The declaration of rights have a lot of similarities, starting with the magna carta, we see that part of the purpose is to give power to those who lack it and to diminish power to those that have it, especially monarchy and government. It is also evident that each declaration reflects events and problems that were happening in the era in which they were written. For example in the Magna Carta it mentions that “The Church was to be free from royal interference, especially in the election of bishops” which reflects problems at the time between the church and monarchy, we also see the mention of loans made by Jews which was common at that time. All of these aspect where more specific once we get to the Declaration of independence we see more rights that generalize to more people for example “That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”. In the English bill of rights 1689 we see for the first time that it is there should be no “illegal and cruel punishments inflicted” and this we see repeated in many other declarations for example in the Constitution of the United States : Bill of Rights it says “nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted”. And it is repeated up to our day, but like in the English bill of rights it’s very vague. In the Declaration of the Rights of Man 1789, it mentions that “ No one shall be disquieted on account of his opinions, including his religious views, provided their manifestation does not disturb the public order established by law.” Here is the first time religion and most important the differences of religions are mentioned. It is not until the Charter of the United Nations that the clear equality of man and woman are mentioned in article 8, where it mentions “The United Nations shall place no restrictions on the eligibility of men and women to participate in any capacity and under conditions of equality in its principal and subsidiary organs”. I also found it surprising to find things included that I would never think about for example in the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms Article 12 it mentions that you have the Right to marry. I personally thought that the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination was the charter of rights, that entails more basic rights that should be included in other declaration of rights especially article 5 where it includes right of housing, health care and education, which are not included in many of the declaration but are essential to life. I also found that International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights was one of the few that included right of children, which I think is very essential. Finally I found it interesting that these declaration of rights even the ones for the UN are mostly translated in Arabic, Chinese , English , French , Russian, Spanish, but I think that they should be translate din to more languages. In general I found that a lot of the declaration of right’s were similar and had similar goals in mind which is to give power to others, but in my opinion there should be more basic rights added to most of them and they also should be more specific.
