Communist Review - In Ho Chi Minh's thought, human rights are not only individual inherent rights and sacred values, but also the cultural values of a national community. President Ho Chi Minh's great contribution in developing the theory of human rights and the international human rights law was to combine the two subjects of rights (human rights as an individual and human rights as a nation) into a single concept of human rights. Along with the reality of the Vietnamese people's revolutionary struggle, the above two legal concepts have been developed into basic national rights, including the right to existence (the right to life), independence, sovereignty, unity, and territorial integrity.

The 1945 Declaration of Independence - timeless value regarding human rights and the right of nations to self-determination

The transformation of the concept of human rights into fundamental national rights done by President Ho Chi Minh was briefly expressed in the Declaration of Independence in 1945 giving birth to the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam, now the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam, marking a remarkable development of the theory of human rights as well as that of international law on human rights, when for the first time in history the concept of the right to life, the right to freedom of all nations had been extended from the right to life, the right to freedom of people. President Ho Chi Minh started his Declaration of Independence with obvious facts, widely accepted by the international community: “All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” ⁽¹⁾. He, at the same time, made a subtle and profound affirmation: “Those immortal words are in the 1776 American Declaration of Independence. Broadly speaking, it means: All the peoples of the world are born equal; Every nation has the right to life, the right to happiness and the right to liberty”. He continued to quote the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of the French revolution in 1789: "All men are born and remain free and equal in rights". From the two famous declarations above, President Ho Chi Minh came to a conclusion: "Those are the undeniable truths".

By developing human rights with individual characters to human rights with national characters, President Ho Chi Minh raised the issue of natural human rights to a new height, in the spirit of the scientific worldview of dialectical materialism about human history and society, truthfully reflecting the history and reality of existence and development of the Vietnamese nation as well as of the enslaved and oppressed nations around the world. The transformation of the subject of the rights to life, freedom, and happiness pursuit from individual into nation serves as a leap forward in theory, especially at times when the colonialists and imperialists deliberately degraded, trampled on and took away a nation’s dignity to honor that of the exploiters. Therefore, with the affirmation of the right to life of a nation, President Ho Chi Minh produced a precise conception of the dialectical relationship between individual freedom and community freedom, between human emancipation and social emancipation. In such unification, President Ho Chi Minh placed special emphasis on the role of liberating people individually. He noted that in order to liberate all social forces and to develop society, it is necessary first to completely liberate all individuals, paving the way for the promotion of people’s potentials. And only then will human rights be realized.

The Declaration of Independence ended with a strong and eloquent argument, as a death appeal for the protection of the inherent, sacred and supreme freedom of each person and of the Vietnamese people: “Viet Nam has the right to enjoy freedom and independence, and in fact has become a free and independent country. The entire Vietnamese nation is determined to use all its spirit and strength, life and wealth to safeguard those rights”⁽²⁾. That immortal oath shows the burning desire for freedom and the unyielding spirit of the Vietnamese people, of which President Ho Chi Minh is representative. The idea of ​​freedom and democracy of the Declaration of Independence became a constitutional principle. The fundamental individual rights are closely related to the independence and freedom of a nation, and are constantly expanded in concept and connotation through constitutions, especially the 1992 Constitution and the 2013 Constitution, with the remarkable development of human rights institutions. The construction of a socialist rule of law state of the people, by the people, for the people and the execution of the socialist democracy, etc. also reflect the realization and development of President Ho Chi Minh’s great ideas on human rights.

For President Ho Chi Minh, human rights and freedom are the first and foremost noble values of mankind regardless of races, colors, territories, etc. ... This was clearly expressed in his “Letter to the French in Indochina”: “Dear French people, You love your France and want it to be independent. You love your people and want them to be free. This patriotism glorifies you because it is the noblest ideal of mankind... What you consider to be an ideal must also be our ideal” ⁽³⁾. Thus, for Ho Chi Minh, human rights are a human value, common to each person and nation, and a confirmation of sacred, inherent and inviolable values. The profound human value of human rights is not granted or taken away by any supernatural force, but is produced in the history of human formation, struggle and development.

Ho Chi Minh's thought on human rights highlights the upholding and dialectical inheritance between traditional values and modern values, between national values ​​and mankind values. For President Ho Chi Minh, the "right to security and resistance to oppression" is the national right to self-determination without being interfered in internal affairs. In other words, the sacred and evident national rights are again affirmed. Thus, when integrating the concept of “human rights” into the right of nations to self-determination as an integral and inseparable part, President Ho Chi Minh developed and raised it to a new height in terms of quality.

Human rights mentioned by President Ho Chi Minh are not the creation of the creator in the eyes of Western thinkers who were deeply influenced by theism, but the return of the original essence of human rights that belongs to each individual, each community, each nation and mankind. Such essence is summarized and molded from various fundamental values, including dignity, equality, non-discrimination, freedom and independence. Thanks to those values, it is required for people to be treated equally, to be recognized, and to respect individual autonomy and integrity in relation with other individual and with society. As regards a single nation, it is first of all mirrored via the development of the community that includes individuals and the generalization and synthesis of individuals with their inherent values. According to such logic, the characters of each individual's dignity, freedom, autonomy, self-determination (independence) is also the characters of each nation. Therefore, the claim of freedom for each individual is the claim of liberation, freedom and independence for the nation.

