Evolution of Human Rights Standards Questions and Answers

Answer: B

The instrument is the UDHR.

The preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN General Assembly on 10 December 1948, proclaims it 'as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations'.

The ICCPR and ICESCR (1966) are binding covenants that give legal force to the UDHR's rights, and CEDAW (1979) deals specifically with discrimination against women.

Answer: A

The three generations were classified by Karel Vasak (printed Vasek).

In 1977 Karel Vasak, a Czech-French jurist working with UNESCO, described three generations of human rights, linked to the French revolutionary ideals: first-generation civil and political rights (liberty), second-generation economic, social and cultural rights (equality), and third-generation solidarity rights such as development and a healthy environment (fraternity).

Karl Marx, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill wrote long before this classification; Bentham famously dismissed natural rights altogether.

Answer: B

The instrument is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The UDHR, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948, was the first comprehensive international statement of human rights. The two International Covenants, the conventions on discrimination against women, on the rights of the child and others, and many national constitutions draw their catalogues of rights from it, which is why it is described as the source from which they have been quarried.

The ICCPR, ICESCR and CEDAW came later and themselves derive from the Declaration.

Answer: C

The first binding treaty is the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1989 and in force from 1990, the CRC was the first legally binding international instrument to cover the full range of children's civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Declaration of the Rights of the Child (1959) are declarations, not binding treaties. The Optional Protocols to the CRC came later, in 2000, and supplement it.

Answer: A

The key matches the Universal Declaration to 1948, the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to 1966, the Child Convention to the item printed as 1999 and the Disabilities Convention to 2006, which is i ii iv iii.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1966 and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2006. The Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted in 1989, and the booklet's 1999 looks like a misprint.

Even so, the pairing is forced: with 1999 the only year left for the Child Convention, only the first set gives i, ii and iii correctly to the other three. The other sets all put 1948 or 1966 against the wrong document.

Answer: A

The Magna Carta dates from 1215, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights from 1966, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights from 1948 and the Convention on the Rights of the Child from 1989. So a matches 3, b matches 4, c matches 1 and d matches 2, which is the code 3 4 1 2. The code 2 3 1 4 assigns 1989 to the Magna Carta, the code 1 2 3 4 gets every pair wrong and the code 4 2 1 3 gets the first two wrong. The answer is 3 4 1 2.

Answer: B

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women was adopted by the General Assembly in 1979, and entered into force in 1981 after the twentieth ratification. The year 1979 is the year of adoption, 1989 is the year of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and 1992 is the year India ratified CEDAW. The answer is 1981.

Answer: A

The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights was established under ECOSOC Resolution 1985/17 adopted on 28 May 1985 to carry out the monitoring functions of the Covenant. The Covenant itself gave the task of monitoring to ECOSOC, and the Committee was created so that a standing expert body could review the reports of States. The resolution carries the year 1985 in its number, so the two dates in 1986 cannot be right, and 30 May 1985 is close but is not the date of adoption. The answer is 28 May 1985.

Answer: B

The Helsinki Declaration of 1964 is concerned with human experimentation. It was adopted by the World Medical Association and lays down ethical principles for medical research involving human subjects, including informed consent and the duty to protect the health of the participants.

It has nothing to do with the prevention of war, gender discrimination or child abuse, which are the subject of other instruments such as the UN Charter, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Answer: B

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 10 December 1948, a date now observed every year as Human Rights Day.

The other dates are close to it but wrong: the Declaration was not adopted on 1 December, 11 December or 31 December 1948. A common slip is to confuse it with the Genocide Convention, which was adopted a day earlier, on 9 December 1948.