The Modern State and Human Rights

The citizen finds no institutional support within the state apparatus if the construction of the state collapses. He/she can then claim a right of resistance against oppressive state power. Jean Bodin was the first influential figure who defended that doctrinal position. Bodin stressed the independence of the kings of France whereas the English author Thomas Hobbes emphasized the rights of the sovereign power of the state over all members of the common polity. State power which he called Leviathan must be released from all kinds of legal ties. The commands of God and the laws of nature are the main subject in his doctrine. In his opinion, if state fails to protect citizens, the rights of citizens come back to life. .
             Protection of human beings by recognition of human rights. John Lock is the author who took positions opposed to the approach taken by Thomas Hobbes. In his view, human being is not able to divest himself of all natural rights, which he enjoys as a gift of nature. Hugo Grotius had also expressed similar ideas. According to Montesquieu, the citizen will receive sufficient protection from the state where the legislative function, the judicial function and the executive function are separated from each other. Ideas of John Lock found textual reflection in the Virginia Declaration of Rights of 12 June 1776 which was produced on the North American continent. Further, on 4 July, 1776, the reflection of Lock's position was found in the American Declaration of Independence. The French Declaration also stressed the rights of the human as being natural and inalienable. In 1815 the Declaration on the Abolition of the Slave Trade was adopted during the Peace Conference in Vienna on 8 February 1815. A further development of human rights had its origins in the middle of the nineteenth century. During the Italian War of National Unification, thousands of wounded soldiers died. The witness of this battle was a citizen of Geneva, Jean Henri Dunant who initiated to convene an international conference in Geneva in 1864 which resulted in the adoption of the Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Filed.