The development of international theory and law on human rights manifested in Ho Chi Minh's thought and the 1945 Declaration of Independence

Ho Chi Minh's thought on human rights in general and the right of nations to self-determination in particular has made great contributions, both in theory and practice, to the development and realization of human rights.

In theory, Ho Chi Minh's views on human rights which were molded during his journey to find a way to save the country and expressed in the 1945 Declaration of Independence is, on the one hand, the crystallization of Vietnamese people’s dignity and values ​​throughout history and the inheritance of human values on the other hand. This is a dialectical combination between traditional values and modern values, between the nation and the times, thereby eloquently affirming the basic human rights in association with the sacred national rights: Independence, freedom, unity, sovereignty, territorial integrity... By "developing", President Ho Chi Minh laid a solid foundation for the development of human rights theory. He raised the traditional ideals of the 18^th – 19^th centuries to the same level as those of the new era: the era of national liberation, in which oppressed people break the shackles of colonialism and exploitation to regain the right to life, independence, freedom, democracy and development. It is also the era in which people are deeply aware that the key issue of human rights is national independence associated with socialism and human liberation, and respect the decisiveness and inseparability of the national right to self-determination, independence and freedom from human rights. Such pioneering thought has become a guideline for contemporary theories on human rights: Individual rights are associated with community rights and collective rights; independence, freedom and development are basic human rights; human rights can never be higher and separated from national sovereignty.

Ho Chi Minh's thought on human rights not only creates a favourable condition for the construction and realization of Vietnamese constitutional and legal documents, but also serves as one of the foundations of modern international law in establishing the concept of "fundamental national rights". Since the mid-twentieth century, numerous Asian and African countries have acknowledged President Ho Chi Minh's great contribution to the establishment of a new international legal institution that protects the freedom and equality of all nations and peoples in the world, especially the right to escape from the domination of colonialism and imperialism. They also recognized Ho Chi Minh’s theoretical contributions to the right of nations to self-determination (especially the right to freely decide their own political institutions and to free economic, social, cultural development) and the rights of the vulnerable (women, children, the elderly, the poor...). Highly evaluating the significance and influence of the thought on human rights in the Declaration of Independence in 1945, at the ceremony awarding the honorable Doctor of Laws to President Ho Chi Minh in 1959, the President of Bandung University of Technology (Indonesia) affirmed: "It is a new law highlighting the inviolable freedom and independence of the oppressed peoples"(4).

In practice, at the present, human rights protection, one of the world’s topics of interest, is always executed in association with other great goals of mankind. Human rights, despite being naturally endowed to people, are not always enjoyed by all people, all cultures and all nations. On the contrary, to win those rights, people have to go through arduous struggles and make tragic sacrifices in dealing with natural and social forces.

Human rights are an international political issue strongly influenced by profound class and national interests. In international legal-political relations, human rights are refracted through the prism of the "double standard" of rights (which is being seen as a form of "New Cultural Imperialism") which superpowers have been imposed on developing countries. Human rights remain a key content in "peaceful evolution" and "humanitarian intervention" as well as the fight against "terrorism" ignited by some major powers through their planning of diplomacy, global security, peace and development policies.

Those policies have ignored and trampled on the international law (which establishes the fundamental principle of respecting the national independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and self-determination right in the international community) by interfering in the internal affairs of sovereign states. Therefore, more than ever, Ho Chi Minh's thought on human rights is guiding the perception and actions of our Party and State in struggling, refuting false and hostile claims about human rights as well as in caring, protecting and promoting the respect and realization of people’s basic rights and freedom as affirmed in the Party's documents. It has been proven in practice that a nation without sovereignty has no freedom and vice versa, a nation that uses its power to dominate, enslave, impose and trample on another nation cannot be a representative of true freedom. The ignorance, denial or depriving of the sacred values ​​of the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that every citizen deserves is contrary to his great thought.

Human rights in association with the right of nations to self-determination, with national independence and with socialism

Human rights closely associated with the right of nations to self-determination, with national independence and with socialism has always been the right choice, the development path not only for a number of nations - peoples but for the whole mankind, the underlying truth for the oppressed, enslaved, peace-loving nations worldwide.

