Human rights: the story on HearLore

Human rights

The 12th of May 1215, King John of England signed the Magna Carta, a document that would eventually become the bedrock of modern human rights. This charter was not merely a political compromise between the king and his rebellious barons; it was the first time a sovereign explicitly committed to respecting certain legal rights for his people, establishing the principle that no one, not even the monarch, was above the law. While the original text focused heavily on feudal privileges and the rights of the barons, its legacy rippled through centuries, influencing the development of common law and later constitutional documents like the 1689 English Bill of Rights and the 1789 United States Constitution. The true forerunner of human rights discourse, however, was the concept of natural rights, which first appeared as part of the medieval natural law tradition. This tradition was heavily influenced by the writings of early Christian thinkers such as St Hilary of Poitiers, St Ambrose, and St Augustine, who examined the legitimacy of human laws and the boundaries of what laws and rights occur naturally based on wisdom and conscience. Augustine was among the earliest to argue that people are obligated to obey laws that are just, but not those that are unjust, laying the philosophical groundwork for resistance against tyranny. In the 13th century, the Kouroukan Fouga, the constitution of the Mali Empire in West Africa, emerged as one of the very first charters on human rights, including the right to life and the preservation of physical integrity, along with significant protections for women. This document, composed in the 13th century, demonstrates that the seeds of human rights were being sown globally, not just in Europe, long before the modern era. The Spanish scholastics of the 16th and 17th centuries, including Luis de Molina, Domingo de Soto, and Francisco Vitoria, further developed these ideas by defining law as a moral power over one's own, asserting that there are certain natural rights related to the body and the spirit. The Valladolid Debate of 1550 and 1551, a famous discussion in Castile about the just titles of the conquest and the nature of indigenous people, brought these ideas into the public eye, suggesting that measures were applied in which the germs of the idea of Human Rights were present. The jurist Vázquez de Menchaca, starting from an individualist philosophy, was decisive in the dissemination of the term, helping to spread the concept of natural rights across the Atlantic and into the heart of European legal thought.

The Enlightenment And The Birth Of Rights

The 17th century saw a radical shift in how humanity understood its own value, driven by philosophers who argued that rights were inherent to being human rather than granted by a ruler. John Locke, the English philosopher, discussed natural rights in his work, identifying them as being life, liberty, and estate, and argued that such fundamental rights could not be surrendered in the social contract. This thinking turned Hobbes' prescription around, saying that if the ruler went against natural law and failed to protect life, liberty, and property, people could justifiably overthrow the existing state and create a new one. The 18th century brought two major revolutions that would cement these ideas into the fabric of modern governance. In the United States, the Second Continental Congress unanimously ratified the Declaration of Independence on the 4th of July 1776, articulating certain human rights that would inspire future generations. In France, the National Assembly approved the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen on the 26th of August 1789, which similarly articulated fundamental freedoms. The Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776 encoded into law a number of fundamental civil rights and civil freedoms, serving as a precursor to the U.S. Bill of Rights. Philosophers such as Thomas Paine, John Stuart Mill, and Hegel expanded on the theme of universality during the 18th and 19th centuries. In 1831, William Lloyd Garrison wrote in a newspaper called The Liberator that he was trying to enlist his readers in the great cause of human rights, so the term human rights probably came into use sometime between Paine's The Rights of Man and Garrison's publication. In 1849, a contemporary, Henry David Thoreau, wrote about human rights in his treatise On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, which was later influential on human rights and civil rights thinkers. United States Supreme Court Justice David Davis, in his 1867 opinion for Ex Parte Milligan, wrote that by the protection of the law, human rights are secured, and to withdraw that protection is to leave them at the mercy of wicked rulers or the clamor of an excited people. These intellectual currents fueled movements that achieved profound social changes over the course of the 20th century, including labor unions bringing about laws granting workers the right to strike, establishing minimum work conditions, and forbidding or regulating child labour. The women's rights movement succeeded in gaining for many women the right to vote, while national liberation movements in many countries succeeded in driving out colonial powers, with Mahatma Gandhi's leadership of the Indian independence movement standing as one of the most influential examples. Movements by long-oppressed racial and religious minorities succeeded in many parts of the world, among them the civil rights movement, and more recent diverse identity politics movements, on behalf of women and minorities in the United States.

When was the Magna Carta signed by King John of England?

King John of England signed the Magna Carta on the 12th of May 1215. This document established the principle that no one, not even the monarch, was above the law.

Who drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948?

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was drafted by the Human Rights Commission with Eleanor Roosevelt as chair. Canadian law professor John Humphrey and French lawyer René Cassin were responsible for much of the cross-national research and the structure of the document respectively.

