The issue of human rights has become an international or global issue. The principle of human right holds that all men and women are created equal and this has become the foundation or yardstick for measuring of democratic societies.
Fundamental rights are rights that are acquired at the point of conception, that is when a child is conceived in the mother’s womb. For that reason abortion is outlawed in many countries including Nigerian. Of recent in the United States, the Supreme Court judgments in the case of Rowe v. Wade which gave a woman the right to carry out abortion under certain circumstances were overturned by the Court. The controversial judgment is not our concern here and now but the fact that it shows that the right to life of an unborn child is recognized and protected by the law.
It has been contended by authors like Prof. A.V. Dicey that human rights are God given rights and their sources are not the law or the Constitution because these rights had been in existence before man devised the act of law making. The laws or Constitution only document these right for easy identification and enforcement purposes. I believe in this school of thought because right to life precede the human laws and Constitutions. It was not the codification the vested these rights, the law simply publicise them for people to become aware of them.
It must be pointed out that the frontiers of the law have been expanded for good and for bad depending on where you stand. For instance, in the West, gender right has been expanded to include the right of a man to claim to be a woman. In the West it is a crime I some territories to tell your child that he is boy or girl, their law says when the child comes of age, he or she will decide the gender he or she will like to be. This is one of the corruption of fundamental rights by the highly “civilized” West.
As mentioned earlier, these rights are now codified or documented by the state and other players like the Africa Union, United Nations, European Union and in nations’ constitutions. In other words, human rights are defined in both domestic and international laws. Consequently, there are variations between how these human rights norms are perceived and defined both in context and how they are enforced in different countries. For instance, what is regarded as fundamental rights in Europe or the United States may not be same in the context of China or Russia.
It has been observed that opinions of people based on race, personal belief, or social standing tend to define what amounts to human rights. However, it is the opinion of this writer that the standard of human rights should be the one internationally acknowledged by comity. This has made the attainment of equal rights to remain a constant struggle. The existence, validity and content of human rights continue to be the subject of debate in philosophy and politics.
In Nigerian, major sources of codified fundamental rights are:
- The 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as altered by various alterations made by the National Assembly and assented to by the president). The Constitution is referred to as the grundnorm or find et original, that is the source of all laws in Nigeria.
- The African Charter on People’s And Human Rights, a convention of the African Union enacted into our body of laws by a local enactment which rendered it effective and applicable in Nigeria.
- The United Nations Convention On Human Rights 1948. This convention ought to be binding on all UN member nations, but our Constitution says it has to enacted local into our body of laws, this has been done since 1948 but the Fundamental Rights Enforcement Rules of 2009 made by the Chief Justice of Nigeria, the Honourable Justice Kutigi, pursuant to the power conferred by the Constitution, it expressly made it enforceable in our courts.
4a. Decisions of our various courts that have interpreted the provisions of these enactments can also be said to be sources of human rights laws in Nigeria.
- Opinions of some experts in the field of human rights cannot be ignored as well, they have helped to enlarge the Territorial boundaries of human rights.
To be continued.
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