IB MYP Individuals and Societies – Rights and social protest Study Guide

This study guide teaches rights and social protest for IB MYP Individuals and Societies, aligned to the International Baccalaureate Organization, Middle Years Programme Subject Brief – Individuals and societies, from 2014. It suits MYP years 4 and 5 (there is no SL/HL split in the MYP). “Rights and social protest” is one of the topics the brief lists for the individuals and societies on-screen examinations, which are available in history, geography and integrated humanities.

MYP has no prescribed content list: schools design their own units, so your teacher may use other movements. This page gives you accurate core knowledge and a method that works with any case study.

Use it with the revision notes and the practice questions. For the course overview, see the course hub and the printable checklist.

What this unit covers

Area	What you must be able to do	Level
Rights	Define human rights and civil rights; tell de jure from de facto rights	MYP years 4–5
The UDHR (1948)	Explain its origins, key articles, legal status and what followed it	MYP years 4–5
Protest movements	Give accurate, dated evidence from the US civil rights, anti-apartheid and women’s suffrage movements	MYP years 4–5
Methods of protest	Classify methods and explain why a movement chose them	MYP years 4–5
Effectiveness	Judge success against aims, in the short and long term, with evidence	MYP years 4–5

What rights are

Human rights are rights every person has because they are human. They are usually described as universal (for everyone), inalienable (they cannot be taken away, only unlawfully denied) and indivisible (no right is less important than another).

Civil rights are rights a state guarantees to its own citizens in law, such as equal treatment and the vote. Protest movements often demand these for a group the state has excluded.

Two families of rights are often separated:

• Civil and political rights: liberty, free speech, fair trial, voting.
• Economic, social and cultural rights: work, education, health.

A de jure right exists in law. A de facto right exists in practice. US law gave Black men the vote in 1870, but for decades many could not use it in the South. Many protests target that gap.

Older landmarks, such as the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789), protected only some people.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)

Why it was written

The Second World War and the Holocaust showed that a state could strip its own people of every right. The UN Charter (1945) committed members to promote human rights but did not list them. A UN commission chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt drafted a list.

Adoption

The UN General Assembly adopted the UDHR in Paris on 10 December 1948. The vote was 48 in favour, none against and 8 abstentions, out of 58 member states. The abstainers included the USSR, South Africa and Saudi Arabia.

Key articles

It has 30 articles. Article 1 says all human beings are “born free and equal in dignity and rights”.

Article	Right
2	All rights apply without distinction of race, colour, sex, language, religion, opinion or origin
3	Life, liberty and security of person
4 / 5	No slavery / no torture
7	Equality before the law
9	No arbitrary arrest, detention or exile
13	Freedom of movement within a country
19	Freedom of opinion and expression
20	Peaceful assembly and association
21	Take part in government; periodic, genuine elections with universal and equal suffrage
26	Education; elementary education free and compulsory

Articles 19, 20 and 21 protect speaking out, gathering and voting, so they matter most for protest.

Legal status and what followed

The UDHR is a General Assembly declaration, so it is not a legally binding treaty. Its force is moral: campaigners and governments quote it as a common standard. In 1966 the UN adopted two binding treaties, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Both came into force in 1976 for the states that ratified them. Together with the UDHR they form the International Bill of Human Rights.

Worked example: applying the UDHR to a case

Task: identify which UDHR articles South African apartheid laws breached.

1. Name the law and what it did. The Population Registration Act (1950) classified every person by race. The Group Areas Act (1950) decided where each group could live. Pass laws controlled where Black South Africans could travel and work.
2. Match each to an article. Racial classification breached Article 2 (non-discrimination). The Group Areas Act and pass laws breached Article 13 (freedom of movement). Denying the vote to the Black majority breached Article 21.
3. Add the legal point. South Africa abstained in 1948 and the UDHR was not binding, so critics used it as a moral standard, not as law.

Three protest movements

US civil rights movement

The 13th Amendment (1865) ended slavery, the 14th (1868) promised equal protection and the 15th (1870) banned denying the vote because of race. In practice, Southern “Jim Crow” laws enforced segregation, and the Supreme Court’s Plessy v. Ferguson ruling (1896) accepted “separate but equal”.

• Courts. The NAACP (founded 1909) won Brown v. Board of Education on 17 May 1954: segregated public schools were unconstitutional.
• Montgomery Bus Boycott. Rosa Parks was arrested on 1 December 1955 for refusing to give up her seat. Black residents boycotted the buses for 381 days, led by Martin Luther King Jr. It ended in December 1956 after the Supreme Court ruled bus segregation unconstitutional.
• Sit-ins. Four students began a sit-in at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro on 1 February 1960.
• Birmingham, 1963. Police used fire hoses and dogs on marchers, including children. The images shocked national opinion; President Kennedy announced a civil rights bill on television on 11 June 1963.
• March on Washington, 28 August 1963, where King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech.
• Laws. The Civil Rights Act (2 July 1964) banned segregation in public places and employment discrimination. After police attacked marchers at Selma on 7 March 1965, the Voting Rights Act followed on 6 August 1965.

Anti-apartheid movement in South Africa

The National Party won the 1948 election and built apartheid, a system of racial separation and white minority rule.

