Collective vs individual rights: what’s the difference and why does it matter?

For centuries people have understood that they need to uphold and protect each other’s individual dignity and this concept served as the foundation of human rights.

Regardless of their origin, culture, religion, or level of income, individuals tend to highly value their rights and when something affects those rights, people are prone to express their concerns, sometimes even in an aggressive manner.

What are human rights?

There is no single definition that is accepted worldwide because people’s understanding of human rights is constantly changing. However, it is possible to identify a number of common perceptions.

All people have the same basic legal rights, regardless of gender, skin colour, religion, or any other distinction, including the right to work and the right to study. These rights apply to all individuals without exception according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

Here are some of the commonly accepted human rights principles

🔹 Human rights are inalienable

No one has the power to limit another person’s rights, unless there are particular circumstances and according to due process. For instance, if an individual is convicted in court, his or her right to freedom may be limited.

🔹 Human rights are indivisible and interdependent

It is impossible to completely embrace one set of rights without the other. For instance, the practice of economic, social, and cultural rights is facilitated by advances in the protection of political and civil rights.

🔹 Human rights are equal and non-discriminatory

According to Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, every person has equal rights and freedoms from birth. What guarantees this equality is the freedom from discrimination outlined in Article 2.

Rights can be divided into individual and collective (also known as group) rights. Individual rights are those that apply to individuals, while collective rights apply to a group of individuals.

What are individual rights?

Individual rights are the essential liberties that every citizen must have access to in order to live a fair and independent life.

The idea of individual rights gained popularity during the Enlightenment era in the 17th and 18th centuries when liberal philosophers argued that everyone has unalienable rights that no other person, organization, or government should be able to infringe.

Examples of individual rights:

• Freedom of speech – everyone has the right to have an opinion and express it, without worrying about retaliation or censorship from the government.
• Freedom of religion – everyone is free to follow any religion they choose to or not practice any religion at all, without fear of retaliation or pressure.
• Right to privacy – a person’s space and personal data are safeguarded under this right, which protects these from being accessed or shared without permission.
• Right to a fair trial – when indicted or convicted, everyone has the right to a fair trial.
• Freedom of assembly – every person has the right to join others for peaceful goals in a public or private setting.

What are collective rights?

Rather than being held by a single person, collective rights are shared by a community. These rights have historically concerned indigenous peoples as well as other communities whose rights are jeopardized.

Collective rights, also called group rights, are universal, inseparable, and interconnected. They are rooted in the shared culture and traditions of Indigenous people and local communities, making them historical rights rather than property rights. This means, for instance, that ancestral wisdom is owned jointly and does not relate to one person.

Examples of collective rights:

• The right to preserve one’s culture, including the right to speak a native language and teach one’s children in it.
• The right to maintain cultural identities unique to ethnic minorities.
• The right to own land.
• The right of minorities to possess independent self-government.
• The right for a religious group to freely practice communal religious expression.

Group rights are distinct from the rights that individuals hold just by belonging to a group. For instance, a student’s right to access a university’s library is an individual’s right.

Individual vs collective rights

Groups made up of national minorities and immigrants are vying for the legal acknowledgment of their ethnocultural identities and traditions in various ways. However, collective rights are sometimes criticized since they can interfere with individual rights.

Some group rights are advocated as supplements to individual rights in the belief that they improve and extend traditional liberal concepts to address contemporary issues.

At the same time, those who oppose group rights typically believe that they can limit individual rights, endangering the fundamental liberal democratic concepts of liberty, justice, and equality.

Sociological analysis of various societies reveals that, under the guise of group unity, many organizations attempt to legally impose restrictions on the freedom of the individuals of that group.

Governments should therefore intervene to forbid such practices.

In a nutshell: group rights, also called collective rights, are the rights held by a group as a whole rather than by each of its individual members. Individual rights, on the other hand, are rights enjoyed by each individual. At the same time, collective rights face criticism since some experts say they can limit individual rights.