When did the United Nations adopt the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?

The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on the 10th of December 1948 in Paris. This document was the first international legal effort to limit the behavior of states and ensure they fulfilled their duties to their citizens.

What is the relationship between the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?

The United Nations adopted the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on the 16th of December 1966 to make the rights contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights binding on all states. These covenants came into force in 1976 when they were ratified by a sufficient number of countries.

When did the International Court of Justice declare a clean environment a human right?

The International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion in 2025 stating that a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is a human right. This ruling declared that failing to protect the planet from the impacts of climate change may be a violation of international law.

The Holocaust And The Universal Declaration

The 10th of December 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Paris, a document born from the ashes of World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust. This declaration was the first international legal effort to limit the behavior of states and make sure they did their duties to their citizens following the model of the rights-duty duality. The UDHR was framed by members of the Human Rights Commission, with Eleanor Roosevelt as chair, who began to discuss an International Bill of Rights in 1947. The members of the Commission did not immediately agree on the form of such a bill of rights, and whether, or how, it should be enforced. The Commission proceeded to frame the UDHR and accompanying treaties, but the UDHR quickly became the priority. Canadian law professor John Humphrey and French lawyer René Cassin were responsible for much of the cross-national research and the structure of the document respectively, where the articles of the declaration were interpretative of the general principle of the preamble. The document was structured by Cassin to include the basic principles of dignity, liberty, equality and brotherhood in the first two articles, followed successively by rights pertaining to individuals; rights of individuals in relation to each other and to groups; spiritual, public and political rights; and economic, social and cultural rights. The final three articles place, according to Cassin, rights in the context of limits, duties and the social and political order in which they are to be realized. Some of the UDHR was researched and written by a committee of international experts on human rights, including representatives from all continents and all major religions, and drawing on consultation with leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi. The inclusion of both civil and political rights and economic, social, and cultural rights was predicated on the assumption that basic human rights are indivisible and that the different types of rights listed are inextricably linked. Although this principle was not opposed by any member states at the time of adoption, the declaration was adopted unanimously, with the abstention of the Soviet bloc, apartheid South Africa, and Saudi Arabia. All major governments at the time of drafting the U.N. charter and the Universal declaration did their best to ensure, by all means known to domestic and international law, that these principles had only international application and carried no legal obligation on those governments to be implemented domestically. The onset of the Cold War soon after the UDHR was conceived brought to the fore divisions over the inclusion of both economic and social rights and civil and political rights. Capitalist states tended to place strong emphasis on civil and political rights, while socialist states placed much greater importance on economic and social rights. Because of the divisions over which rights to include and because some states declined to ratify any treaties including certain specific interpretations of human rights, the rights enshrined in the UDHR were split into two separate covenants, allowing states to adopt some rights and derogate others. Although this allowed the covenants to be created, it denied the proposed principle that all rights are linked, which was central to some interpretations of the UDHR. Despite being a non-binding resolution, the UDHR is now considered to be a central component of international customary law which may be invoked under appropriate circumstances by state judiciaries and other judiciaries.

The Covenants And The Courts

The 16th of December 1966, the United Nations adopted the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, making the rights contained in the UDHR binding on all states. These covenants came into force only in 1976, when they were ratified by a sufficient number of countries, though the United States only ratified the ICCPR in 1992. Numerous other treaties have been offered at the international level, known as human rights instruments, including the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted in 1948 and entering into force in 1951, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which entered into force in 1969. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women entered into force in 1981, followed by the United Nations Convention Against Torture in 1984, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989. The International Criminal Court, established by the Rome Statute, entered into force in 2002, with a mandate to bring to justice perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity that occurred after its creation. The ICC and other international courts exist to take action where the national legal system of a state is unable to try the case itself. If national law is able to safeguard human rights and punish those who breach human rights legislation, it has primary jurisdiction by complementarity. Only when all local remedies have been exhausted does international law take effect. The United Nations Human Rights Council, created in 2005, has a mandate to investigate alleged human rights violations. Forty-seven of the 193 UN member states sit on the council, elected by simple majority in a secret ballot of the United Nations General Assembly. Members serve a maximum of six years and may have their membership suspended for gross human rights abuses. The council is based in Geneva and meets three times a year, with additional meetings to respond to urgent situations. Independent experts, known as rapporteurs, are retained by the council to investigate alleged human rights abuses and to report to the council. The Human Rights Council may request that the Security Council refer cases to the International Criminal Court even if the issue being referred is outside the normal jurisdiction of the ICC. Regional human rights regimes have also emerged, such as the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, which is a quasi-judicial organ of the African Union tasked with promoting and protecting human rights and collective rights throughout the African continent. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, based in Washington, D.C., and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, based in San José, Costa Rica, form the inter-American system for the promotion and protection of human rights. The Council of Europe, founded in 1949, is responsible for both the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights, which bind the council's members to a code of human rights. In 2021, the United Nations Human Rights Council officially recognized having a clean, healthy and sustainable environment as a human right, and in April 2024, the European Court of Human Rights ruled, for the first time in history, that the Swiss government had violated human rights by not acting strongly enough to stop climate change. In 2025, the International Court of Justice has said in an advisory opinion that a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is a human right, and that failing to protect the planet from the impacts of climate change may be a violation of international law.

