Assignment 01: Lynn Hunt Inventing Human Rights
Hello everyone, my name is Liatt. This is my last semester at CWE. I currently work as a Direct Service Provider for a non-profit in Brooklyn. I work with adults with mental illness and intellectual and developmental disabilities. I also have a 14 year old daughter on the Autism spectrum.
I chose this class because I feel it will connect well with a class I took in the fall titled Women and Work. Another reason I chose this class is because I think it is important to understand the history of human rights and why women are still fighting for them.
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen 1789 essentially said that all people are born free and have equal rights. The document also specifically named those rights, such as freedom, the right to own property, the right to safety and protection, the right to be involved in the creation of laws, the right to a fair trial (innocent until proven guilty). Many of the articles in the declaration sound very similar to the U.S Constitution but the language changes in some of the articles. According to article 6 of The Declaration of Rights of Man and the Citizen, the words “all citizens” is used where in article 1 of the document the words “all men” is used.
I think that language as well as changes in society (education, employment, economics) affects how rights are interpreted, exercised, and applied. Today civil and human rights are not applied evenly or equally. In the past rights were not applied evenly or equally either. All of the precursory documents written regarding rights and citizenship were written by men. In almost all of them women, slaves, and people that are not property owners were not written in to the documents therefore not protected or included.
There are many groups of people today in the U.S that do not enjoy full citizenship and who are not protected by the constitution or bill of rights. A persons social location determines citizenship, inclusion, protection under the law and whether or not one can exercise certain rights as well as political representation. Gender, immigration status, race and economic status all determine what rights apply to a particular group or if that group is even included under those rights. Human rights are still being violated today just as they were in the past.
I don’t understand a declaration to be law but instead they are a set of rules that were put into writing in order to prevent one person from having too much power. A declaration is basically a document stating how a person should be treated by others in the larger society and what society expects of its members. Again, the language used as to who these rights protect is also very vague and not specifically naming every group of people. So if the terms “man” and “citizen” were used then for me that implies that only men are protected and only men can be citizens. Women, slaves, and people who did not own property, were not mentioned in the declaration, they were not thought to be honorable and had no political representation or rights. The language used in the Declaration of Rights of Man and the Citizen separated groups of people based on gender, economic status and race.
