The Human rights

 

Introduction

Every human will come face to face with a situation or an event that would require the interference of some certain authority that will help in preserving and protecting his rights . In some cases, and due to the defects and the weakness of the law systems certain countries, the people rights will be lost under these strong and unfair governments. To overcome this issue in some of the un developed countries and sometimes even in the developed countries, a certain set of rules and regulation was formed and it was called the human rights laws. In this paper, I will be talking about the human rights, human rights philosophies and human right classification.

 

Human right

Human rights are defined as the set of moral principles that creates certain standards of human behavior towards other humans and regularly protects human rights in national and international law. Human rights are commonly known as the fundamental rights to which a person deserves simply because she or he is a human being living in this world. Human rights are universal and the same for everyone. Since the day human rights were introduced to the international law, they have been highly influential with global and regional institutions that are the different law courts. The main idea and the main objective of human rights demonstrates that the global society must speak a common moral language that is the human rights.  Unfortunately, with developed world that we live in and with the different beliefs of  different nations, the principles of human rights continue to provoke considerable debates and doubts about the content, nature and justifications of human rights. The reason behind that is because the word rights will vary from one person to another and within one society to another.

 

 

Human rights philosophies

The main philosophy of human rights is to examine and explain the basis of the concepts of human rights and define the content and justification of human rights. To justify and explain the Human Rights, several theories were proposed to explain how and why human rights have become a part of social expectations in every nation. The oldest philosophies of human rights are that human rights are a product of a natural law, originated from different philosophical or religious grounds. Another theory states that human rights arrange moral behavior, which is a human social product, developed by a process of biological and social evolution of the humans themselves. If we take a look into human rights we will find out that, they are described as a sociological pattern of rules and regulations used to protect human needs and believes. The human rights approach says that individuals in a society should accept the rules from legitimate and legal authority in exchange for security and economic advantage. In general, all human rights theories demonstrate that the principal function of human rights is to protect and promote certain essential human interests and to establish the validity of human rights based on the unique human capacity for freedom and self-expression.

 

Classification of human rights

Human rights are classified to a number of categories at an international level. The most common categories of human rights are split into civil and political rights, and economic, social and cultural rights. The civil and political rights are mentioned in articles 3 to 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Economic, social and cultural rights are mentioned in articles 22 to 28 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

 

 

 

 

Conclusion

Nowadays, and with many leaders around the world taking advantage of the weakness of their people, a set of rules and regulations were implemented by the international law to protect the rights of the people. Human rights are defined as the sets of moral principles that create certain standards of human behavior towards other humans and regularly protect humans as legal rights in national and international law. All human rights theories demonstrate that the principal function of human rights is to protect and promote certain essential human interests and to establish the validity of human rights based on the unique human capacity for freedom and self-expression. If it were not for the human rights, many nations and many countries would live in the dark ages where people struggle and suffer to survive in this world. The human rights are to protect the rights of people around the world but unfortunately some of the people’s demands are extreme and since some people stands for what they believe in, it will be difficult to use the principles of human rights to protect them.

 

References

http://www.un.org/en/rights/

http://www.theguardian.com/law/human-rights

http://www.ohchr.org/en/issues/pages/whatarehumanrights.aspx

http://www.hrw.org/

http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/about

https://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=I-1&chapter=1&lang=en

The ZEEBRUGGE ferry disaster

Introduction

To understand my project and to visualize what happened exactly, I have to go through three terms that is the sea transportation, the ferry and Capsizing. Sea transportation is considered one of the oldest roots of transportation and it was used since the days of the old Roman and Greeks. The Ships transports not only people but goods as well. If we went down in the history, we will find that the Sea transport is the largest carrier ever invented. Although the importance and the popularity of sea travel for passengers has decreased because of the aviation and the air transportation, it is still used for short trips and pleasure cruises and off course for sipping the different goods and merchant dices. The sea transportation includes boat, ship, sailboat, barge and ferries, over oceans and lakes, through canals or along rivers. The ferries are some kind of boats or ships that is used mostly to carry passengers and sometimes, it is used to carry cars across a reasonable distance on water. The ferries will have many stops along their way most of the time and that is why they are called the waterbuses or the water taxies in many cities around the world. Finally, Capsizing is when the ship or the boat turn on its sides or upside down due to an engine malfunctioning of due to crashing that cause the ship to tilt over.   

