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Concepts and Development of Human Rights
Previous Year Question Paper with Solution
LLM · Group 4 Human Rights Law
2025-26 Examination
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LLM Group 4 Human Rights Law Concepts and Development of Human Rights 2025-26 Question Paper with Solutions
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First published on munotes.in on 11 September 2026.
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Model answers written and edited by the munotes.in editorial desk.
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The University does not publish an official answer key for this paper. The answers in this volume are model answers, written to show how a full-mark answer is built. They are a study aid, not an authority on what an examiner marked.
The question paper reproduced here is the paper as set by the University of Mumbai at the 2025-26 examination.
The law in these answers is stated as at September 2026, and three things date most textbooks here. The Whistle Blowers Protection Act, 2014 received assent on 9 May 2014 and section 1(3) requires a commencement notification that has never been issued, so it is not in force. The pecuniary limits under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 were reset by rules notified on 30 December 2021 and are now fifty lakh rupees for a District Commission, fifty lakh to two crore for a State Commission and above two crore for the National Commission, measured on the CONSIDERATION PAID. And the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, which the third generation had claimed since 1972, was recognised by the Human Rights Council on 8 October 2021 and by the General Assembly on 28 July 2022 by 161 votes to none.
Contents
The questions below are the paper as the University of Mumbai set it at the 2025-26 examination, in the order it was set.
MarksPage
The Paper as Set
The questions in this volume are the questions asked at the 2025-26 examination, reproduced as the University of Mumbai set them, in the order it set them. Nothing has been reworded, added or left out. Only the answers are ours. See the original question paper.
Duration 3 hours · Total marks 100 · 7 questions answered
How to use this volume
Solve the paper first, under exam conditions and against the clock. Then read the answers here and mark your own. Reading a solution before attempting the question feels productive and teaches very little, because recognising an answer is not the same as being able to write one.
Q.1.What challenges hinder the effective implementation of the universality principle in International Human Rights Law? Critically evaluate.[25]
Answer
For full marks, cover: the question has two halves and the examiner has weighted the second. Listing obstacles will earn you about a third of the marks. The marks are in showing what the universality principle actually asserts, separating the challenges that go to the CONTENT of rights from those that go only to their ENFORCEMENT, and then evaluating: saying which objections have force and which do not. Finish by taking the relativist case at its strongest and answering it, because an answer that treats universality as obviously correct has not evaluated anything.
What the universality principle asserts
Universality is the claim that human rights belong to every human being by virtue of being human, and not by virtue of citizenship, religion, sex, caste, wealth or the permission of a State. It is a claim about the SOURCE of the entitlement, not about uniform enforcement. A State that fails to secure a right does not thereby show the right is not universal; it shows it is in breach.
The claim is stated three times in the founding instruments. The Charter of the United Nations, 1945, in Article 1(3) makes one of the purposes of the Organisation the promotion of respect for human rights "for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion", and Articles 55 and 56 turn that into a pledge by members. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by General Assembly Resolution 217A (III) on 10 December 1948, opens in Article 1 with the proposition that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights, and in Article 2 forbids distinction of any kind.
The most important modern restatement is paragraph 5 of the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, adopted by the World Conference on Human Rights on 25 June 1993. It says that all human rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent and interrelated, that the international community must treat them globally in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing and with the same emphasis, and then makes the concession that matters. While the significance of national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds must be borne in mind, it is the duty of States, regardless of their political, economic and cultural systems, to promote and protect all human rights.
That sentence is the settlement of the whole debate, and the challenges below are best read as pressure applied at the seam it creates.
Challenge one: cultural relativism and the Asian values argument
The relativist objection is that rights are the product of a particular European history, that the catalogue in the Universal Declaration encodes an individualism that is not shared, and that a community may legitimately rank duty, family and social harmony above individual entitlement.
The objection has a documentary form. Ministers and representatives of Asian States met at Bangkok from 29 March to 2 April 1993, in preparation for the Vienna Conference, and adopted the Bangkok Declaration. It accepted universality in terms and then qualified it, urging that human rights be considered in the context of national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds, and insisting that economic and social development is a precondition of progress on rights. China was the leading formulator.
