Lecture 6: Philosophy and law Contemporary significance of human rights

3.4. Scope of human rights duties 
Human rights are said to be possessed equally, by everyone. A conventional corollary of 
this claim is that everyone has a duty to protect and promote the human rights of everyone 
else. However, in practice, the onus for securing human rights typically falls upon 
national governments and international, inter-governmental bodies. Philosophers such as 
Thomas Pogge (1995) argue that the moral burden for securing human rights should fall 
disproportionately upon such institutions precisely because they are best placed and most 
able to effectively perform the task. On this reading, non-governmental organizations and 
private citizens have an important role to play in supporting the global protection of 
human rights, but the onus must fall upon the relevant national and international 
institutions, such as the governments of nation-states and such bodies as the United 
Nations and the World Bank. One might wish to argue that, for example, human rights 
can be adequately secured by the existence of reciprocal duties held between individuals 
across the globe. However, ‘privatizing’ human rights in this fashion would ignore two 
particularly salient factors: individuals have a tendency to prioritise the moral demands 
of those closest to them, particularly members of their own family or immediate 
community; individuals’ ability to exercise their duties is, to a large extent, determined 
by their own personal financial circumstances. Thus, global inequalities in the distribution 

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of wealth fundamentally undermine the ability of those in the poorer countries to 
reciprocate assistance provided them by those living in wealthier countries. Reasons such 
as these underlie Pogge’s insistence that the onus of responsibility lies at the level of 
national and international institutions. Adequately protecting and promoting human rights 
requires both nation-states ensuring the adequate provision of services and institutions for 
their own citizens and the co-operation of nation-states within international institutions 
acting to secure the requisite global conditions for the protection and promotion of 
everyone’s human rights. 
What must such bodies actively do to adequately secure individuals’ human 
rights? Does the child’s human right to receive an adequate education require the 
education authority to do everything possible to assist and enhance my child’s education? 
Does it require the provision of a world-class library, frequent study trips abroad, and 
employing the most able and best-qualified teachers? The answer is, of course, no. Given 
the relative scarcity of resources and the demands placed upon those resources, we are 
inclined to say that adequately securing individuals’ human rights extends to the 
establishment of decent social and governmental practice so as to ensure that all 
individuals have the opportunity of leading a minimally good life. In the first instance, 
national governments are typically held to be primarily responsible for the adequate 
provision of their own citizens’ human rights. Philosophers such as Brian Orend (2002) 
endorse this aspiration when he writes that the object of human rights is to secure 
‘minimal levels of decent and respectful treatment.’ It is important to note, however, that 
the duty ensure the provision of even minimal levels of decent and respectful treatment 
cannot be strictly limited by national boundaries. The adequate protection and promotion 
of everyone’s human rights does require, for example, the more affluent and powerful 
nation-states providing sufficient assistance to those countries currently incapable of 
adequately ensuring the protection of their own citizens’ basic human rights. While some 
may consider Orend’s aspirations for human rights to be unduly cautious, even the 
briefest survey of the extent of human suffering and deprivation in many parts of the 
world today is sufficient to demonstrate just how far we are from realizing even this fairly 
minimal standard. 
National and international institutions bear the primary responsibility of securing 
human rights and the test for successfully fulfilling this responsibility is the creation of 

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opportunities for all individuals to lead a minimally good life. The realization of human 
rights requires establishing the conditions for all human beings to lead minimally good 
lives and thus should not be confused as an attempt to create a morally perfect society. 
The impression that many have of human rights as being unduly utopian testifies less to 
the inherent demands of human rights and more to the extent to which even fairly modest 
aspirations are so far from being realized in the world today. The actual aspirations of 
human rights are, on the face of it, quite modest. However, this should not distract from 
a full appreciation of the possible force of human rights. Human rights call for the creation 
of politically democratic societies in which all citizens have the means of leading a 
minimally good life. While the object of individual human rights may be modest, the 
force of that right is intended to be near absolute. That is to say, the demands of rights are 
meant to take precedence over other possible social goals. Ronald Dworkin has coined 
the term ‘rights as trumps’ to describe this property. He writes that, ‘rights are best 
understood as trumps over some background justification for political decisions that states 
a goal for the community as a whole.’ (Dworkin 1977, 153) In general, Dworkin argues, 
considerations of rights claims must take priority over alternative considerations when 
formulating public policy and distributing public benefits. Thus, for example, a minority’s 
possession of rights against discriminatory treatment should trump any and all 
considerations of the possible benefits that the majority would derive from discriminating 
against the minority group. Similarly, an individual’s right to an adequate diet should 
trump other individuals’ desires to eat lavish meals, despite the aggregate gain in pleasure 
these individuals would derive. For Dworkin, rights as trumps expresses the fundamental 
ideal of equality upon which the contemporary doctrine of human rights rests. Treating 
rights as trumps is a means for ensuring that all individuals are treated in an equal and 
like fashion in respect of the provision of fundamental human rights. Fully realizing the 
aspirations of human rights may not require the provision of ‘state of the art’ resources, 
but this should not detract from the force of human rights as taking priority over 
alternative social and political considerations.