Human Rights as Everyone’s Business

Abstract

The first half of Chapter 10 addresses criticisms of the conception of human rights developed in Chapter 9: that it overlooks how human rights law protects collective goods rather than the individual, and that it overlooks the centrality of the state as duty-bearer in human rights law. The author’s response includes noting that state-focused human rights law is only one way in which ‘natural’ human rights are institutionalized: criminal law and non-law policy also play human rights roles. The chapter’s second half argues that human rights not only exist ‘for the right-holder’s sake’ (as in Chapters 7–9) but are also rights whose protection is distinctively ‘everyone’s business’: rights with which any human anywhere can show solidarity by demanding their fulfilment. This does not imply that human rights violations in one state are equally every state’s business. The chapter ends by summarizing Part II (Chapters 7–10) as vindicating the idea of human rights.