Chapter 6 How Human Rights Work Sources of human rights Human rights are recognized as being inherent within all people and they are mainly identified and articulated through human rights treaties. Once these treaties have been adopted, signed and ratified they are binding upon the states parties to the treaty, and the rights contained within them have the force of law. As a legal principle, treaties are therefore the strongest assertion of rights,125 with the exception of certain rights guaranteed through customary international law, such as the prohibition on torture and slavery, which are recognized as being peremptory norms and therefore the most fundamental. Treaty law (due to its binding nature, often referred to as “hard law”) is, however, not the only source of human rights law. Other sources include declarations such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,126 guidelines, rules and regulations. These latter sources are often referred to as “soft law”. Whilst these may be adopted under the auspices of an international organization, such as the UN or the Council of Europe, they are not intended to create legal obligations on states parties. They do, however, provide authoritative sources of rights and how they should be applied. Further sources of soft law include statements from those responsible for implementing human rights treaties, such as the general comments and the decisions of the Human Rights Committee under the ICCPR. Although these are highly respected, they are technically not hard law. This is to be contrasted with decisions of international courts such as the European Court of Human Rights, whose judgements are binding on the state party to the litigation and whose case law has to be followed by all other parties to the European Convention on Human Rights. These judgments ought, therefore, to be considered as hard law. The OSCE has a comprehensive collection of human rights commitments, which in many instances go well beyond what can be found in human rights treaties. These are not hard law, but are politically binding on all participating States. Since OSCE commitments are adopted through a process of consensus, each participating State has voluntarily pledged itself to honour and abide by each commitment. This manual draws on all these sources of human rights. Their applicability in each particular OSCE participating State will depend upon that state’s membership of a particular organization and on the status of signature and/or ratification of treaties by that state. All of the 125 What amounts to a treaty is itself a legal term of art. Other words for treaties include convention, covenant and charter. What is essential is that there is an intention to create a legal relationship among the parties in regard to subject matter of the treaty. For further information, see the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, opened for signatures on 23 May 1969 and entered into force on 27 January 1980, United Nations Treaty Series, vol. 1155, p. 331, Art. 34. 126 That Declaration although initially agreed as a non-binding instrument, over time is now considered to have assumed the quality of customary international law. 58 Countering Terrorism, Protecting Human Rights