Well-Being and Human Rights

Abstract

This chapter demonstrates how the conception of well-being developed in this book is a crucial part of the rationale for human rights. A variant of interest-based theories of human rights is defended against a number of objections. These objections include criticisms raised by proponents of control theories, dignity-based theories, and critics who maintain that the function of human rights is not limited to considerations of how human rights matter to the right-holder. The argument builds on an account of the contingent, but widespread linkage between structural unfairness and human rights violations to defend a pragmatic approach to problems of assigning responsibility for human rights. It addresses the specification of counterpart duties that correlate with human rights claims, and it offers guidance on questions pertaining to the more general responsibilities of institutional agents, paradigmatically nation-states, for maintaining background conditions of structural fairness.