Human rights are fundamentally about treating people with dignity and respect. This idea is powerful and largely non-controversial because it is recognised by all cultures, governments and religions. The idea is that humans have a right not to be violated or treated in a manner that undermines their dignity and this should extend to everyone, including criminals, heads of state, children, women, the homeless and even prisoners. The idea is not to protect these rights to the point of giving them a ‘free pass’ to do anything they want but to limit government power so that all individuals are free to live with certain minimum requirements for human dignity.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was a landmark document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948 that established for the first time that certain fundamental human rights are universal and inalienable. The UDHR was the product of an enormous amount of work by representatives with many different legal and cultural backgrounds from all parts of the world, making it a truly universal document.
It is also important to understand that while the notion of human rights is universal, it does not mean that any particular treaty or organisation has an authoritative list of what exactly those human rights are. Some people assume that because a right appears on the official lists of human rights that it therefore must be a true and authentic human right, (“If it’s in the book then that settles it”). This is dangerous thinking, and there are plenty of examples of false or misleading statements on official lists.
Rather, human rights are based on a process of consensus and agreement between states. The UDHR and subsequent international treaties were negotiated and agreed through a political process that had its ups and downs. As a result, there are still a number of issues that have not been resolved to everyone’s satisfaction but this does not detract from the fact that many human rights exist and that they are recognised as such by most countries in the world.
A final important thing to bear in mind is that while the idea of human rights are universal and inalienable they are not automatically enforceable by law in all countries. It is up to individual people, groups and organisations to monitor government compliance with human rights agreements and to speak out when they are breached.
Some of the most important issues in the history of human rights have been related to the question of how to get from the idea of god-given, natural rights to the specific set of rights found in contemporary human rights agreements and declarations. Attempts to argue that these rights are enshrined in the laws of nature or by divine decree may help at a metaphysical level but, in a very diverse world, they do not provide practical security.
Slavery, for example, is no longer tolerated in the modern world because it is widely seen as a violation of human rights. Other examples are female genital mutilation and capital punishment, both of which have been defended by some people in the name of culture but which are now widely condemned.