entered into force in 2008, when seven members of the League of Arab States ratified it. Article 26 affirms: “Everyone has a guaranteed right to freedom of belief, thought and opinion.”
Finally, one must say that human rights law and human rights theory are very much alive and continue to develop around the world. Authors like Nussbaum, centering their theories around human dignity and the universality of what makes us “truly human” (2003, p. 41), propose that governments should ensure that people develop essential human capabilities that allow us to use our minds, imaginations, and thoughts “in ways protected by guarantees of freedom of expression” (Nussbaum 2003, p. 41) and that allow us to “participate effectively in political choices that govern one’s life” (Nussbaum 2003, p. 42). For this, communication rights must not only be guaranteed but actively fostered by states.
Conclusion: The UDHR as the Basis for Modern Communication Rights
This chapter began by analyzing the concept of freedom as a basis and foundation for human activity, particularly in the field of communication and, more precisely, information. With the struggle to ensure that states recognized rights and guaranteed the freedom to exercise them rather than simply granting limited rights to citizens, communication ceased to be regarded simply as an attribute of freedom and instead became the object of bona fide communication rights. Humankind’s tenacity gave rise to successive and ever more complete declarations of the essential rights that make one human.
The UDHR invoked freedom as a natural support for the right to information. This chapter concludes with a focus on that document as a foundation for communication rights, as well as the foundation for a set of legal and ethical norms that led to the development of what is conceptualized here as subject, object, and contents. This was an essential step forward in the characterization of communication as a right.
As pointed out, the UDHR is a text that has ethical authority but no legal support or guarantees of legal implementation. Some might have thought this would pose a challenge to the formulation of communication rights. Nothing could be further from the truth, since the declaration has contributed to the progressive constitutionalization of this right in countries with a Napoleonic legal tradition, and it has served as a legal precedent to guide legal decisions about communication issues in countries with a common law tradition.
Analysis of the legal-informational communication reality in a broad range of countries, based on their constitutions and legislation, indicates that the internationality of communication rights is alive and well. Little by little, without hurry though also without pause, the image of a universal right to information is arising through the unified force of diverse national laws. This is a profound development of the guidelines laid down in the UDHR in 1948. It is natural to find opposition – even unconscious resistance – to the gradual global acceptance of the principles laid down in Article 19 of the UDHR. Such resistance can take on forms that even violate the contents of the article, but modern reality, technological advances, and the development of new communication systems are creating an unstoppable march toward universal laws that ensure the right to information.
This trajectory also reflects the importance of universal public opinion regarding the achievement of international communication rights in the sense that community ideas are internationally valid and can be shared among all peoples. Globalization strengthens the possibilities for universality and will undoubtedly contribute to universal communication rights. So do different approaches to human rights that link them to human capabilities that are, in turn, made universal by identifying the essentials of human dignity, of what makes us “truly human.”
This is reflected in the successive international declarations, such as the European Convention on Human Rights of 1950, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of 1966, the Pact of Costa Rica of 1969, the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights of 1986, and the Arab Charter of Human Rights of 2004. These documents refer to communication in practically the same terms as Article 19 of the UDHR. This highlights the importance of the UDHR in ensuring that countries around the world acknowledge the existence and importance of communication rights and other human rights and the aspiration that societies and political systems continue strengthening their commitment to the protection of these rights by respecting and implementing international and regional human rights treaties.
References
1 Abad, L. (2015). El derecho a la información en los textos universales (estudio del artículo 19 de la DUDH). In: Derecho de la Información. El ejercicio del derecho a la información y su jurisprudencia (ed. I. Bel and L. Corredoira), 49–68. Madrid: Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales.
2 Azurmendi, A. (2015). El proceso de la configuración del derecho y la Información. In: Derecho de la Información. El ejercicio del derecho a la información y su jurisprudencia (ed. I. Bel and L. Corredoira), 31–47. Madrid: Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales.
3 Castro Fariñas, J.A. (1970). De la libertad de prensa. Madrid: Fragua.
4 Desantes Guanter, J.M. (1974). La información como derecho. Madrid: Editora Nacional.
5 Desantes Guanter, J.M. (1977). Fundamentos del derecho de la información. Madrid: Fondo editorial Cajas de Ahorros.
6 Desantes Guanter, J.M. (1999). Francisco de Vitoria, precursor del derecho de la información. Madrid: Imatique.
7 Fernández, R. (ed.) (2003). Los derechos Humanos. Antología de Francisco de Vitoria. Salamanca: Editorial San Esteban.
8 Nussbaum, M. (2003). Capabilities as fundamental entitlements: Sen and social justice. Feminist Economics 9 (2–3): 33–59.
9 Paine, T. (1791). The Rights of Man. London: J. Johnson.
10 Sánchez Ferriz, R. and Corredoira, L. (2017). La compleja configuración de un derecho-libertad poliédrico, el Derecho a la información.: Referencias históricas. Revista de derecho político 99: 11–48.
11 Subedi, S. (2017). The Effectiveness of the UN Human Rights System: Reform and the Judicialisation of Human Rights. London: Routledge.
12 Suksi, M., Agapiou-Josephides, K., Lehners, J.-P. et al. (eds.) (2015). First Fundamental Rights Documents in Europe. Cambridge, UK: Intersentia.
Notes
1 1 See the various studies on Francisco de Vitoria, who promoted human rights in the early sixteenth century. José María Desantes considers him the first precursor of communication rights in his work Francisco de Vitoria, precursor del derecho de la información, 1999, especially pp. 35–68. See also de Vitoria’s work published by Ramón Fernández in 2003, Los derechos Humanos. Antología, particularly pp. 242–243. De Vitoria did not write directly; his legal work Lectiones has been handed down to us from his students.
2 2 See, for example, Suski et al. (2015).
2 Dignity, a Revolutionary Principle in a Cosmopolitan Society
Javier Gomá Lanzón
Dignity is the most revolutionary concept to come out of the twentieth century. It is endowed with such transforming power that the mere mention of it, as if it were a magic word, has been enough to overcome enormous obstacles that have held back the moral progress of humanity. In the past few years, it has advanced dramatically. And yet, in spite of the extraordinary influence of this concept, philosophy, strangely enough, has simply ignored it for the last two centuries. It has never been
