1 00:00:00,940 --> 00:00:07,940 The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was established in 1948 by the United Nations. 2 00:00:07,940 --> 00:00:18,940 This means that all the countries in the world accepted to write on a paper which are our basic fundamental rights. 3 00:00:18,940 --> 00:00:21,940 How many rights have we got? 4 00:00:21,940 --> 00:00:28,940 In the Universal Declaration there are 30 rights and if you are interested in getting to know them 5 00:00:28,940 --> 00:00:35,100 invite you to go to the internet and visit a wonderful website called Youth for Human Rights 6 00:00:35,100 --> 00:00:42,939 or in Spanish Juventud por los Derechos Humanos in which you will find 30 wonderful videos explaining 7 00:00:42,939 --> 00:00:50,060 all of your individual rights. Now human rights have very special characteristics that you should 8 00:00:50,060 --> 00:00:57,100 know. They are universal, imprescriptible and inalienable. They are universal because they apply 9 00:00:57,100 --> 00:01:03,420 to everybody regardless of our differences they are imprescriptible because they never expire 10 00:01:03,420 --> 00:01:09,180 no matter how old you are or what you do and they are inalienable because nobody can take them away 11 00:01:09,180 --> 00:01:14,939 from you or ignore you and because you cannot give them away you cannot say you don't want your 12 00:01:14,939 --> 00:01:23,980 rights because they intrinsically belong to you now why do we have rights that is a difficult 13 00:01:23,980 --> 00:01:28,959 philosophical question about the foundations of rights there are 14 00:01:28,959 --> 00:01:33,540 different theories to explain this one of them is the conventionalist theory 15 00:01:33,540 --> 00:01:39,180 according to conventionalists we have rights because we decided to do that 16 00:01:39,180 --> 00:01:46,239 this means that rights come from an agreement so when people decided to 17 00:01:46,239 --> 00:01:54,879 write our articles in a paper that's why we have rights it's sort of a pact or an 18 00:01:54,879 --> 00:02:00,579 agreement made by people this is for example the theory that sophists 19 00:02:00,579 --> 00:02:05,680 defended they as you know were also relativists they thought different 20 00:02:05,680 --> 00:02:10,419 countries and different times have different norms and rules so human 21 00:02:10,419 --> 00:02:18,639 rights for them would be only the result of an agreement. This means that if we have the way to 22 00:02:18,639 --> 00:02:24,740 find a different agreement, our rights could change. According to the conventionalist theory, 23 00:02:24,740 --> 00:02:33,460 we could change our rights if we agree to modify them in the future. Now, there is a different 24 00:02:33,460 --> 00:02:40,060 theory, an opposed interpretation of human rights, which is called the theory of natural law. 25 00:02:40,419 --> 00:02:46,599 According to the natural law theory, rights are in our human nature. 26 00:02:46,599 --> 00:02:53,159 It means that they belong to everybody, everywhere, no matter where or when you live. 27 00:02:53,740 --> 00:02:59,520 So, human rights are natural. They are part of our way of being. 28 00:03:00,039 --> 00:03:06,460 They form our human essence and we cannot change them because they are in the nature of things. 29 00:03:07,280 --> 00:03:14,460 John Locke, for example, who was a philosopher who lived in the 17th century, defended the theory of natural law. 30 00:03:14,460 --> 00:03:24,639 For him, the right to freedom, life and private property are basic rights that belong to us by nature. 31 00:03:25,680 --> 00:03:29,280 There is a very important thing that you should know about human rights. 32 00:03:29,699 --> 00:03:32,800 They are not all equal. They can be classified. 33 00:03:32,800 --> 00:03:38,560 actually they can be classified in two different ways so we'll go step by step 34 00:03:38,560 --> 00:03:44,379 the first classification of human rights divides them according to which value 35 00:03:44,379 --> 00:03:52,539 they are trying to protect civil rights protect our freedom civil rights are the 36 00:03:52,539 --> 00:03:58,460 things that nobody can do to you because if they do that to you you're not free 37 00:03:58,460 --> 00:04:04,199 no one can do these things not even the government not even the state not even 38 00:04:04,199 --> 00:04:09,780 the police some basic civil rights are the right to life meaning that nobody 39 00:04:09,780 --> 