IPO Vote: Human Rights Charter

[Delfos]

Article 1 - obligation to respect human rights
Any signatory party is bound to secure the rights under the other Articles of this Human Rights Charter.

Article 2 - right to Life
This right means that nobody can take anyone else's life away without justification. This justification can only be applied by national constitutional laws.

Article 3 - right to Dignity
From the moment you are born to the moment you die, you have the right to live in dignity. Every human must respect someone else's dignity, because if we are disgraced by someone else, that someone is taking our right to be a respectful human being.

Article 4 - right for Food and Water.
As basic properties of survival. A government or collective cannot hide or remove such resources from their population, this prohibits the illicit property of natural goods.

Article 5 - right for a Fair Trial
Every human has the right for a fair trial, including the right to a public hearing before an independent and impartial tribunal within reasonable time, the presumption of innocence, and other minimum rights for those charged in a criminal case.

Article 6 - prohibition of torture
This prohibits torture, and "inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment". There are no exceptions or limitations on this right.
This provision usually applies, apart from torture, to cases of severe police violence and poor conditions in detention.

Article 7 - prohibition of slavery
This prohibits slavery and forced labour, but excepted from this prohibitions are conscription, national service, prison labour, service exacted in cases of emergency or calamity, and "normal civic obligations".

Article 8 - no punishment without law
Prohibits the retrospective criminalisation of acts and omissions. No person may be punished for an act that was not a criminal offence at the time of its commission. The article states that a criminal offence is one under either national or international law, which would permit a party to prosecute someone for a crime which was not illegal under their domestic law at the time, so long as it was prohibited by (possibly customary) international law. This also prohibits a heavier penalty being imposed than was applicable at the time when the criminal act was committed.

Article 9 - right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion
This provides a right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This includes the freedom to change a religion or belief, and to manifest a religion or belief in worship, teaching, practice and observance, subject to certain restrictions that are in accordance with law and necessary in a civilized society.

Article 10 - prohibition of discrimination
This prohibition is broad in some ways, and narrow in others. On the one hand, the article protects against discrimination based on any of a wide range of grounds. The article provides a list of such grounds, including sex, race, colour, language, religion and several other criteria, and most significantly providing that this list is non-exhaustive.

Article 11 - prohibition of abuse of rights
No one may use the rights guaranteed by the Human Rights Charter to seek the abolition or limitation of rights guaranteed in the Charter. This addresses instances where states seek to restrict a human right in the name of another human right, or where individuals rely on a human right to undermine other human rights.

This is not the ratification, this is an approval as frame for the ratification. If this passes you can still propose protocols before the ratification. But the frame will not be changed.

[Delfos]

wow, it's having more success than what i imagined.

[Xyrael]

This is not the ratification, this is an approval as frame for the ratification. If this passes you can still propose protocols before the ratification. But the frame will not be changed.

I am against:

Article 5 - right for a Fair Trial
Every human has the right for a fair trial, including the right to a public hearing before an independent and impartial tribunal within reasonable time, the presumption of innocence, and other minimum rights for those charged in a criminal case.

For it sets a Westernized though process upon other nations which may deem it necessary to forego the trial.

Article 6 - prohibition of torture
This prohibits torture, and "inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment". There are no exceptions or limitations on this right.
This provision usually applies, apart from torture, to cases of severe police violence and poor conditions in detention.

Torture has been proven a reliable way of finding evidence, a humane death is forfeit to someone whos right to life is no longer applicable. Furthermore, torture is so rampant within Taijitu that enforcing this would become quite complicated.

Article 7 - prohibition of slavery
This prohibits slavery and forced labour, but excepted from this prohibitions are conscription, national service, prison labour, service exacted in cases of emergency or calamity, and "normal civic obligations".

This prohibits "slavery" without defining slavery, instead it assumes all slavery is as it was under the American Southerners and European Slave Trade, ignoring other slavery such as the type within the Umayyad, Abassid, and other Caliphates which were much more humane than the slavery we think of.

Noting my objections, I would like to say that I am not against the democratic process, which I was I abstained (which means I silently allowed this document to pass)

Furthermore, bound by what?

Article 1 - obligation to respect human rights
Any signatory party is bound to secure the rights under the other Articles of this Human Rights Charter.

What are nations bound by? Honor? Respect? Membership? What is the punishment if they do not secure the rights? Please clarify before this goes to voting.

[Delfos]

it doesn't have to define anything, it's meant to be to all kinds of slavery, we don't have to become an international dictionary, everyone knows what slavery is. You had a chance to discuss about this before going here, no interest was made. As i said, this is a just an approval for ratification, you don't want it just don't sign it, but be sure you might be charged with crimes against humanity, and that's the "punishment". When this charter is created, we will need the creation of an International Court.
Bound to respect all human beings and their rights, that's the message, and it's clear. Yes it's westernized, but it's anyways good to any part of the world. Yes there is slavery (by our standards) currently in the oriental cultures. But as explained, everything has justifications. You can propose a protocol about derogation of the laws if there's already a better law in your legislation or a law that prevents your historic culture to be affected by this. Whatever you want, but i don't think this frame is going back unless the majority fails it.

