STANDARDS: GUIDELINES FOR THE WORLD’S POLICE OFFICERS

Police agencies throughout the world need to be concerned about the viola-tion of human rights by their police officers. The police in all countries are accused of violating the human rights of the citizens they serve. As members of the United Nations, the governments of the world must enforce the human rights standards established by the United Nations and agreed on by most member nations of this world body. This article reviews the definition of human rights and standards pertaining to police officers that are known as international human rights instruments. The methods suggested by the United Nations to implement human rights, along with measures to monitor human rights violations and sanctions for violation of human rights by police officers, are covered in the discussion. To put it simply, human rights are rights that all humans have solely because they are human. Human rights are universal rights held by all humans irre-spective of their rights as individuals, citizens, members of families, em-ployees, or as a member of an organization. The rights of humans have a moral and political connotation to them when applied to the concept of hu-man rights (Donnelly, 1998, p. 18). The conventional meaning of human rights was adopted by the United Nations in 1948. Human rights are often equated with individual rights, which specifically means civil and political rights. Chandra Muzaffar (1999, p. 25) claimed that human rights with indi-vidual civil and political rights are a product of the European Enlightenmen