III. GENERATIONS IN HUMAN RIGHTS THOUGHT
Human rights thought is rooted in the European natural rights philosophy
and in the age of Enlightenment with its struggle against absolute monarchy.6
This opposition created a new relationship between citizen and state
that replaced the one existing between state and subject.7
In this new
relationship, a basis was created for the individualistic and liberalistic
understanding of society that found expression in the American Declaration
of Independence and in the French Revolution and later in the liberal
thinking of the nineteenth century. In broad terms, we could say that developments in the eighteenth
century established the foundation for a new relationship between the
individual and the (national) state, while the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights of 1948 created the foundation for a new relationship
between the individual and the global political order.8
It is this order that
still is being debated and whose structures are still in a process of emerging.9
In more detailed historical interpretations, the development of human
rights thought is often described as having three phases. The first generation
of human rights comprised civil and political rights; the second generation
included economic, social, and cultural rights; the third generation included
the so-called solidarity rights—for example, the right to development,
to the environment, and to peace and self-determination.10
The status of the solidarity rights is not clear, especially the rights to
development and a good environment.11 Johan Galtung describes the first
generation of human rights as belonging to the bourgeoisie (blue), the
second generation to the working class (red) and the third generation to the
social movements (green).12 Galtung, with his color scheme, thus connects
the third generation with the grassroots movements, which is hardly
completely correct since the right to development, for example, has been
promoted by the governments of many developing countries.
Noberto Bobbio emphasizes the uneven nature of the third generation
of human rights, but it is worth noting that according to him the right to development is not important here. However, like Galtung, he sees thirdgeneration
human rights as being connected with demands from environmental
organizations.13 Finally, Bobbio points out a fourth generation of
rights that are related to the disturbing results of biological research and to
the question of genetic identity