[Feniexia]

The Enlightened Empire disagrees with this charter; especially with following paragraphs:

Article 3 - right to Dignity
From the moment you are born to the moment you die, you have the right to live in dignity. This means that any human has the same dignity as any other, and every human must respect someone else's dignity, because if we are disgraced by someone else, that someone is taking our right to be a respectful human being.

The Feniexian government believes in that some human beings are superior to others; we believe in that intelligent and educated people are more important than most of the easily replaceable working class members. While we do not think it is right to threat those inferior beings worse than average people threated in other nations, we do think it is right to grant superior beings advantages over less important beings. We also do disagree because this paragraph would set the royal family on the same level as someone with intellectual abilities lower than 80% of our classification system's standards.

Article 8 - no punishment without law
Prohibits the retrospective criminalisation of acts and omissions. No person may be punished for an act that was not a criminal offence at the time of its commission. The article states that a criminal offence is one under either national or international law, which would permit a party to prosecute someone for a crime which was not illegal under their domestic law at the time, so long as it was prohibited by (possibly customary) international law. This also prohibits a heavier penalty being imposed than was applicable at the time when the criminal act was committed.

This protects criminals who commit extraordinary, never before seen crimes. It is impossible for a law codex to cover all possible situations; so, this law might allow some of the cruelest criminals to get away without any trouble. Besides, Feniexian punishment methods focus on rehabilitation more than punishment, so people who are no threat to our society or members of it are rarely locked up in closed psychiatric clinics. There are no prisons in Feniexia.

[Delfos]

If your legislation does not including extraordinary criminal actions than it's not as advanced as you made us believe. And if you don't have a law covering such 'crime', then it's not a crime and you can't charge anyone with it.
That's the propose of this article, you cannot charge people for crimes not explicit in the law.
Imagine there is no law against stealing documents, a guy steals documents, are you going to charge him for stealing documents? Under this article, you can't. What are the solutions? Write a law against stealing documents. Or define steal and make it illegal in any form, whatever.

About Article 3, I'm really disappointed with leaders that say they have advanced human rights and advanced society and then say people do not deserve the same dignity. Dignity has nothing to do with education by the way.

Dignity in humans involves the earning or the expectation of personal respect or esteem.

[Cantr]

The problem is not that the opposed delegates believe that any human deserves no dignity, only that some deserve more than others.  I must say that I agree, though I value my people more by how much they are willing to give to their fellow Cantrians than by how intelligent or educated they are.

[Delfos]

Still, a workman cannot be restricted from dignity and treated like a worthless piece of garbage, in example. That article doesn't make you help him in any way, just says you cannot take his dignity away, from the moment of birth to his graveyard. The Article 3 prevents public services, another example, to have exclusive or discriminatory attendance, and is closely followed by Article 10, although Article 10 is related to groups, Article 3 is related to individuals.

But i must admit, Article 3 is not exactly vague, but is loose to society rules, and here it serves as a guide-line for future protocols or articles, because most of any other situations not related to social individuals, Article 10 gives more coverage using explicit prohibition of discrimination.

[Cantr]

This means that any human has the same dignity as any other,

This is the part that is causing problems.  No, you can't treat a workman like garbage, but does that mean you can't treat a war hero like...well, a hero?  Fact is, that hero has more dignity than a common workman.  He's put his life on the line and earned it.

EDIT: Fixed the quotes

[Delfos]

lol, and if it wasn't the workman, the 'hero' would never had: a weapon, cloths, or budget to go to war. That's exactly the problem, don't try to hierarchize. Workers have the same dignity than heroes, but what the article means is that both have the same right to dignity, doesn't mean some have more dignity than others. But still, i don't see why there's so much arguing about an article that isn't supposed to mean anything controversial, it's about the dignity of humans, every human has the right to it, what do i care if you think some have more dignity than others, as long all have dignity. I bet you don't even have a law about dignity, and about heroes having more dignity than workmen, nothing that can be destroyed by this article, so why arguing about it?

[Cantr]

The piece of the article I quoted above explicitly states that no human can have more dignity than another, thus a government attempting to give more dignity to a war hero than to a workman (or vice versa) is breaking the article.  I suggest removing that sentence, as the concept of all humans having dignity to some degree or another is something we all agree on.

[Delfos]

alright.

[Aquatoria]

I am abstaining, because I agree with some of the rights, but it conflicts with my belief that human rights should be enforced in the individual constitutions of the various nations.

[Delfos]

that's why this isn't a ratification, and that's why this will need a ratification, so it enters in every signatory's constitution. That's how it's done Canada boy.