Commentary
Newsday
The United Nations celebrated World Human Rights Day on Saturday. This date commemorates the day the General Assembly adopted and promulgated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948 and, in fact, this year marks its 75th anniversary.
The UDHR was the forerunner of many United Nations conventions on specific areas of human rights. In our column published on October 24, we noted that TT has signed and ratified six of these conventions, three of which are the conventions on the rights of persons with disabilities, on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination and on the elimination of discrimination against women.
These three are important to the work of the Equal Opportunities Commission as we are empowered by legislation to receive, investigate and, as far as possible, settle complaints from people who have suffered discrimination on the grounds of race , their ethnicity, gender. or their disability, as well as for three other reasons (their religion, their marital status and their origin).
However, human rights are larger than these specific areas. Human rights are inherent to all people, that is, every person has them simply by being born, regardless of demarcating factors such as their race, religion, class or family background. Section 4 of our Constitution, which enshrines a number of fundamental rights, begins by saying:
“It is hereby recognized and declared that in Trinidad and Tobago have existed and will continue to exist, without discrimination on the grounds of race, origin, color, religion or sex, the following fundamental human rights and freedoms…” And continues with the list a series of rights, starting with the right to life, liberty, enjoyment of property, equality before the law, equality of treatment and then a series of freedoms such as freedom of movement, of conscience and religion, of thought and expression. , and the press.
It is worth mentioning that the Constitution declared these rights as “existing”, that is, the Constitution did not create these rights, they existed even before the Constitution came. What the Constitution does is that it seeks to guarantee these rights: they are declared for all to see so that no one can be left in doubt, and they are protected from interference by the state.
Parliament cannot pass any law that infringes or takes away these rights, except in limited ways provided in the Constitution; for example, only through what is commonly called a “special majority” of members of the House of Representatives and the Senate. Then, if any agent of the state attempts to do something that violates these rights, any aggrieved person can file what is commonly called a “constitutional motion,” asking the Supreme Court to stop the violation.
The constitution is not the only source of human rights. As mentioned, the Equal Opportunity Act protects people’s rights not to be discriminated against on the previously mentioned grounds. There are other pieces of legislation that affect other areas of human rights. For example, one of the six UN conventions that we have ratified is the Convention on the Rights of the Child; The Children Act 2012 (Cap. 46:01) seeks to give teeth to many of the rights in this convention and has established the Children’s Authority to enforce them.
In general, there are two types of human rights:
1. Civil and Political: These are rights that protect individual liberties from abuse of power by the state or private entities and allow people to exist without persecution or oppression. For example, all the rights in Article 4 of the Constitution would fall into this category. These are first generation rights.
2. Social, economic and cultural: These are freedoms, privileges and rights that people need to live in dignity and participate fully in society. These are second-generation rights, as they can only exist after first-generation liberties are protected. These are rights related to the workplace, social security, family life, access to housing, food, water, health care and education.
For example, things like the right to a minimum wage, to maternity protection for pregnant women, to consumer standards, to adequate protection in case of unemployment, sickness or old age such as national insurance and pension, are also part of the rights apparatus. of man. .
Unlike constitutional rights, they do not require a petition to the Supreme Court to be enforced. In fact, the best defender of these rights is each individual member of society; everyone should be vigilant in protecting their rights and conscious not to infringe on the rights of others.
