The idea behind human rights is that every person, regardless of their location or circumstances in life, deserves dignity. It’s a concept that allows people to speak up when they feel they are being treated unfairly or when they see something wrong with their society. Human rights also empowers them to be a part of changing things.
A human rights violation occurs when a state or a company violates a right that someone holds. The most common rights include the right to life, liberty and security of person. These rights are protected by provincial, territorial and federal laws. In some cases, these laws can be suspended or restricted under particular circumstances. For example, if you commit a crime that can be punished by the law, your right to freedom is temporarily suspended until the court decides whether or not to punish you for the crime.
People can also have their rights violated when a government fails to protect them from another group within society, such as when police fail to intervene during lynchings in the United States. Human rights violations can happen by both individuals and groups, but they can only be stopped if everyone stands up for their rights.
In order to prevent human rights abuses, the international community has created a series of international treaties and agreements to protect our basic freedoms. These include the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and its two Optional Protocols and the International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
These documents allow people to bring forward their concerns about a government’s human rights record to the international community. These treaties have been ratified by many countries around the world, so they are legally binding.
The UDHR and the other international treaties and agreements have been made to ensure that all people are treated equally. They prohibit discrimination on the basis of race or ethnicity, colour, sex, gender, language, sexual orientation, religion or other opinion, national or social origin, property, disability, age or birth.
There are also rules for when military intervention is necessary. It must be done with the right intention, which means that there are reasonable grounds that non-military options have been exhausted and it must be a last resort. It should also be proportional, which means that the military action should be limited to the minimum force required to achieve the humanitarian goal.
In order to stand up for your human rights, you can try some of these tips: Write to your parliamentary representative and head of state, or contact local NGOs that are active in human rights activism. Explain why you think they are violating your rights and ask for their help to get those rights restored. You can also read about human rights violations in the news, watch documentaries on YouTube and read books about them. Educating yourself about your rights can help you to feel more confident when confronting those who have abused you or seeing injustice in your society.