Public debate over the need for establishment of powerful, effective, and accessible mechanisms of human rights protection can be heard worldwide and at all the levels, including the official one. Agreeing with Lord Tom Bingham, the prominent judge and scholar in the field of the rule of law principle development, we should highlight that this process took place long time ago. The author defines Magna Carta, passed in in 1215, as the first milestone of this process, when a lawful judgment was necessary for, in particular, person’s detention or imprisonment (Bingham 10).
Not only the previous century has demonstrated how much evil, hate, and anger the humanity can produce, but also has it given us the hope for future elimination of such phenomena, as discrimination (since the Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination was adopted), unpunished crimes against humanity (as the system of international bodies and legal instruments were established), limitation of freedom of the press and assembly.
However, nowadays there are barriers to establish the so-called principle (which is important in this context) of the universality of human rights which will grant people from all the states with the same complex of rights and freedoms, namely their recognition by the state; with the same guarantees concerning the protection of these rights (Kalin and Kunzli 3).
If we take an example of the European system of human rights protection, it should be emphasized that, besides wars and military conflicts, the continent benefited the development of the ideas of the need for human rights protection, in particular those were the English courts and the European philosophers (Locke, Russo, Montesquieu) to consider the importance of natural rights recognition and their protection.
Nowadays, Europe has presented such the effective instruments as the European Court of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights as well as the Court of Justice functioning as the body of the European Union. These court annually hear hundreds of cases regarding the violation of human rights and, consequently, pass the decisions aiming at the restoring of the rights and freedoms. The proper system of human rights protection, however, exclusively domestic, has been developed in the U.S.
On the contrary, Asia and, in particular, the Middle East states demonstrate the opposite approach towards the issue of human rights protection, namely sometimes widely recognized rights are not even granted. In particular, one of the latest reports of Human Rights Watch showed us that in Saudi Arabia ‘adult women must obtain permission from a male guardian to travel abroad, marry, or be released from prison, and may be required to provide guardian consent to work or get health care’ (www.hrw.org/news/2016/07/16/saudi-arabia-male-guardianship-boxes-women). This is a so-called male guardianship which, additionally, prevents women from lodging their claim to courts.
Thus, we can conclude that the level of human rights protection is different and depends on the traditions which have been developed in certain regions. The fact stated can be proven by the comparison between the European approach towards this issue and Arabian.
Works Cited
“Saudi Arabia: Male Guardianship Boxes Women In”. Human Rights Watch. Web, 16 July 2016
Bingham, Tom. The Rule of Law. London: Allen Lane, 2010.
Kalin, Walter, Junzli, JorgThe Law of International Human Rights Protection. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009
