In our blog we are covering different important topics like human rights, justice, poverty, equality, politics and many others. But how are the human rights exactly defined?
To define human rights, we have to look at history and modern laws. They are regarded as subjective rights which are given to every human being. Moreover, they are universal, cannot be given away and cannot be reduced. The idea of human rights is narrowly connected with Humanism, the Enlightenment and with natural justice.
That human rights do exist, is accepted by almost all states in the world. That alleged universality is responsible for a strong basement when it comes to political debates and arguments. Being part of Constitutions and international contracts, the basic rights are as well enforceable rights.
Human Rights could also be understood as kind of a counterpart to civil rights. The most important international source for the former is the International Bill of Human Rights by the United Nations. In 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly at the Palais de Chaillot, Paris. It is said to be one of the most translated documents in the world.
The UDHR was formed after the Second World War, when the experiences of hunger, death, murder, racism, sadness in between many other were still close and in the mind of millions of people. Hence, the human rights were declard as the first global expression of rights to which all human beings are entitled.
One of the most famous quotes out of article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights reads as follows:
“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.”
Even more than 60 years after the declaration there are still many places in the world, where even this fundamental sentence is not put into reality. We always have to remind ourselves that we have to fight for human rights and that it is worth to fight for them, for us.
