Human Rights for the Twenty-First Century

In this article, I explore the way that traditionally dominant conceptions of human rights have been rendered inadequate in the 21st century through the example of contemporary threats to the freedom of thought arising from the Information Revolution. The sequence of the article is: an initial section provides background on freedom of thought as one of the most fundamental but overlooked of human rights, and reflects on the myriad ways in which it is imperiled by processes enabled or amplified by the current Age of Information. I then draw on this example to demonstrate why it is vital to move forward from traditional (predominantly vertical and negative) approaches to human rights and adopt modern approaches which are suited to the profile of threats to human rights in the twenty-first century. In this regard, I argue first for the horizontal effect of human rights, and second for a positive dimension to the protection of essential human freedoms.