• Non-violent mass action. The ANC (founded 1912) led the Defiance Campaign of 1952. The Freedom Charter was adopted at Kliptown on 26 June 1955.
• Sharpeville, 21 March 1960: police killed 69 people protesting against the pass laws. The government banned the ANC and PAC.
• Armed struggle. The ANC formed Umkhonto we Sizwe in 1961, beginning with sabotage. Nelson Mandela was arrested in 1962 and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964.
• Soweto uprising, 16 June 1976: school students protested against Afrikaans being imposed as a language of teaching; police opened fire. Steve Biko died in police custody in 1977.
• International pressure. The UN Security Council imposed a mandatory arms embargo in 1977. Sports and cultural boycotts, consumer boycotts and the US Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act (1986) added economic and political pressure.
• End. President F. W. de Klerk lifted the ban on the ANC in February 1990 and Mandela was released on 11 February 1990. The first election open to all races took place on 27 April 1994 and Mandela became president.

Women’s suffrage in Britain

• Suffragists. The NUWSS, formed in 1897 and led by Millicent Fawcett, used petitions, meetings and lobbying.
• Suffragettes. Emmeline Pankhurst founded the WSPU in 1903 under the slogan “Deeds not words”. Militant tactics included window-smashing, arson and hunger strikes (from 1909). The government replied with force-feeding and the “Cat and Mouse” Act (1913). Emily Wilding Davison died after running onto the course at the Derby in June 1913.
• War. The WSPU suspended its campaign in August 1914; women’s war work changed attitudes.
• Result. The Representation of the People Act (1918) gave the vote to women over 30 who met a property qualification. The Equal Franchise Act (1928) gave women the vote on the same terms as men, at 21.

Methods of protest

Category	Methods	Example
Persuasion	Petitions, speeches, marches, publicity	March on Washington, 1963
Legal and political	Court cases, lobbying, voter registration	Brown v. Board, 1954
Non-cooperation	Boycotts, strikes, refusing unjust laws	Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955–56
Non-violent intervention	Sit-ins, occupations, freedom rides	Greensboro, 1960
Militant action against property	Window-smashing, arson	WSPU, 1912–14
Armed struggle	Sabotage, guerrilla war	Umkhonto we Sizwe, from 1961
International pressure	Sanctions, embargoes, sports boycotts	UN arms embargo on South Africa, 1977

The persuasion, non-cooperation and non-violent intervention rows follow the political scientist Gene Sharp, who in 1973 listed 198 methods of non-violent action under three headings: protest and persuasion, non-cooperation, and non-violent intervention. Civil disobedience means openly breaking an unjust law and accepting the penalty to show the law is unjust.

Judging effectiveness

Judge success against the movement’s own aims. Then ask four questions:

1. Aims achieved? Were laws changed (de jure)?
2. Real change? Did practice change (de facto)?
3. When? Short-term gains versus long-term change.
4. Why? Which factors mattered most: methods, leadership, unity, media coverage, economic pressure, the government’s response, international pressure, or events outside the movement (a war, the end of the Cold War)?

A harsh government response can backfire. Birmingham (1963), Selma (1965) and Sharpeville (1960) all drew wide condemnation, but in the USA this helped pass federal laws, while in South Africa the government banned the main movements.

Worked example: was the Montgomery Bus Boycott effective?

1. Aim: end segregated seating on Montgomery buses.
2. De jure: achieved. Bus segregation was ruled unconstitutional in 1956.
3. Why: economic pressure on the bus company, unity for 381 days, and a court case running alongside.
4. Limits: Southern schools and voting stayed segregated or restricted for years.
5. Judgement: highly effective for its local aim; longer term, it made King a national figure.

Worked example: reading rights data

Fictional data: in Norland, 480,000 adults from a minority group were eligible to vote. Before a voting rights law, 120,000 were registered. Five years later, 312,000 were registered.

Before: 120,000 ÷ 480,000 × 100 = 25%
After:  312,000 ÷ 480,000 × 100 = 65%
Change in rate:            65 − 25 = 40 percentage points
Increase in registrations: (312,000 − 120,000) ÷ 120,000 × 100 = 160%

Say “a rise of 40 percentage points”, not “a 40% rise”. Then add a limit: registering is not voting.

Concepts and global contexts

The topic fits the key concept change and the global contexts fairness and development and identities and relationships. Causality, a related concept the brief names, fits every “why did it succeed?” question.

How this topic can be examined

The brief sets out three on-screen examination tasks: Investigating (26 marks, criteria A and B), Communicating (18 marks, criteria A and C) and Thinking critically (36 marks, criteria A, C and D). Each criterion has eight achievement levels (1–8) in four bands. The brief’s sample questions, from history eAssessment, are about protest movements and sources. Your teacher will share the task-specific clarifications. See the source-evaluation exam preparation page, the criteria in practice guide and, for the UN, the warfare and peacekeeping study guide.

Common errors

• Calling the UDHR a treaty or “international law”. It is a declaration; the 1966 covenants are the binding treaties.
• Treating a new law as the end of the story: the 15th Amendment (1870) did not stop voter suppression.
• Mixing up suffragists (NUWSS, lawful) and suffragettes (WSPU, militant).
• Writing that all women gained the vote in 1918. It was women over 30 with a property qualification; equal terms came in 1928.
• Saying the anti-apartheid movement was entirely non-violent. The ANC turned to armed struggle in 1961.
• Judging success without stating the movement’s aims first.

Official syllabus

International Baccalaureate Organization, Middle Years Programme Subject Brief – Individuals and societies, from 2014. The brief lists “rights and social protest” among the topics explored in the individuals and societies on-screen examinations; the movements here are standard case studies, and your school may use others.