4. Human development and human rights advancement

Human development is an endless historical process; it is hard for us to learn about its start and to forecast its end. Human rights are rights of human beings, and the latter is the main body of the former. There are diverse and varied forms of existence of human beings, including, in general terms, individuals of human beings, groups of human beings, and all human beings as a whole. Therefore, human rights by nature are reflected as individual human rights, group human rights, and human rights as a whole. In the course of human development, the contents of human rights were replenished continuously, and especially with economic development, they also extended in terms of human cognition and legal recordation. Economic development, cognitive development and legal development are not only the foundation but also an integral part of human development. Between human development and human rights development is a whole-to-part relationship, also a foundation-to-development relationship.

The progressiveness of human development also determines the progressiveness of human rights advancement. In its development, humankind continued to set forth new human rights requirements and improve the condition of human rights protection, leading to an improving level of human rights protection. Human development from ignorance to civilization and from one level of civilization to a higher level determines and influences the advance of human rights from one level to a higher level. There’s no doubt about the relevance of human rights advancement to human development and about its reliance on human development. Human rights are a human attribute, which decides on the significance of human development to human rights advancement and determines that the extent of human rights advancement must be appropriate to that of human development.

Human rights advancement itself is a content and reflection of human development. Human development involves extremely broad contents, while human rights advancement is a constituting, and extremely important, part of human development. Human rights belong directly to human beings, influence directly human beings, reflect directly the state of human subsistence and development, and denote the level of civilization of a country or society. Thus, we cannot say that a society or country where human rights are widely despised or infringed is a civilized society or country. We have many and varied appraisal indicators to measure the level of human development, among which, the extent of human rights advancement is no doubt one of extremely important indicators. It is therefore advocated that when evaluating social system and social reality, we should use human rights advancement as one important indicator so that we can improve the level of human rights protection of humankind and promote the development of individuals, groups and humankind as a whole.

(The author is Professor of Law, Vice-director of the Politics and Law Department in Party School of the Central Committee, CPC.)