ABSTRACT
The right to resist plays an enigmatic role in the history of human rights in general, and in the French Revolution in particular. Although it is an integral part of the first wave of human rights declarations – US Declaration of Independence (1776), the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (1789), and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (1793) – it completely disappears in later rights declarations. It is deliberately not mentioned in the 1795 Declaration of the Rights and Duties of the Man and the Citizen, and the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights defines resistance (or rebellion) against oppression in purely negative terms; that is, resistance not as a right, but rather as a mechanical effect of a loss of rights: ‘it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law’ (Preamble).