 

The incident of ZEEBRUGGE ferry disaster

In 1987, a British ferry called the Herald of Free Enterprise capsized after leaving the Belgian port of zeebrugge. This incident resulted in the death of 193 person including the ferry passengers and the ferry crew. At that day, the ferry left the harbor without closing the bow-door (the loading and the unloading door at the end of the ferry) and that caused the loading dock to be flooded with see water with in few minutes and eventually the ferry capsized. The ferry bow door was designed in such a way to handle the rapid loading and unloading of passengers and their cars but it was not designed to prevent the see water of getting into the ferry when the door is open and that what cause the disaster. The person who is responsible for closing the bow-door is the assistant boatswain who slept during his duty and that mistake cost many people their precious lives.

 

The ethical issue involve in the ZEEBRUGGE ferry disaster

In this incident, we have to coin out that the blame is on the captain and his crewmembers because the lack of communication and the carelessness of them all cost these people their life. This problem could be avoided by a very simple procedure which involve a simple phone call threw the ferry internal call system to confirm that the door is closed and the ferry is ready to go. Unfortunately, the captain was going according to the procedure and we have to blame the assistant boatswain who slept during his duty. There is no excuse to take a nap or sleep during the working hours and if he waited for few minutes, he could close the door and sleep until the ferry reach the distend harbor.

 

My own position and explain why

In my opening, the ship crew could be more interactive and have a better communication. That ferry was one of the biggest ferries at that time since it was an 8-deck car and passenger ferry that could accommodate hundreds of passengers and cars during its journey. Another thing that I can find really disappointing is the safety measures on the ship. Although this incident took place within few minutes, the ferry crew should be prepared to something like this to happen all the time. The capsizing is a very common incident in most of the sea transportations and the crew should have a maximum evacuation measures in these type of incident so the entire passengers on board would be saved. Finally, I think that the entire crew including the captain should educated about the importance of the ethical code of profession and how important it is to consider all important morals that would make everyone perform their work perfectly and with no hesitation or carelessness.           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

The BBC news, (2014). 1987: Hundreds trapped as car ferry capsizes. The BBC news: bbc.co.uk. Available from http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/6/newsid_2515000/2515923.stm accedes @ 4:30 pm on 4/22/2014.

The Mirror UK, (2012). Zeebrugge ferry disaster survivor still haunted by tragic events after 25 years. The mirror of UK: mirror.co.uk. Available from http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/zeebrugge-ferry-disaster-25-years-750972 accessed @ 5:00 pm on 4/25/2014 

The ship disaster (2013). MS Herald of Free Enterprise. The ferry disaster: ship-disaser.com. Available from http://www.ship-disasters.com/passenger-ship-disasters/herald-of-free-enterprise/ accessed on 26/4/2014 @ 6:00 pm

The independent, (2011). A Day That Shook The World: Zeebrugge ferry disaster. The passenger ship disaster: independent.co.uk. Available from http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/history/a-day-that-shook-the-world-zeebrugge-ferry-disaster-2231389.html.  Accessed on 27/04/2014 @ 5:30 pm.

