Lesson 1: What it means to be human Human rights abuses
Learning outcome 1.3
Learning outcome 1.9 Students should be able to explain a hierarchy of human needs and how this relates to human rights.
Exercise 24A Considering the impacts of human rights abuses Key Skills
Success criteria
Students should be able to outline different perspectives in situations where there is an apparent confl ict of rights or an abuse of rights.
I can name consequences of an abuse of rights.
The UDHR lists the rights that all humans are entitled to. Sometimes countries deny their own people or other groups their human rights. When this happens, human rights are abused. These abuses can be planned, such as preventing people from voting, or can happen because a country does not intervene, such as not protecting minorities because the government wants the support of the majority. Examples of human rights abuses (and the rights that are denied) include: ● Discriminating in jobs against groups based on gender, religion, sexual orientation (the right to work) ● Not allowing girls to attend school (the right to education) ● Allowing air pollution from factories (the right to health) ● Taking property from people to give it to others (the right to property) ● Intelligence agencies spying on people’s online activity (the right to privacy).
Working in pairs, discuss the following statements, and tick whether you think they are true or false. True False
1. In 2017, 58 countries banned religious practice by one or more religious groups. 2. 70% of the world’s poor are male. 3. Two-thirds of illiterate people in the world aged over 15 are female. 4. In 2018, 9% of girls and 7% of boys worldwide were not attending primary school. 5. In 2019, 50% of the countries rated best for freedom of expression were in Europe. 6. 20,000 children die every day around the world due to poverty. 7. The majority of people killed by landmines are men. 8. South Sudan and Somalia were rated the most corrupt countries in the world in 2020.