The Coming of Communitarian Rights: Are ‘Third-Generation’ Human Rights Really ‘First-Generation Rights?

Abstract

This article considers the limits of Western rights discourse in relation to the developing world, with a particular focus on Africa, and argues that the rights debate is ideologically driven, with its emphases on ‘first-generation’ civil and political rights. For the former European colonial territories, which comprise much of the developing world, it is the so-called ‘third-generation’ rights of communal solidarity and national development that are of paramount importance. This article argues that human rights are socially constructed, bearing little relation to the physical world, and that the history of international human rights evolution — predicated on parity, equity and justice on a. universal scale — has now come full circle to demand recognition of ‘third-generation’ rights as equally important rights on par with ‘first-generation’ rights in the West.