Mombai building collapse

Mombai building collapse

 

On 14 March 2014, a seven storey building collapsed in the Santa Cruz region of Mumbai, killing seven people and injuring four. The building was called the Shankar Lok and it collapsed onto an adjoining building known as Catherine Chawl. Five of those killed lived in the chawl. The collapsed building was only constructed in 1982 and was declared unfit to live in after a structural inspection in 2008, when the authorities said it needed to be demolished and re-built. All tenants of the building had been given an eviction notice and most families, except for two, had left. The residents of the chawl had also been warned of the danger. It is difficult to say who is to blame for what happened. One of the families was related to a lawyer, who went to court to challenge the eviction notice. This caused the court to delay demolition. So, many people are blaming the lawyer for her actions. The builder may also be to blame as many builders use low quality materials, because building regulations in India are not strict and housing demand is high. The main ethical issue here is that if the people who lived in the building and the chawl had somewhere else to move to, then they would have not have been staying in a dangerous building. The poverty and lack of options for tenants meant that some had no choice but to live there.

 

Conclusion:

The building collapsed because it was unstable and should have been demolished. This was delayed because the lawyer had been to court to challenge the eviction and demolition. The tenants that stayed in the chawl would not have been killed if the Shankar Lok building had been demolished. If the building had been constructed correctly in the first place then it would never have deteriorated so quickly.

 

 

 

 

Reference

 

Bhavika Jain (2014). Seven killed in Mumbai building collapse. [ONLINE] Available  at: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/Seven-killed-in-Mumbai-building-collapse/articleshow/32029992.cms. [Last Accessed 2014].

Human rights

Human rights

The American Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The core of the American Declaration of Independencecircled around some ideas of great thinkers from the Explanation Era. One of these ideas suggested that all men are created equal by the Lord Almighty and every single person had the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. those slaves were denied their rights of liberty and the pursuit of happiness while being torn away from their homelands and brought to a whole different place where they were not familiar to any of the aspects of the society. Moreover they were tortured by their white masters and were treated like objects and not human beings. Considering all these facts about slavery, the American Declaration of Independence sounded like a ridiculous irony that they kept making fun of which doesn’t represent the real comprehension of equality. It was quite an ironic declaration if one cared to relate these words by Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg address (November 1864) ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people’ to the social and political mechanism of the American colonies.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau:

"Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains" That was the first sentence of Rousseau's "The Social Contract."

This was the concept of ‘the noble savage’.

Thomas Hobbes:

"In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently, not culture of the earth, no navigation, nor the use of commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

Aluminium cans

Aluminium cans

Approximately 1 billion are produced in the USA each year. The first can was designed in 1958 by Kaiser Aluminium. This metal proved ideal as it was a lightweight, flexible material that allowed manufacturing of the bottom & sides of the can from a single sheet, leaving the top to be added after the can was filled.

The first cans were opened with a separate opener but this was inconvenient so Ermal Fraze designed a small lever attached to the can which was removed as the can was opened.

The design was workable but after a while it created an ethical dilemma:

in this case could cause injury on hands or feet when some body walk ,also it is cause more environmental

  

So in 1976 Daniel F. Cudzik invented a simple, stay-attached opener of the sort familiar today.

As improvements were made in the design & production of aluminium cans, various ethical problems arose concerning:

 

a.Human safety:

 

this new developments could make people to drink more soft drink which can make problem to thir healh

 

b. Environmental pollution:

 

 

many of people are dont care about environment which could they throw out the cans on the streets

c. Convenience:

 

the cans material type is difficulte to recycle it and which can make problem for municipality

d. Money:

the industy can take the used cans from the streets and everywhere and recycle it it will be cheaber than they made new cans

Ethical issues

Ethics is part of morality; it involves good and bad, but there are grey areas between them. For example , humans some times do the wrong thing to avoid some thing or say some thing because they need to say it. As we can know in the second world war when the American army used the atomic bomb in Hiroshima in Japan because it was the last solution to protect themselfves from the Japanese army. All of us know the right and the wrong but when we are in the middle that means there is some thing which controls us to do it. Some people do not agree about the gray area but they need this area  sometimes.

In my opinion the morality is the important thing with  most people  because the right morality will control you  most  times.