Human rights are based on principles like dignity, fairness and respect. They protect people in all aspects of their lives — from the way they are treated by government and other public officials, to the way they work, to the places where they live, and even the relationships that they have.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), adopted in 1948, is a milestone in the development of human rights. It was drafted by representatives with different legal and cultural backgrounds from around the world, and it is widely recognized as the most important international document in the field of human rights.
It is one of the best-known and most widely used documents in the world. It is a powerful tool in the fight against discrimination and injustice and has helped to bring about changes in national law, policies and practices across the globe.
However, it is not enough to simply promote and enforce the UDHR. It is essential that the human rights movement continue to build broad political support. This is especially crucial if the human rights movement wishes to survive and prosper in the future, because only then can it ensure that its proposals will have widespread acceptance and support.
This means that the defenders of human rights must find ways to justify them in terms that appeal to people with a wide range of political views, from center-left to center-right. One approach that has been popular in recent decades is to ground human rights in human agency and autonomy. This is the view that human rights are intrinsically valuable and that it is wrong to deny them.
Another approach is to ground human rights in the responsibilities that people have as members of society. This is the view that human rights are a part of a fundamental responsibility to do the right thing. This view is not as powerful as the agency-based justification, but it can be appealing to people with a variety of political viewpoints.
Finally, some people try to justify human rights by arguing that they are a result of God’s commands. This view provides a metaphysical foundation for the concept of human rights, but it is not enough to guarantee that human rights will be available in the real world. It is far more important to secure their status by ensuring that they are enshrined in law at the national and international levels.
Deciding which norms should be included in official lists of human rights is a politically charged process, and many political movements would welcome the opportunity to see their main concerns categorized as human rights issues, since this will publicize and legitimize them at the international level. Nonetheless, it is clear that human rights are primarily a product of politics and not some innately valuable property of humanity. This is why the vast majority of human rights violations are the result of policy decisions made by governments and other institutions, not some inherent property of humanity.