetius was punished for betraying his treaty obligations to Rome by being torn apart by two chariots going in opposite directions (in retaliation for his having been �torn’ between fulfilling his obligations and awaiting the outcome of the battle).

He killed Trebonius brutally, torturing him as Regulus had been tortured at Carthage, and so forgetful of humanitas that after breaking his neck he showed insatiable cruelty to the dead, cutting off Trebonius’ head and parading it on a spear. He has been false to his city, his country and his gods—in short, false to nature and mankind.

(Cic. Phil. 11.8-10)

The modern scene has also prompted despairing assessments, not only of the unbridled savagery of the second to fifth decades of the twentieth century, �the darkest of the dark ages’, but also of the more hopeful period ushered in by the Universal Declaration. In a work published in 1993, E.L.Doctorow expressed black pessimism reminiscent of Polybius:

When introduced [human rights] referred to a person’s right to speak freely, to hold any political opinion or to be tried under due process of law. But under pressure of worldwide practices the term has taken on a humbler meaning. Now [it] refers to standards of treatment that you hope to expect of your oppressor after he has taken all your rights away. He should not pack you away in an isolation cell while denying that you’re under detention; or with relish take you into a ditch and break every bone in your body before killing you. If you’re an infant you have the right not to have your skull smashed against a wall; if a nursing mother, not to have your breasts sliced off. The right not to have these things done to you—the right not to be tortured, mutilated, enslaved or injudiciously murdered—is what we’ve come to understand by the term human rights.⁵

Our identification of brutality and savagery as the central problem of human rights is every bit as valid for the modern scene as for the ancient. But this does not mean that other, non-brutal values are not important. In ancient times they easily outweigh the brutality group numerically. But they should be seen as regulators. Values like culture, education, kindness, clemency are (hopefully) capable of counteracting the central core. Polybius has drawn our attention to this in the concluding sentence of the above passage.