HUMAN RIGHTS

Human Rights

Human Rights

Introduction

The rights to life and liberty, to freedom of expression and opinion, to participation in government and choice of employment, and to private property and general security in one's person—these are just some of the rights that people around the globe. These rights have come to recognize as human rights—those rights that all individuals have simply by virtue of their mere humanity; rights that we expect all societies to guarantee to their citizens irrespective of a person's race, religion, gender, sexuality, or ethnicity; rights that we should have no matter where we live or who we are. Understood as universal and inalienable, human rights have come to represent a common standard, a set of international norms against which we measure the actions of governments and practices of communities. They have come to function as the grounds on which we challenge policies and actions of states and the basis upon which we demand change or imagine a different, better future. With all that they do, with all that we expect from them, it is not surprising that human rights cherished all over the world.

Human rights are rights ascribed to human beings simply as human beings. While people may possess some rights only if they occupy a special position or role, such as citizen, doctor or promisee, the claim of human rights theory is that there are other rights that everyone possesses merely in virtue of being human. Historically, the idea of human rights associated closely with that of inherent rights, and both of these sorts of right have been conceived, in the first instance, as moral rights. However, since the United Nations promulgated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948, human rights have been elaborated and provided for in a host of international declarations and conventions and the internal law of many states, so that human rights now frequently have a legal or quasi-legal status (Waldron 2000, pp. 45-71). The usual idea of human rights has been very widely accepted, but there is disagreement over which rights are human rights, over how these rights should be justified, and over their absolute or defeasible status. The difficulty of combining the universality of human rights with respect for cultural difference is also a major preoccupation of both proponents and critics of human rights (Fuller 2009, pp.41-97).

Discussion and Analysis

Human Rights Deceleration

When the horrors and brutality of World War I were fully recognized, people throughout the world began equating the way governments treat the people they govern with the way they treat other nations and began seeing peace as a way to safeguard the rights of all peoples. The League of Nations was the first attempt at an inter-government worldwide organization that would ensure peaceful resolution of international conflicts, but the failure of the League to stop the aggression of the Axis powers (German, Italy, and Japan) throughout the 1930s dashed hopes for universal peace (Donnelly, 2007, pp. 21-67). Moreover, the League did not concern itself so much with the needs ...