Global Awareness
Thoughts on Human Rights
Towson University , Maria Montserrat Padron A .
Rights that are given to people are known as Human Rights . Just being a human guarantees that these rights will be protected without condition . Human Rights include freedom of speech , freedom of religion , freedom from persecution , etc . The right to associate is not an independent constitutional right but it is resultant from and dependent on the first amendment assures freedom of speech and expression . It is protected only to the extent that it is stated in conjunction with a First Amendment right . Still , some legal academics maintain that freedom of association is more fundamental than the rights written in the Constitution because without it those other rights have little meaning .
There are a variety of institutions that have been created to protect this rights , the biggest is the United Nations . The United Nations is composed of various departments that are dedicated to investigate and prosecute human rights abuses . One department is the International Criminal Court , which focuses crimes . Nevertheless , the ICC has one obvious weakness and that problem is that the ICC only has jurisdiction is countries that have signed and ratified the Rome statute , which is the document establishing the ICC . So in other words , if a state declares that it will not sign or ratify the documents pertaining to the court , then the court cannot act upon crimes committed in that country . Also , the ICC can ’ t act in a country if the country ’ s own legal system is investigating or prosecuting the crimes . This helps prevent double jeopardy , which is when a person is prosecuted twice for the same crime .
While this form of jurisdiction has caused problems in the past , it can also be valuable . A situation where the intervention of the International Criminal Court could be beneficial is in politically charged cases , in which any decision can create arguments or protests . If a politically unbiased organization enters and creates a trial , then the political organizations are free from the consequences of the decision . Human Rights on prosecuting crimes against humanity , genocide and war have been established as something that is conferred to all