Human rights, citizenship, and justice

Human rights are enshrined in numerous human rights documents produced by the United Nations, most notably in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its related covenants outlining civil, political, economic, cultural, and social rights. However, while they are presented as aspirational guides for the way in which human beings ought to be treated, significant abuses of these rights continue to occur. This is because human rights can only be protected by nation-states through the legal rights of citizenship. Since it is costly to protect human rights, nation-states restrict access to citizenship by excluding those beyond their geographical boundaries. This often means that despite our common humanity, we have access to a range of human rights based solely on the lottery of our birth in a particular location. Citizens of one nation-state often have human rights that people in others do not have. Because of its relationship to human rights, citizenship is a contested notion, offering both inclusion and exclusion. In this chapter, we will explore the competing stories about human rights and about citizenship, and consider how they intersect in complex ways to shape access to justice globally. Like many of the other stories discussed in this book, these stories closely align with political philosophy and with sociology. The first story is drawn from political philosophy, and suggests that human rights are natural, universal, and apply equally, and that the role of citizenship is to enable access to the full range of human rights. In this story, citizenship is about an increasing level of inclusion over time. The second story is drawn from sociology and suggests that human rights are applied unequally, and that as a consequence, citizenship does not lead to an equal capacity to access the rights and privileges that are attached to a particular nation-state. In this story, citizenship is about increasing levels of exclusion over time.