The Cognitive Representation of Human Rights: Knowledge, Importance, and Commitment

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations, 2002) is an important ethical framework for political actions. In this declaration, and in the subsequent International Covenants (United Nations, 2002), 2 major classes of human rights are distinguished, one consisting of civil and political rights, and the other consisting of economic, social, and cultural rights. The Universal Declaration itself and the UN Decade for Human Rights Education emphasize the relevance of an adequate knowledge about human rights in the population. Accordingly, this article represents the results of 2 representative studies on human rights in Germany. The major results of these studies are that knowledge about human rights and about human rights documents is quite low. Also, economic, social, and cultural rights are less known, and are evaluated as less important, than civil and political rights. Thus, the idea of the indivisibility of human rights is not realized. Relating to the commitment to human rights, about 1% ...