Human Rights & Duties: Foundations, Instruments, and Enforcement
The UGC-NET Human Rights & Duties paper examines conceptual foundations (theories and generations of rights), the international bill of rights, and India's constitutional and institutional machinery. Questions reward precise knowledge of dates, legal status, and institutional powers rather than general commentary.
Core framework
- Theories: natural rights are inherent and pre-state; positivism treats rights as state-conferred; Marxist theory sees rights as bourgeois ideology masking class power.
- Karel Vasak's generations: first-civil and political (life, speech, fair trial); second-economic, social and cultural (education, health, work); third-solidarity or collective (development, clean environment, peace).
- The UDHR, adopted on 10 December 1948, contains 30 articles and is a UN General Assembly declaration, not a treaty.
- The 1966 Covenants-ICCPR and ICESCR-entered into force in 1976. The ICCPR's Human Rights Committee receives state reports and, under the first Optional Protocol, individual communications.
- Universality versus cultural relativism: the 1993 Vienna Declaration reaffirmed universality while acknowledging national and regional particularities.
India
- Part III (Articles 12–35) Fundamental Rights are enforceable through Articles 32 and 226.
- Part IV Directive Principles are non-justiciable.
- Article 51A Fundamental Duties were inserted by the 42nd Amendment (1976) with ten duties; the 86th Amendment (2002) added the eleventh on education of children aged 6–14.
- The NHRC, under the Protection of Human Rights Act 1993, is chaired by a retired Chief Justice of India; it inquires and recommends but cannot punish.
Worked example
Question: “The right to a clean environment belongs to which generation, and is it enforceable in India?” Reasoning: it is a third-generation solidarity right in Vasak's scheme. India has no explicit constitutional environmental right, but courts read it into Article 21 (right to life), so it is enforceable through writ petitions.
Traps
- The UDHR is not a binding treaty.
- ICCPR covers civil and political rights; ICESCR covers socio-economic rights, but both were adopted in 1966.
- Do not confuse the ICCPR Human Rights Committee with the UN Human Rights Council.
- Fundamental Duties are non-justiciable, and the NHRC cannot award damages.