Human Rights and Correlative Duties

Abstract: There is a huge amount of unclarity in the discussions about human rights. For instance, it is unclear how human rights are connected to corresponding duties, and who bears such duties. If there is no clarity about the duties and the bearers of these duties human rights claims are rather meaningless, and ask being reduced to mere ideals. In this article examples of human rights theories are given and are divided into duty-bearer-fixed and duty-bearer open classifications. The advantages and disadvantages of both kinds of theories are discussed, as well as the complications that result from them. These complications are deserving far more attention than they have received up to now. The future of human rights will to a large extent depend on the question whether or not theoretical reflection and political practice will be able to convincingly determine the duty-bearers of human rights.