First, Second and Third Generation Human Rights: Their Meaning, Historical

Take a slum family in Mankhurd. The father is arrested and held without being told why. The children cannot afford school fees. The nearby creek is polluted by a factory and the community has no say in how the land around it is used. These are three different kinds of injury, and the law answers each with a different kind of right: a right not to be locked up arbitrarily, a right to education and work, and a right to a clean environment and a share in development. Human-rights lawyers group them as three generations. The question for this topic is what each generation means, where it came from and why the grouping is both useful and contested.

In two minutes

First-generation rights are civil and political liberties against the State, second-generation rights are economic, social and cultural entitlements that the State must provide, and third-generation rights are collective solidarity rights such as development, peace and a healthy environment; Karel Vasak proposed the scheme in 1977.

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