A human right is a basic freedom that everybody should be entitled to enjoy. It means that no one should be treated unfairly – for example, because of their race or ethnic background, age, gender, disability, sexuality or religion. It also includes freedom of expression, protection against enslavement and access to education. These rights are not just for rich countries, but for everyone on the planet.
They cannot be taken away, and they are for everyone, including children. However, not everyone is able to enjoy them all the time. Some people are at greater risk of having their human rights violated than others. According to the Pew Research Center, these groups include racial minorities, the poor and the elderly. These groups are at a higher risk because they are less likely to have access to legal representation and may be subject to biased or ineffective laws and procedures.
In 1948, after the horrors of World War II, representatives from all countries came together to create a document that would outline and protect every single person’s basic rights. This became the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). It lists 30 rights, which everybody on this planet should have the chance to enjoy. The UDHR is still the basis for all international human rights law, seven decades on.
It was the first time that a global agreement marked out and defended the rights of all individuals, regardless of their country, culture or religious beliefs. It was the beginning of a process that has led to more than 70 human rights treaties – all containing references to the UDHR in their preambles.
The UDHR was created by an extraordinary coalition of states that included the USA, Lebanon and China. This diversity allowed the drafters to benefit from a wide range of perspectives and cultures. It is widely recognized as having inspired, and paved the way for, more than seventy human rights treaties that are applied on a permanent basis at global and regional levels today.
Despite their many differences, the major world powers at the time were united in their tacit recognition that, for them to remain legitimate in the eyes of the public, they had to be seen as protecting human rights. Moreover, they recognised that, for their own populations to be able to exercise effective resistance to tyranny and oppression, they had to be viewed as respecting those rights.
The belief that people are born with God-given natural rights is a longstanding one, dating back thousands of years. But it was John Locke that developed the theory that these “natural” rights should entitle people to certain legal protections from government interference. Today, this is a very widely held view. It is why human rights enjoy support from every culture, civilised government and major religion. They are fundamental to human dignity, and to be denied them degrades the human spirit. This is why harmful traditional practices cannot be justified on the grounds of tradition or culture. Changing them requires educational programmes and efforts that engage with families and communities, not repression or condemnation.