Human rights are fundamental freedoms that everyone has by virtue of being a human being. They include the right to life, liberty and security of person. They also include the right to equality, dignity and respect. Human rights are universal, indivisible and inalienable. These fundamental freedoms cannot be taken away voluntarily and are protected by the state through legal guarantees. They are the foundation for peace, prosperity and development.
The idea of human rights emerged in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a response to revolutions, wars and emerging national identities. For example, the American Declaration of Independence (1776) drew upon the ideas of ancient Greece and Rome. So did the Greek dramatist Sophocles’ play Antigone, where the title character defied King Creon’s order not to bury her brother because she believed it went against the laws of nature.
This concept was formalised in 1948 when the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). It was the first globally agreed document to recognise that humans are equal, regardless of sex, religion, political belief or social status. It was drafted by representatives of countries from all regions and their varied religious, political and cultural contexts. This was a milestone in human rights history because it gave the world a common framework for understanding and talking about these issues.
However, human rights are still widely violated. Women, children and minorities continue to be marginalised; freedom of the press is restricted in many places; and dissenters are silenced, too often permanently. The human rights situation has become worse in some countries since the UDHR was written, and even some of the world’s established democracies have been criticised for not prioritising their own citizens’ civil liberties and other fundamental freedoms.
Several international treaties have been signed and ratified to guarantee human rights. But a significant number of countries remain uncommitted to these principles. This reflects a trend towards more transactional diplomacy in which countries seek military alliances with regimes that have poor human rights records, secure trade agreements with governments that do not comply with international law, and engage in military interventions without clear human rights objectives.
People who are most likely to be affected by human rights violations are people of particular races or ethnicities, homeless people, children and individuals with low social or economic status. They are often at risk of having their quality of life rights – which also encompasses the right to a decent standard of living – violated.
These groups are often deprived of their freedoms by discrimination based on race, gender, sex, disability, age, religion or political opinion. They are also at risk of having their human rights violated by the use of violence against civilians as a tactic of war. In these situations, the defenders of human rights need to fight hard for their cause. They must not allow themselves to be distracted by pursuing purely pragmatic policy objectives. If they do, their efforts may be in vain.