Nickel provides a very useful framework for analysis of whether the concept of human rights has changed since the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights . His framework attempts to explain how rights operate in society. Five fundamental elements of rights are identified: a) they have conditions of possession; b) they give the right to something specific; c) they have conditions of operability, and they can be engaged; d) they are addressed to someone specific; e) they hold weight and can be ranked. This essay will deal with a number of these elements of rights, and try to assess whether the 'new' rights have in fact changed these elements and whether this means that the concept of human rights has changed as a result.

The most common argument over these new rights is over the conditions of possession, in other words who is the holder of the rights. It has been argued that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights assumes that only individuals can be the holder of these rights. In subsequent documents, however, the possessors of the rights were thought to include groups and not just individuals. For example the International Covenant on Civil and

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, however, talks of peoples as well. In the preamble it acknowledges that individuals are members of the "human family"; that the "common people" have declared their desire for freedom of speech and belief and to be free from fear and want; nations should be in friendly relations; the peoples of the United Nations declared in the Charter their belief in fundamental human rights; that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is to be a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, among the peoples of Member States and among the peoples of territories undert their jurisdiction.

The international bill of rights consists of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights acting as a coherent whole. The problem with this is that the latter two explicitly identify groups as the beneficiaries of rights. In both convenants the first article proclaims the right of peoples to self-determination. This right is believed to have radically altered the meaning of human rights as it was generally accepted. This problem was further exacerbated by subsequent decolonisation and a global discourse which focused on the poverty of the newly independent states and the inequity of the world economy. This culminated in the 1986 Declaration of the Right to Development.

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Approximate Word count = 1540
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)