A Brief Essay on Human Rights

“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”

—Article 1 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)

On December 10^th, 1948 The United Nations General Assembly adopted Universal Declaration of Human Rights at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris. The UDHR consists of 30 Articles covering the basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled. Examples of rights and freedoms which have come to be commonly thought of as human rights include civil and political rights, such as the right to life and liberty, freedom of expression, and equality before the law; and economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to participate in culture, the right to be treated with respect and dignity, the right to food, the right to work, and the right to education.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights has acted as the leading modern codification of commonly accepted rights. However, this Bill of Rights does not represent international law and all signee countries adhere to it only on a voluntary basis. Indeed internationally, there has been many debates and disagreements over which rights are human rights, and about the precise nature, content, justification and appropriate legal status of those rights. One of the biggest questions has been over at what point is a human deemed to even be human for these rights to apply? Some countries have even criticized the Universal Declaration for its perceived failure to take into the account the cultural and religious context of different countries.

That aside, what is the necessity of having an internationally accepted doctrine of human rights? The necessity is that without doing so, all humanity would be condemned to a future of persistent barbarity where insecurity would be the norm. History has shown that societies in which the rights of the individual have been ignored have all been doomed to eventual entropy. The definition of what these rights are have of course changed over time from the Cyrus Cylinder of the ancient Persians, the Natural Laws of the Romans, the Magna Carta, the Natural Rights of the French and finally the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. What this shows is that people have long understood that there is value in being human and it is this value that needs to be protected.

In conclusion there is a distinct need to identify an internationally accepted covenant that would legally bind states to protect the dignity and sanctity of the life of the common man. We need to identify the prerequisites for a "universal" minimal standard of justice and tolerance that would maintain this dignity and would be considered the internationally accepted moral norms owed by and to the individual by the mere virtue of their humanity and of course at what point does it apply. These prerequisites can exist as the shared norms of actual human moralities, as justified moral norms or moral rights supported by strong reasons, as legal rights at a national level, or as a legal right within international law.

“I'm a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!”

Peter Finch as Howard Beale in Network (1976)