Abstract:
Scholars from different countries and legal schools pay attention to substantiating
the understanding of the fourth generation of human rights and
developing a classification of human rights belonging to this generation. At
the same time, differences in the national regulation of fourth-generation
human rights and the lack of their consistent recognition by subjects of international
law have led to the fact that none of the proposed concepts and
classifications has received universal recognition. The purpose of the article
is to identify the theoretical and applied problems which hinder the development
and general recognition of a unified understanding of the fourth
generation of human rights, and to design the solution proposals. Achievement
of the research purpose necessitated the use of various methods
of scientific knowledge, among which the most important are: dialectical
method; historical and legal method; comparative method; systemic and
structural method; method of analysis; method of synthesis; hermeneutical
method; and method of generalisation. The study briefly describes the main
stages of the genesis of international legal regulation of relations in the
field of human rights, the essence of the scientific classification of the three
generations of human rights, and the doctrinal approaches to understanding
the fourth generation of human rights. Based on the results of the analysis,
the author proposes to: reconsider the historical dating of the emergence
of human rights generations; expand the source base of scientific research,
based on which scholars substantiate their own, usually Eurocentric, understanding
of the fourth generation of human rights; intensify comprehensive
comparative studies with a view to distinguishing between human rights,
the emergence and implementation of which became possible in the late
twentieth – first quarter of the twenty-first century due to the development
of scientific and technological progress in the field of biology, medicine and
technology.
