Throughout history, many cultures have believed that human beings are born free and equal in dignity and worth. They have also believed that the dignity and rights of every person are to be protected by their governments and all people everywhere. These beliefs formed the basis of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), adopted by the United Nations in 1948. The UDHR is a set of 30 articles describing basic human rights that are indivisible, interdependent and interrelated. It asserts that each right contributes to the fulfilment of another and the achievement of human dignity.
The UDHR and its international treaties and agreements are the first global legal instruments to protect human rights, and their adoption was a direct result of atrocities committed during World War II. Since then, the world has come a long way in its pursuit of human rights, and there is now a global network of bodies that monitors and enforces the UDHR and other international agreements and laws.
Despite progress, human rights violations persist in the world today. People die at the hands of armed conflict, they suffer from the effects of climate change, their health is compromised by malnutrition and pollution, they are subject to torture and other ill treatment in prisons and in detention centres, their freedom of expression is curtailed, and their voices are silenced and ignored in the face of oppressive political or religious regimes.
These violations are all too often caused by governments that are unwilling or unable to respect the UDHR and the rights of their people. In other cases, they are the result of unbridled corporate greed and the insatiable appetite for profits that drive some businesses to violate fundamental principles of fairness and social responsibility.
The origins of the idea of human rights can be traced back to the early modern era and the writings of John Locke and others, who argued that humans have innate, or natural, rights that are independent of any enactment or recognition by their government. This idea was later reformulated as the rights of man, and then as the universal rights of humanity.
As the notion of human rights gained acceptance, it was found that they apply to all people – irrespective of state, geography or culture. This belief, known as cultural relativism, has led some to argue that certain human rights should be interpreted according to the customs and values of particular countries or societies.
Amnesty believes that there are objective, rational ways of reaching agreement on the content, normativity and roles of human rights in the world today. This approach to the debate is described by philosopher John Rawls as ‘a political conception’ of human rights. This means that we can understand what human rights are and what they are meant to achieve by looking at the main role they play in some political sphere, and in his book The Law of Peoples he suggests that this is mainly in relation to international relations.