Moral Dimensions of Human Rights

Abstract

That human rights should have moral implications beyond the need to enact and conform to effective human rights laws is hardly surprising, given that the very concept of human rights is, at base, a moral one. Human rights are primarily a species of moral rights in that they highlight certain priority moral values that cannot be identified with any actual set of institutionalised rights and duties. Human rights can never, for instance, simply be equated with human rights law, either in its domestic or international manifestations. Because human rights derive from important human interests and needs, it is natural to expect legal protection of human rights. Indeed this itself may contribute to their moral influence in a society. Nevertheless, the import of human rights goes far beyond setting up and implementing laws and ought to impact on every aspect of policy and decisionmaking in private as well as public sector organisations. This gives new force to the significance of developing ethical cultures in organisations, a process that is already emerging in the increasing significance given to internal codes of ethics, ethical audits and open acknowledgment of the corporate social responsibility of management and boards of directors. In this introductory chapter, I argue that when these distinctively moral dimensions of human rights are taken seriously in the governance and goal-setting of organisations, this does not involve simply taking on board institutionalised human rights in their existing state and legally oriented guise, but can be expected to lead to the articulation and deployment of specific human rights that, in form and content, relate to the particular situations and capacities, for good and evil, of different types of human organisation.