Taxonomy of Human Rights Issues 

For many years I have been concerned with what I consider to be Human Rights Issues in Career Development.  To obtain some idea of where this topic fitted in with Human Rights Issues in general I sought a Taxonomy of HRI.

To get a measure of the problem, I have tried drawing up a Taxonomy.  To do this I examined what Global Giving and Amnesty International listed on their websites (December 2008) under the Human Rights heading.  I came up with the following categories:-

1. Preventing deliberate action by individuals against other individuals.

2. Remedial action for victims of deliberate actions by other humans.

3. Campaigning for human rights.

4. Remedial action for victims of avoidable results of deliberate actions by others.

5. Remedial action to make good shortfalls in Government and/or community provision due to lack of awareness, action or resources.

6. Remedial action to make good deliberate shortfalls in Government and/or community provision.

7. Preventing deliberate action by Governtment agencies against individuals

8. Preventing predjudiced action by individuals & Governments to the detriment of individuals or groups.

9. Particularly difficult to classify

The lists, together with extracts from the description of each item and and the 'marking' in terms of this crude taxonomy can be accessed from the following pdf file:-

Draft Taxonomy

None of the above categories cover the kinds of HRI in Career Development I envisaged, except perhaps Category 9.  With this in mind I would be glad to learn of a more comprehensive and better thought out Taxonomy of Human Rights Issues.

Harold Beck

May 2009