The Clash Of Values And Cultures

The 1993 Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action stated that the significance of national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds must be borne in mind, indicating that the specific understanding of human rights is subject to local nuances. Proponents of cultural relativism suggest that human rights are not all universal, and indeed conflict with some cultures and threaten their survival. Rights which are most often contested with relativistic arguments are the rights of women, such as female genital mutilation, which occurs in different cultures in Africa, Asia and South America. It is not mandated by any religion, but has become a tradition in many cultures. It is considered a violation of women's and girl's rights by much of the international community, and is outlawed in some countries. Universalism has been described by some as cultural, economic or political imperialism. In particular, the concept of human rights is often claimed to be fundamentally rooted in a politically liberal outlook which, although generally accepted in Europe, Japan or North America, is not necessarily taken as standard elsewhere. In 1981, the Iranian representative to the United Nations, Said Rajaie-Khorassani, articulated the position of his country regarding the UDHR by saying that the UDHR was a secular understanding of the Judeo-Christian tradition, which could not be implemented by Muslims without trespassing the Islamic law. The former Prime Ministers of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, and of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad both claimed in the 1990s that Asian values were significantly different from western values and included a sense of loyalty and foregoing personal freedoms for the sake of social stability and prosperity, and therefore authoritarian government is more appropriate in Asia than democracy. This view is countered by Mahathir's former deputy, and Singapore's opposition leader Chee Soon Juan also states that it is racist to assert that Asians do not want human rights. An appeal is often made to the fact that influential human rights thinkers, such as John Locke and John Stuart Mill, have all been Western and indeed that some were involved in the running of Empires themselves. Relativistic arguments tend to neglect the fact that modern human rights are new to all cultures, dating back no further than the UDHR in 1948. They also do not account for the fact that the UDHR was drafted by people from many different cultures and traditions, including a US Roman Catholic, a Chinese Confucian philosopher, a French Zionist and a representative from the Arab League, amongst others, and drew upon advice from thinkers such as Mahatma Gandhi. Michael Ignatieff has argued that cultural relativism is almost exclusively an argument used by those who wield power in cultures which commit human rights abuses, and that those whose human rights are compromised are the powerless. The difficulty in judging universalism versus relativism lies in who is claiming to represent a particular culture. Although the argument between universalism and relativism is far from complete, it is an academic discussion in that all international human rights instruments adhere to the principle that human rights are universally applicable. The 2005 World Summit reaffirmed the international community's adherence to this principle. Human rights that depend on an individualist orientation have been criticized as unsuited to communally orientated societies, which critics say makes individual human rights non-universal. Simone Weil argues for a focus on human obligations over individual human rights, advocating for rebuilding a Free France around a framework of obligations and needs and cautioning against a system built of rights. Weil felt that in our moral culture centered on individual rights, it's as though we constantly turn away from others' suffering because we lack the moral strength to confront its most extreme expressions. Weil maintained that all humans share universal obligations, though expressed differently in varying contexts, and that duty to the human being as such, that alone is eternal. Weil saw rights and obligations as interdependent: obligations belong to the self; rights exist only when others recognize their duties toward us. A person alone in the universe would have no rights, but still obligations. She emphasized that while rights are conditional, obligations are absolute and universal.

