Resumen de Augmenting Human Rights with Human Responsibilities
The central premise of this paper is that human rights will be better protected or ensured when people assume their duties to the each other and to the local, regional, national and global community. There is a well-established human rights framework, celebrating its 65th anniversary this year. A responsibility framework would complement the current focus on rights. In fact, there is a global movement around the idea of a declaration of human responsibilities, providing strength for the argument that responsibilities complement rights. This paper profiles four of these initiatives: (a) the 1993 Parliament of the World’s Religions initiative, (b) 1997 InterAction Council initiative, (c) the 1998 UNESCO-sponsored Valencia initiative, and (d) the 2003 United Nations Human Rights Commission initiative. Although they were developed independently between 1993 and 2003, there was 65% agreement on what should constitute a declaration of human responsibilities. The paper concludes that this congruency lends hope to the enterprise of eventually developing a universal framework document to augment the longstanding Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Given the concurrent turmoil and potential of our current times, the time is ripe for a renewed global dialogue about a common declaration of human responsibilities.
