Third Generation Human Rights Essay

Over the past century, the basic principles associated with the concept of human rights and their universality have become an inextricable component of international and domestic affairs. As moral constructs, human rights help address societal factors on the human condition and continue to operate as the only viable framework in which human progress can be evaluated throughout the world. In this essay, I will examine the development of third-generation human rights within a unified hierarchical framework to describe how their implementation has impacted the advancement and procurement of other human rights. The concept of generational rights has quickly become the dominant system utilized by renowned scholars to examine the framework of

Notably, second-generation human rights are derived from positive law and therefore, attempt to address an individual’s right to work, education and access to social programs. Consequently, these kinds of rights are often referred to as red-rights because their implementation is vitally dependent upon institutional support of individual governments (Hiske, 2005). Lastly, third-generation human rights fall under a unique category of rights because unlike first and second-generation rights, they cannot be exercised individually. Instead, third-generation human rights, commonly referred to as green-rights or solidarity rights, must be exerted by a collective of people (UNHCR, 2006). For this reason, the implementation of third-generation human rights has the inadvertent potential of impacting the advancement and procurement of international human

In the aftermath of a second-world war that saw the displacement of millions of people throughout Europe, the United Nations (U.N.) sought to establish the legal parameters that would define who qualified as a refugee and the shared responsibilities of the nations that granted them asylum (Akram, 2002). As an extension of green-rights, the 1951 Refugee Convention helped advance the procurement of international human rights for a collective of individuals that would have otherwise been discriminated against and exploited due to their vulnerable circumstances (Text1951,