The division of human rights into three generations was initially proposed in 1979 by the Czech jurist Karel Vasak at the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

His divisions follow the three great watchwords of the French Revolution: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. The three generations are reflected in some of the rubrics of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.

First-generation human rights

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First-generation human rights deal essentially with liberty. They are fundamentally civil and political in nature and serve to protect the individual from excesses of the state. First-generation rights include, among other things, freedom of speech, the right to a fair trial, and freedom of religion. They were first enshrined at the global level by the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

See: Articles 3 to 21 of the Universal Declaration, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Second-generation human rights

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Second-generation human rights are related to equality and began to be recognized by governments after World War I. They are fundamentally social, economic, and cultural in nature. They ensure different members of the citizenry equal conditions and treatment. Secondary rights would include a right to be employed, rights to housing and health care, as well as social security and unemployment benefits. Like first-generation rights, they were also covered by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

See: Articles 22 to 27 of the Universal Declaration, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.

Third-generation human rights

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Third-generation human rights are those rights that go beyond the mere civil and social, as expressed in many progressive documents of international law, including the 1972 Stockholm Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, and other pieces of generally aspirational "soft law." Because of the principle of sovereignty and the preponderance of would-be offender nations, these rights have been hard to enact in legally binding documents.

The term "third-generaion human rights" remains largely unofficial, and thus houses an extremely broad spectrum of rights, including:

• Group and collective rights
• Right to self-determination
• Right to economic and social development
• Right to a healthy environment
• Right to natural resources
• Right to communicate
• Right to participation in cultural heritage
• Rights to intergenerational equity and sustainability

Criticisms

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Critics see "Second and Third generation human rights" as an attempt to cloak political goals in the language of rights, thus (a) granting certain political goals inappropriately positive connotations; (b) advancing the power of governments and NGOs while (c) diminishing the legitimate negative rights of individuals who are coerced by state power into funding or otherwise providing certain services (for example, a "right to employment" necessarily means that individuals may be forced to provide employment to others, and/or may be forced to pay additional taxes to governments to monitor and administer programs.)

See also

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• Two Concepts of Liberty: a lecture by Isaiah Berlin which distinguished between positive and negative liberty.

Human rights