Article 10 is concerned with freedom of expression, but this is then limited by
various considerations, including ‘national security’, ‘public safety’, ‘protection
of health and morals’ and the ‘protection of reputation’.- Section I of the document sets out the rights and freedoms of individuals, but
Section II – which is about half the document – is concerned with the powers of
the European Court of Human Rights, which was established by the Convention.
Part III – ‘Miscellaneous Provisions’ – deals with various issues relating to the
obligations of the contracting states. - The ECHR has been amended – through ‘protocols’ – many times since its
creation; in most cases this has entailed strengthening, or extending, the rights
contained in it. For example, Protocol 6 (1983) restricted the use of the death
penalty to times of war or national emergency; Protocol 13 (2002) prohibits the
death penalty in all circumstances (not all Council members have ratified
Protocols 6 and 13 – see http://www.worldpolicy.newschool.edu/wpi/globalrights/
dp/maps-dp-echr.html). - Although there is, unsurprisingly, a strong overlap between the rights contained
in both documents, the ECHR omits the ‘social rights’ (Articles 22–26) of the
UDHR. Given that the 10 founding members of the Council were all Western
European, this is to be expected (‘Eastern’ states joined only after the collapse
of state socialism in 1989 – Russia, for example, joined in 1996).
Why the UDHR and the ECHR are significant
The Declaration and the Convention are important in what they reveal about the
nature and justification of human rights, and in the rest of this chapter we will
pursue these further:- Human rights privilege certain values over others: there can be no doubt that
human rights are individualist, in the sense that the integrity of the individual –
her body and mind – and the choices she makes, are the object of protection.
Certainly Articles 22–26 of the Declaration stress the social conditions for action,
and they raise important questions that we consider in Chapter 22 (Global
Justice), but the ‘core’ human rights are individualist. This raises the question
whether human rights are compatible with cultures that place stress on individual -
ism. Would it matter if they were not compatible? We pursue these questions
later in this chapter. - The differences between the two documents are interesting and important and
raise the issue of what happens to the concept of a human right when we try to
apply it in a concrete legal–political situation: must a human right be a legal
right? Even if a human right need not be a legal right might it not be that the
only human right worth having is one that can be enforced in law? This raises
the Nuremberg question: can we have rights that are not recognised in any legal
document? - Rights will conflict – rights can conflict with one another, and they can conflict
with certain duties. A system of rights must, therefore, be compossible, that is,
the rights must be mutually possible. Furthermore, rights must be ‘actionable’,
408 Part 4 Contemporary ideas