Creatively applying Marxism-Leninism to the practice of the Vietnamese revolution, President Ho Chi Minh made an important contribution to developing the Marxist theory in particular, the international theory and legal system on human rights and the right of nations to self-determination in general. The socialist-led struggle for universal suffrage, social justice, and basic rights and freedom of workers, especially of the working class and other disadvantaged groups played an integral part in building a new type of state - the world's first worker-peasant state in Soviet Union in 1917 and the Democratic Republic State in Viet Nam in 1945. Great achievements on human rights in socialist countries have been incorporated into the international legal system, reflected in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and two basic international conventions on human rights: International Covenant on Civil - Political Rights and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966). Uncoincidentally, the drafting committee of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including Rene Cassin (a French law professor and legislator) and Elenor Roosevelt - widow of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, acknowledged the indebtedness to socialist thinkers, ideals, and movements worldwide as well as the invaluable contributions of real socialism towards the formation and development of universal human rights today⁽⁵⁾. Progressive ideas of class liberation, human liberation and the liberation of disadvantaged social groups of the communists have reached the non-Marxists, non-socialist national liberation movements and trends across the globe. Equality and non-discrimination are considered fundamental principles, the core of the modern international human rights law, to which real socialism and the communists made remarkable contributions. It was the communists and socialist countries who inherited and developed the legacy of the Renaissance and Enlightenment social revolutions.

The contributions of President Ho Chi Minh and other prominent communists, such as C. Marx, Ph. Engels, V.I. Lenin involve spreading the exceptional vitality of the Marxist ideology about man and the liberation of man, classes, nations and humanity. These, at the same time, allow the theoretical and practical development of socialism in general and the development of human rights theory and the international human rights law in particular. With the "development" from individual human rights to the right of nations to self-determination highlighted in the immortal 1945 Declaration of Independence, Ho Chi Minh's thought has continued to supplement and deepen the Marxist-Leninist ideology on human rights and human liberation in the following main points: 1- The materialist and historical approach to human rights - which is not possible among bourgeois and royalist scholars of the feudal period, who considered human rights to arise from purely natural factors or to be deified; 2- Fight for universal suffrage, economic equality and other basic social rights. The bourgeois scholars of this period only emphasized civil - political rights, political equality. Meanwhile, the communists demanded substantive equality for all working classes; 3- The right of the nation to self-determination. Realistic socialism has shown the close unity between the basic rights and freedom of individuals with national independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Realistic socialism has brought true rights to everyone, especially the working class and the working people. The socio-economic and cultural rights that communist and socialist countries fought for and asserted from the end of the nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth century were a great achievement that changed the international human rights law. It is the materialist and historical approach to human rights that brings vitality to human rights on a global scale. Socialism has shown that man's progress towards true freedom, equality, and democracy must be measured by his progress towards ensuring freedom, economic equality, welfare standards and social security for everyone, especially working people.

Realistic socialism, with the guiding ideology of such previous Marxists as C. Marx, Ph. Engels, V.I. Lenin, and later Ho Chi Minh, strongly emphasized that political emancipation and economic emancipation are two inherent and inseparable attributes of all social revolutions and that human rights cannot be separated from national independence and socialism. Socialism is first of all political emancipation in order to establish real economic emancipation. Therefore, in nearly two decades of debate and struggle (from 1948 to 1966) since the birth of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, socialist countries integrated socio-economic and cultural rights into the international human rights law. The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has made it legally binding on all states and governments, which have the obligation and legal responsibility to ensure and realize these basic human rights. These include the right to work, the right to education, healthcare and medical treatment, the right to unemployment insurance, retirement, the right to housing, the right to clean water, the right to entertainment and leisure, the right to enjoy and create cultural values...

Ho Chi Minh's thought on human rights was expressed consistently throughout his revolutionary activities via various quotations: "An enslaved nation does not have free men" and "There is no true independent country without people enjoying freedom and happiness". It has always been his ideals to gain national liberation, to bring freedom and happiness to people who have enough to eat, have enough to wear and can enjoy education... The Declaration of Independence is a profound crystallization of Ho Chi Minh's thought on human rights, which is highly appreciated by the international community not only for its profound humanity, great moral and political value for colonized nations and working people all over the world, but also for its strict and creative scientific-legal nature. His thought has provided a reliable methodology for national liberation, human liberation, realization of basic human rights and freedom for all. His thought has been and will pave the way for the cause of human liberation, national liberation and mankind liberation, contributing to realizing the aspiration for the rapid and sustainable development of the country, striving for "Rich people - strong nation - equitable, democratic and civilized society ".

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* This study was funded by the National Foundation for Science and Technology Development (NAFOSTED) under Project code 505.01 - 2018.03

(1) Ho Chi Minh: Complete Volume, Truth National Political Publishing House, Hanoi, 2011, p. 4.

(2), (3) Ho Chi Minh: Complete volume, t. 4, p. 3, 75

(4) Song Thanh: "Declaration of Independence in 1945 - New Act affirms the inalienable right to freedom and independence of all nations", printed in the book: Ministry of Justice - Institute of Legal Science: Declaration of Independence in 1945 of President Ho Chi Minh - Values ​​and meanings of the times, National Politics Publishing House, Hanoi, 1996, p. 69

(5) See Micheline Ishay: “Socialist Contributions to Human Rights: A Forgotten Legacy”, International Journal of Human Rights, 2011, Vol. 9, No. 2, p. 225 - 245

This article was published in the Communist Review No. 973 (November 2021)