Right to property

The right to property, or the right to own property, is often classified as a human right for natural persons regarding their private property. The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution is credited as a significant precedent for the legal protection of individual property rights.
A right to property is specified in Article 17 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but it is not recognised in the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights or in the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The 1950 European Convention on Human Rights acknowledges a right for a natural or legal person to "peaceful enjoyment of his possessions", subject to the "general interest or to secure the payment of taxes."

Definition

Article 17 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights enshrines the right to property as follows:
The object of the right to property as it is usually understood nowadays consists of property already owned or possessed, or of property acquired or to be acquired by a person through lawful means. Not in opposition but in contrast to this, some proposals also defend a universal right to private property, in the sense of a right of every person to effectively receive a certain amount of property, grounded in a claim to Earth's natural resources or other theories of justice.
The right to property is one of the most controversial human rights, both in terms of its existence and interpretation. The controversy about the definition of the right meant that it was not included in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights or the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Controversy centres upon who is deemed to have property rights protected, the type of property which is protected and the reasons for which property can be restricted. In all human rights instruments, either implicit or express restrictions exist on the extent to which property is protected.

Africa

The African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights protects the right to property most explicitly in Article 14, stating:
Property rights are furthermore recognised in Article 13 of the ACHPR, which states that every citizen has the right to participate freely in the government of his country, the right to equal access to public services and "the right of access to public property and services in strict equality of all persons before the law". Article 21 of the ACHPR recognises the right of all peoples to freely dispose of their wealth and natural resources and that this right shall be exercised in the exclusive interest of the people, who may not be deprived of this right. Article 21 also provides that "in case of spoliation the dispossessed people shall have the right to the lawful recovery of its property as well as to adequate compensation".

Americas

When the text of the UDHR was negotiated, other states in the Americas argued that the right to property should be limited to the protection of private property necessary for subsistence. Their suggestion was opposed, but was enshrined in the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, which was negotiated at the same time and adopted one year before the UDHR in 1948. Article 23 of the declaration states:
The definition of the right to property is heavily influenced by Western concepts of property rights, but because property rights vary considerably in different legal systems it has not been possible to establish international standards on property rights. The regional human rights instruments of Europe, Africa and the Americas recognise the right to protection of property to varying degrees.
The American Convention on Human Rights recognises the right to protection of property, including the right to "just compensation". The ACHR also prohibits usury and other exploitation, which is unique amongst human rights instruments. Article 21 of the ACHR states:

Europe

After failed attempts to include the right to protection of property in the European Convention on Human Rights, European states enshrined the right to protection of property in Article 1 of Protocol I to the ECHR as the "right to peaceful enjoyment of possessions", where the right to protection of property is defined as such:
Therefore, European human rights law recognises the right to peaceful enjoyment of property, makes deprivation of possessions subject to certain conditions and recognises that states can balance the right to peaceful possession of property against the public interest. The European Court of Human Rights has interpreted "possessions" to include not only tangible property, but also economic interests, contractual agreements with economic value, compensation claims against the state and public law related claims such as pensions. The European Court of Human Rights has held that the right to property is not absolute and states have a wide degree of discretion to limit the rights. As such, the right to property is regarded as a more flexible right than other human rights. States' degree of discretion is defined in Handyside v. United Kingdom, heard by the European Court of Human Rights in 1976. Notable cases where the European Court of Human Rights has found the right to property having been violated include Sporrong and Lonnroth v. Sweden, heard in 1982, where Swedish law kept property under the threat of expropriation for an extended period of time. The highest economic compensation following a judgment of the Strasbourg Court on this matter was given in case Beyeler v. Italy.

India

In India property rights was one of the fundamental rights of citizens until 1978, and it became a legal right through the 44th Amendment to the Constitution in 1978. The amendment was introduced by the Morarji Desai government as part of land reform policies. In 2020, the Supreme Court of India has stated that, even though property rights are not part of a citizen's fundamental right, it should be considered as one of the human rights promised by the Constitution. The Supreme Court also ruled that the states cannot acquire individual land unless there is a clear legal framework.

International conventions

Property rights are also recognised in the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination which states in Article 5 that everyone has the right to equality before the law without distinction as to race, colour and national or ethnic origin, including the "right to own property alone as well as in association with others" and "the right to inherit". The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women recognises the property rights in Article 16, which establishes the same right for both spouses to ownership, acquisition, management, administration, enjoyment and disposition of property and Article 15, which establishes women's right to conclude contracts.
Property rights are also enshrined in the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families. These international human rights instruments for minorities do not establish a separate right to property, but prohibit discrimination in relation to property rights where such rights are guaranteed.

Relationship to other rights

The right to private property was a crucial demand in early quests for political freedom and equality and against feudal control of property. Property can serve as the basis for the entitlements that ensure the realisation of the right to an adequate standard of living and it was only property owners which were initially granted civil and political rights, such as the right to vote. Because not everybody is a property owner, the right to work was enshrined to allow everybody to attain an adequate standard of living. Today, discrimination on the basis of property ownership is commonly seen as a serious threat to the equal enjoyment of human rights by all and non-discrimination clauses in international human rights instruments frequently include property as a ground on the basis of which discrimination is prohibited. The protection of private property may come into conflict with economic, social and cultural rights and civil and political rights, such as the right to freedom of expression. To mitigate this, the right to property is commonly limited to protect the public interest. Many states also maintain systems of communal and collective ownership. Property rights have frequently been regarded as preventing the realisation of human rights for all, through for example slavery and the exploitation of others. Unequal distribution of wealth often follows line of sex, race and minorities, therefore property rights may appear to be part of the problem, rather than as an interest that merits protection. Property rights have been at the centre of recent human rights debates on land reform, the return of cultural artifacts by collectors and museums to indigenous peoples and the popular sovereignty of peoples over natural resources.

History

The Roman law defined property as "the right to use and abuse one's own within the limits of the law" — jus utendi et abutendi re suâ, guatenus juris ratio patitur. Second, salus populi suprema lex esto, or "the safety of the people shall be the supreme law," was stipulated as early as the Law of the Twelve Tables. The notion of private property and property rights was elaborated further in the Renaissance as international trade by merchants gave rise to mercantilist ideas. In 16th-century Europe, Lutheranism and the Protestant Reformation advanced property rights using biblical terminology. The Protestant work ethic and views on man's destiny came to underline social views in emerging capitalist economies in early modern Europe. The right to private property emerged as a radical demand for human rights vis-a-vis the state in 17th-century revolutionary Europe, but in the 18th and 19th centuries the right to property as a human right became subject of intense controversy.