00:04:14,500 can kill you the right not to be tortured or not to be sent to prison 40 00:04:14,500 --> 00:04:22,800 without our fair reason the right to a fair trial the right not to be tortured 41 00:04:22,800 --> 00:04:30,720 the right to free expression or to free thought a second group of rights is the 42 00:04:30,720 --> 00:04:36,600 political rights political rights protect our participation in society for 43 00:04:36,600 --> 00:04:41,279 example voting the right to vote or the right to participate in a demonstration 44 00:04:41,279 --> 00:04:47,060 in a public assembly are example of political rights the third type of 45 00:04:47,060 --> 00:04:51,779 rights are social and economic rights socio-economic rights protect our 46 00:04:51,779 --> 00:04:57,600 equality because these are things that the state must give you for free for 47 00:04:57,600 --> 00:05:03,779 example education or health protection or Social Security including help for 48 00:05:03,779 --> 00:05:08,300 unemployed people that lost their jobs all these things must be given to the 49 00:05:08,300 --> 00:05:14,660 people by the government for free because if not we are not equal think 50 00:05:14,660 --> 00:05:19,860 what would happen if you had to pay in order to go to school only rich people 51 00:05:19,860 --> 00:05:25,779 would have the opportunity to have an education and that would break equality in society. 52 00:05:26,980 --> 00:05:33,860 And the fourth and last group of rights is the solidarity group. Solidarity rights are 53 00:05:33,860 --> 00:05:40,420 collective rights that apply to peoples not to individuals and one of them for example is the 54 00:05:40,420 --> 00:05:46,740 right to live in a peaceful world, the right to improve the situation of poor countries, 55 00:05:46,740 --> 00:05:54,740 the right to development so that all societies in the world can share a common welfare but as 56 00:05:54,740 --> 00:06:00,660 i told you before there is another way to classify human rights according to when they were established 57 00:06:00,660 --> 00:06:06,819 and acknowledged by the legislation according to this classification human rights are divided in 58 00:06:06,819 --> 00:06:14,740 generations first generation of human rights which includes civil and political rights are the first 59 00:06:14,740 --> 00:06:22,500 rights that were included in the law these rights were approved in the 18th century after the 60 00:06:22,500 --> 00:06:28,740 american and french revolutions you know the revolutionaries decided that people had to stop 61 00:06:28,740 --> 00:06:35,699 being subjects and they had to begin being citizens this meant that there was the necessity 62 00:06:35,699 --> 00:06:41,379 to establish limits to what the government could do to people those are civil rights and that we 63 00:06:41,379 --> 00:06:44,839 we should grant everybody's participation in society, 64 00:06:44,839 --> 00:06:47,459 and those are political rights. 65 00:06:47,459 --> 00:06:50,399 The second generation was established 66 00:06:50,399 --> 00:06:52,620 in the 19th and 20th century, 67 00:06:52,620 --> 00:06:55,899 and it includes social and economic rights. 68 00:06:55,899 --> 00:07:00,259 It took time to pass these rights in the legislation 69 00:07:00,259 --> 00:07:03,639 because, as you know, these rights imply money. 70 00:07:03,639 --> 00:07:06,139 The government has to pay to ensure 71 00:07:06,139 --> 00:07:08,439 that everybody has a free education 72 00:07:08,439 --> 00:07:10,079 or free health protection. 73 00:07:10,079 --> 00:07:13,920 So it was hard to force the government to pass these rights. 74 00:07:15,100 --> 00:07:19,920 The third generation of human rights includes solidarity rights, 75 00:07:20,660 --> 00:07:23,779 like the right to peace or the right to development of poor countries. 76 00:07:24,139 --> 00:07:28,879 And they were only approved at the end of the 20th century. 77 00:07:29,399 --> 00:07:33,980 Now, you might think if there are more rights than these 30 human rights, 78 00:07:34,040 --> 00:07:37,860 including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 79 00:07:37,860 --> 00:07:45,100 Well, some people think there are, and for example, they are planning to develop a fourth 80 00:07:45,100 --> 00:07:50,680 generation of human rights, including new things such as, for example, the right to 81 00:07:50,680 --> 00:07:57,699 access the internet, which is basic in a modern world like our current world.