The argument has to be taken seriously before it is answered. It is true that the Declaration was drafted by a committee on which the colonised world was barely represented; India, then still a colony in fact though a founding member in form, was one of the few non-Western voices. It is true that a right to leave any country, or to change religion, cuts against arrangements that some societies have defended for centuries.
The answer is that the relativist argument proves too much and is usually advanced by the wrong party. It proves too much because the same reasoning would defend slavery, which was also traditional, also defended by religion, and also older than the Declaration. It is advanced by the wrong party because the claim "our culture does not value dissent" is almost always made by the government and almost never by the dissenter. The Vienna formula is the correct settlement: culture is a legitimate consideration in the MANNER of implementation and is no answer at all to the duty.
Challenge two: the consent structure of international law
The deeper obstacle is structural rather than philosophical. International human rights law is treaty law, and a treaty binds only those who join it. Universality is asserted in the instruments and then surrendered at the point of ratification.
Three mechanisms do the surrendering. The first is simple non-ratification: the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, both adopted on 16 December 1966 and in force from 1976, do not bind a State that has not joined. The second is the optional protocol, which makes the individual complaint mechanism itself optional; India has ratified both Covenants but not the First Optional Protocol to the Civil and Political Rights Covenant, so no Indian may petition the Human Rights Committee. The third is the reservation.
Reservations are the most corrosive. A State may join the treaty and then exclude the provisions it dislikes. The International Court of Justice laid down the governing test in its Advisory Opinion on Reservations to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 1951 ICJ Reports 15. The Court held that a State which has made a reservation objected to by some parties may still be regarded as a party, provided the reservation is compatible with the OBJECT AND PURPOSE of the convention. That test is now Article 19(c) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, 1969.
The trouble is that nobody has the last word on compatibility. The Human Rights Committee tried to take it in General Comment No. 24 of 1994, asserting that an incompatible reservation is severable and the State remains bound by the provision. Several States, including the United States and the United Kingdom, rejected the claim. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, 1979, is the standing illustration: it attracts more reservations than any other human rights treaty, many of them to Article 16 on marriage and family, and many entered on the footing that the Article yields to religious personal law. India's own declaration to Articles 5(a) and 16(1) is of that kind.
Challenge three: enforcement, selectivity and the political organs
Even where the obligation is undisputed, the machinery is weak. The treaty bodies receive reports, publish concluding observations and issue views; none of it is directly enforceable. The Human Rights Council, created by General Assembly Resolution 60/251 of 15 March 2006 to replace the discredited Commission on Human Rights, conducts a Universal Periodic Review of every State, which was a genuine advance because it applies to all. It remains a peer review conducted by governments.
Coercive enforcement runs through the Security Council, and there it meets the veto. The result is selectivity, which does more damage to universality than relativism ever did, because it converts a principle into a weapon. When the same conduct attracts a referral to the International Criminal Court in one State and silence in another, the accusation that human rights are a foreign policy instrument becomes hard to answer on the merits.
| Objection | What it attacks | How far it succeeds |
|---|---|---|
| Cultural relativism | The CONTENT of the rights | Weak on the merits; the Vienna formula answers it |
| Reservations and non-ratification | The REACH of the obligation | Strong; there is no authoritative arbiter of compatibility |
| Weak treaty machinery | ENFORCEMENT only | Strong, but concedes the right exists |
| Selectivity of the political organs | The CREDIBILITY of the system | Strongest in practice; it is self-inflicted |
| Progressive realisation of economic rights | The IMMEDIACY of the duty | Overstated; minimum core obligations are immediate |
Challenge four: the split between the two Covenants
Universality was declared indivisible in 1948 and then divided in 1966. The Cold War produced two Covenants instead of one, and they are built differently. Article 2(1) of the Civil and Political Rights Covenant imposes an immediate obligation to respect and ensure; Article 2(1) of the Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Covenant requires each State to take steps to the maximum of its available resources with a view to achieving progressively the full realisation of the rights.
That difference is constantly misread as meaning economic rights are aspirations. The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights answered that in General Comment No. 3 of 1990, holding that every State party has a minimum core obligation to satisfy at least essential levels of each right, and that a State in which any significant number of individuals is deprived of essential foodstuffs, essential primary health care, basic shelter or the most basic forms of education is prima facie failing. Progressive realisation is a rule about pace, not about whether the duty exists.
