On The History And New Developments Of The Theories On The Subjects Of Human Rights

After the Second World War, the Third World Countries fought against imperialism, colonialism and hegemony, and continued to fight for national rights, racial rights. The rights of national survival, racial development as the main content gradually evolved into ’collective human rights’. Nowadays ’collective human rights’ become a popular conceptual slogan, which largely reflects that the Third World Countries are being influenced by the narrow-minded nationalism and totalitarianism and cannot make a proper understanding of human rights and democracy. This result is bound to bring erosion and retrogression to the theories on human rights, which gradually become perfect with the arduous efforts of difficult movements of human rights for centuries.Based on this, the author seeks to make a more comprehensive discussion on the theories of the subjects of human rights. In this article, the author summarizes the three processes of the range extension of the subjects of human rights by analyzing the theoretical evolution of the subjects of human rights. The author draws a conclusion that natural persons are the only subjects of human rights. It expresses dissenting voices to the affirmation of ’corporative human rights’ and ’collective human rights’. At the same time, there are some special persons should be given special protection, for they lack the ability to exert their rights and can not fully enjoy their human rights.In the first part, the author summarizes the three processes of the range extension of the subjects of human rights. They are classical theories on the subjects of human rights, universal theories on the subjects of human rights, modern theories on the subjects of human rights. In these three processes universal natural persons as the only subjects of human rights experienced a process of ’negation-affirmation-negation’. We should adhere to the correct content of this process and rethink the deviation in the development of theories on the subjects of human rights in modern society.In the second part, the author believes that the subjects of human rights, from original meanings and mainstream spirits of human rights, should only be limited to individuals. Corporations and collectivities should not become the subjects of human rights. There is a conceptual problem and they won’t become the subjects of human rights unless the concept of human rights is re-defined. Instead of attempting to seek developments of the country by trying to put the "collective human rights" into the Constitution, it is better to rethink the current political and economic systems as well as protection mechanisms of human rights, and make progress with positive reform.In the third part, the author makes a more detailed classification of the special subjects of human rights and makes an elaborate discussion separately. Special protection to the special persons is the proper meaning of the modern universal protection mechanism of human rights.