The Power Of Non State Actors

The 2003 report by Jean Ziegler, Special Rapporteur of the UN Commission on Human Rights on the right to food, highlighted the growing influence of multinational companies and their role in human rights abuses. Companies, NGOs, political parties, informal groups, and individuals are known as non-State actors. Non-State actors can also commit human rights abuses, but are not subject to human rights law other than International Humanitarian Law, which applies to individuals. Multinational companies play an increasingly large role in the world, and are responsible for a large number of human rights abuses. Although the legal and moral environment surrounding the actions of governments is reasonably well developed, that surrounding multinational companies is both controversial and ill-defined. Multinational companies often view their primary responsibility as being to their shareholders, not to those affected by their actions. Such companies are often larger than the economies of the states in which they operate, and can wield significant economic and political power. No international treaties exist to specifically cover the behavior of companies with regard to human rights, and national legislation is very variable. In August 2003, the Human Rights Commission's Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights produced draft Norms on the responsibilities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises with regard to human rights. These were considered by the Human Rights Commission in 2004, but have no binding status on corporations and are not monitored. The risk of human rights violations increases with the increase in financially vulnerable populations. Girls from poor families in non-industrialized economies are often viewed as a financial burden on the family and marriage of young girls is often driven in the hope that daughters will be fed and protected by wealthier families. Female genital mutilation and force-feeding of daughters is argued to be similarly driven in large part to increase their marriage prospects and thus their financial security by achieving certain idealized standards of beauty. In certain areas, girls requiring the experience of sexual initiation rites with men and passing sex training tests on girls are designed to make them more appealing as marriage prospects. Measures to help the economic status of vulnerable groups in order to reduce human rights violations include girls' education and guaranteed minimum incomes and conditional cash transfers, such as Bolsa familia which subsidize parents who keep children in school rather than contributing to family income, has successfully reduced child labor. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 10 aims to substantially reduce inequality by 2030 through the promotion of appropriate legislation. Human rights abuses are monitored by United Nations committees, national institutions and governments and by many independent non-governmental organizations, such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, World Organisation Against Torture, Freedom House, International Freedom of Expression Exchange and Anti-Slavery International. These organisations collect evidence and documentation of human rights abuses and apply pressure to promote human rights. Educating people on the concept of human rights has been argued as a strategy to prevent human rights abuses. The concept of universal jurisdiction is a controversial principle in international law whereby states claim criminal jurisdiction over persons whose alleged crimes were committed outside the boundaries of the prosecuting state, regardless of nationality, country of residence, or any other relation with the prosecuting country. The state backs its claim on the grounds that the crime committed is considered a crime against all, which any state is authorized to punish. In 1993, Belgium passed a law of universal jurisdiction to give its court's jurisdiction over crimes against humanity in other countries, and in 1998 Augusto Pinochet was arrested in London following an indictment by Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón under the universal jurisdiction principle. The principle is supported by Amnesty International and other human rights organisations as they believe certain crimes pose a threat to the international community as a whole and the community has a moral duty to act, but others, including Henry Kissinger, argue that state sovereignty is paramount, because breaches of rights committed in other countries are outside states' sovereign interest and because states could use the principle for political reasons.

The Future Of Rights And Justice

The 2025 advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice marked a turning point in the legal understanding of environmental rights, declaring that a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is a human right, and that failing to protect the planet from the impacts of climate change may be a violation of international law. This ruling followed the 2024 decision by the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled for the first time in history that the Swiss government had violated human rights by not acting strongly enough to stop climate change. These developments reflect a growing recognition that human rights are not static but evolve to meet new challenges, such as the existential threat posed by climate change. The concept of human rights has expanded to include third-generation solidarity rights, such as the right to peace and the right to a clean environment, which are the most debated and lack both legal and political recognition. The adherence to the principle of indivisibility by the international community was reaffirmed in 1995 and again at the 2005 World Summit in New York, yet the prioritization of rights for pragmatic reasons remains a widely accepted necessity. Human rights that depend on an individualist orientation have been criticized as unsuited to communally orientated societies, which critics say makes individual human rights non-universal. The debate continues over whether human rights are a Western concept that emanate from a European, Judeo-Christian, and/or Enlightenment heritage, or whether they are universal principles that can be enjoyed by all cultures. The 2005 World Summit reaffirmed the international community's adherence to the principle that human rights are universally applicable, despite the challenges posed by cultural relativism and the complexities of implementing rights in different contexts. The future of human rights lies in the ability of international institutions, non-governmental organizations, and national bodies to adapt to new challenges, such as climate change, the rise of multinational corporations, and the increasing interconnectedness of the global economy. The United Nations Human Rights Council, the International Criminal Court, and regional human rights regimes continue to play a crucial role in monitoring and enforcing human rights standards worldwide. The risk of human rights violations increases with the increase in financially vulnerable populations, and measures to help the economic status of vulnerable groups in order to reduce human rights violations include girls' education and guaranteed minimum incomes and conditional cash transfers. The concept of human rights remains a central focus in international relations and legal frameworks, supported by institutions such as the United Nations, various non-governmental organizations, and national bodies dedicated to monitoring and enforcing human rights standards worldwide. The debate over the universality of human rights versus cultural relativism continues, with arguments from both sides highlighting the complexities of implementing rights in different contexts. The future of human rights will depend on the ability of the international community to balance the need for universal standards with the respect for cultural diversity, and to ensure that rights are not just theoretical ideals but practical realities for all people.