How Indian law has handled the problem
India is a dualist State, so a treaty does not by itself become enforceable municipal law. That is the starting point of Jolly George Varghese v. Bank of Cochin, (1980) 2 SCC 360. A judgment debtor faced arrest and detention in a civil prison for non-payment, and it was argued that Article 11 of the Civil and Political Rights Covenant, which forbids imprisonment merely for inability to fulfil a contractual obligation, barred it. Krishna Iyer J. held that the positive commitment of the State to the Covenant did not of itself make the Covenant enforceable, but that the provisions of municipal law must be so construed as to conform to the international obligation wherever the words permit. He then read section 51 of the Code of Civil Procedure and its proviso as requiring proof of means and refusal to pay, which reconciled the two. The case is the working rule: harmonious construction, not direct enforcement.
Vishaka v. State of Rajasthan, (1997) 6 SCC 241, shows the technique at full stretch. A social worker in Rajasthan was gang raped for trying to stop a child marriage, and there was no law on sexual harassment at the workplace. The Supreme Court held that in the absence of domestic law, international conventions and norms are to be read into the fundamental rights guaranteed by Articles 14, 15, 19(1)(g) and 21 to enlarge their meaning and content, and drew on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and on India's official commitments at the Beijing Conference of 1995. It then laid down binding guidelines that governed the field until the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013.
Chairman, Railway Board v. Chandrima Das, (2000) 2 SCC 465, is the case on universality itself. A Bangladeshi national was gang raped by railway employees at the Yatri Nivas at Howrah station, and the Railways argued that a foreigner could not claim a fundamental right and that a writ for damages did not lie. The Supreme Court rejected both. It held that the Universal Declaration has been recognised as a model code and that the rights guaranteed under Article 21 are available to ALL PERSONS, citizen or not, because Article 21 speaks of "person" and not of "citizen"; it upheld the award of compensation of rupees ten lakh. It is the authority to cite for the proposition that universality is not a slogan in Indian law but a rule of construction with a price tag.
National Legal Services Authority v. Union of India, (2014) 5 SCC 438, carried the same method to a group the drafters never contemplated, recognising transgender persons as a third gender and drawing expressly on the Yogyakarta Principles as an aid to construing Articles 14, 15, 19 and 21. It shows both the power of the technique and its limit, because what is read in by a court can be read down by another.
The strongest case against universality, stated fairly
The best version of the objection is not cultural but institutional. It runs like this. A right that no institution can enforce against the State that is violating it is not meaningfully a legal right; it is a moral claim in legal dress. The universality of such a claim is therefore cheap, because it costs nothing to declare and nothing to breach. Worse, the declaration does harm, because it lets the international community substitute a statement for a remedy.
The answer is that the objection confuses the norm with the machinery. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, 1998, in force from 1 July 2002, and the exercise of universal jurisdiction over torture in the Pinochet litigation in the House of Lords show that the machinery does occasionally close on the powerful. More importantly, the norm does work through domestic courts, which is exactly what Vishaka and Chandrima Das demonstrate. The universality of the norm is what made the Indian constitutional text expand; no treaty body had to lift a finger.
Conclusion. The universality principle is not hindered chiefly by the argument that rights are Western. That objection is weak, is usually raised by governments rather than by the people whose culture is invoked, and was answered by paragraph 5 of the Vienna Declaration, which allows culture to shape the manner of implementation and refuses it as an excuse for the duty. The real hindrances are structural: a treaty system that lets States choose their obligations through non-ratification and reservations with no authoritative arbiter of compatibility, machinery that reports rather than enforces, and a Security Council whose selectivity has done more to discredit universality than any relativist ever managed. What holds the principle up in practice is the domestic court. Indian law is the working example: a Bangladeshi woman raped on railway premises recovered ten lakh rupees in Chandrima Das because Article 21 says "person", and a gap in the statute book was filled in Vishaka by reading a convention into the Constitution. Universality survives not because the international system enforces it but because national constitutions keep absorbing it.
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