Human rights
are moral principles or norms that describe certain standards of human behavior,
and are regularly protected as legal rights in national and international law. They
are commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights "to which a
person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being," and
which are "inherent in all human beings" regardless of their nation,
location, language, religion, ethnic origin or any other status. They are
applicable everywhere and at every time in the sense of being universal, and
they are egalitarian in the sense of being the same for everyone.
They require empathy and the rule of law and impose an obligation on persons to
respect the human rights of others.
They should not be taken away except as a result of due process based on
specific circumstances, and require freedom from unlawful imprisonment,
torture, and execution.
The doctrine of human rights has been
highly influential within international law, global and regional institutions.
Actions by states and non-governmental organizations form a basis of public
policy worldwide. The idea of human rights
suggests that "if the public discourse of peacetime global society can be
said to have a common moral language, it is that of human rights." The
strong claims made by the doctrine of human rights continue to provoke
considerable skepticism and debates about the content, nature and
justifications of human rights to this day. The precise meaning of the term right is controversial and is the
subject of continued philosophical debate; while there is consensus that human
rights encompasses a wide variety of rights
such as the right to a fair trial, protection against enslavement, prohibition
of genocide, free speech,
or a right to education, there is disagreement about which of these particular
rights should be included within the general framework of human rights; some
thinkers suggest that human rights should be a minimum requirement to avoid the
worst-case abuses, while others see it as a higher standard.
Many of the basic ideas that animated
the human rights movement developed in the aftermath of the Second World War
and the atrocities of The Holocaust, culminating in the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
in Paris by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948. Ancient peoples did
not have the same modern-day conception of universal human rights.
The true forerunner of human rights discourse was the concept of natural rights
which appeared as part of the medieval natural law tradition that became
prominent during the Enlightenment with such philosophers as John Locke, Francis
Hutcheson, and Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui, and which featured prominently in the
political discourse of the American Revolution and the French Revolution.
From this foundation, the modern human rights arguments emerged over the latter
half of the twentieth century,
possibly as a reaction to slavery, torture, genocide, and war crimes, as a
realization of inherent human vulnerability and as being a precondition for the
possibility of a just society.
“Whereas
recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of
all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace
in the world.”
—1st
sentence of the Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
“All human
beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”
—Article
1 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)
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