Ethical Engineering: Definitions, Theories and Techniques - Ethical Engineering for International Development and Environmental Sustainability - page 29

It has been criticised as being insuffi ciently critical. In addition the results of
reasoning by analogy are considered indeterminate, particularly in cultures with
several different value systems. This is only a problem if the approaches used are
expected to give a unique solution rather than to highlight issues and help in structuring
the problem. There is probably also a role for the case approach in testing solutions
reached by other more analytical approaches.

2.3.1.2 Rights Ethics

Rights ethics considers actions to be wrong if they violate fundamental moral rights.
There are a number of different types of rights including the following:

1. Moral rights, which includes all rights that are held to exist prior to or indepen-
dently of legal or institutional rules.
2. Legal and institutional rights, due to national (or international) legislation and
institutional regulations.
3. Human rights: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the
United Nations General Assembly in 1948.

Moral rights include:

1. Conventional rights due to established customs and expectations.
2. Ideal rights, i.e. rights that should be legal, institutional or conventional rights.
3. Conscientious rights.
4. Exercise rights, i.e. moral justifi cations for the exercise of another type of rights.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights has 30 articles covering a wide
range of rights, including the following: (not the full list and the numbers do not
correspond to the article numbers) (1) life, liberty, to be equal in dignity and rights;
(2) freedom from slavery, torture and arbitrary arrest; (3) recognition as a person in
law, equality before the law and equal protection from the law; (4) the right to a
nationality, to marry and fi nd a family and to work with free choice of employment;
and (5) the right to join a trade union and freedom of thought, conscience, religion,
opinion and expression. These rights are independent of 'race, colour, sex, language,
religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other
status'. Due to the early date, disability, gender identity and sexual orientation are
not listed explicitly, though they could possibly be considered to be included under
'other status', and the language used is male centric. Groups such as Amnesty
International and War Resisters International have asked for the right not to kill to
be included. Some steps have been taken, but this is currently only stated in less
important United Nations documents. An amended version was adopted by the
Council of Europe in 1971. It has since then been further amended and the most
recent version ( http://conventions.coe.int/treaty/EN/Treaties/html/005.htm ) entered
into force in November 1998. It has also become part of national legislation, for
instance, as the Human Rights Act 1998 in the UK.