HUMAN RIGHTS AND FREEDOM

Human Rights and Freedom



Human Rights and Freedom

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 have come to recognize as human rights—those rights that all individuals have simply by virtue of their very 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 the practices of communities. They have come to function as the grounds on which we challenge particular 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 are cherished the world over.

And yet this was not always the case, nor is it the case that the promise of human rights has been fulfilled by any means. Not only has the language of human rights arrived on the international scene only fairly recently with the adoption by the United Nations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, but also the unfortunate fact is that for many individuals and groups around the globe, the protection of human rights is virtually nonexistent. Whether the result of mistakes, good intentions gone bad, or greed and hatred, widespread human rights violations are reported on a daily basis. These include everything from limitations on speech and suffrage to unsafe working conditions; to discrimination on the basis of religion, gender, or sexual orientation; to lack of access to necessary medical treatment or police protection; and even to outright torture and genocide. And despite that there seems to be an international consensus that human rights should be protected, there is little consensus about how to make that happen.

Discussion

A state denies its citizens the freedom to protest an election; a government terrorizes a particular group of individuals because of its ethnicity; members of the general public harass and abuse gays and lesbians with impunity; businesses amass great fortunes by selling women and children into slavery and trafficking them across borders. For many of us, though certainly not all, these are clear examples of human rights abuses that demand a response from leadership, whether at the elite or the community level. But what that response should look like is something about which there may be considerable disagreement. This disagreement is likely to stem, in part, from deeper conceptual or philosophical disagreements about what human rights are, which are most important, and who is responsible for their enforcement.

The leadership challenge of human rights, in others, may appear to ...