Human rights are the principles that recognise everyone’s inherent dignity and worth. They are universal, inalienable and indivisible. No one earns them or can voluntarily give them up and no one can have them taken away from them. They are inherent in the person and cover civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights.
Human rights are a set of rules and laws that are agreed upon by the world community in a number of international treaties. These include negative rights (which prohibit certain activities such as torture) and positive rights (such as the right to life) that states are bound to uphold.
The idea of human rights developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, during a period of revolutions and new national identities. For example, the United States Declaration of Independence recognised that “all men are created equal… and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights”.
Governments have a responsibility to protect people’s human rights and provide them with services such as schools, healthcare and housing. However, they can’t do so without the help of people who are willing to stand up for their rights.
The United Nations was formed in 1948 as a global community to ensure that everyone had a common understanding of what human rights were and to create an international system to protect them. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was proclaimed at this time to provide the basis for a world built on freedom, justice and peace. The United Nations is the principal multilateral forum for defining and promoting human rights. It also has the power to investigate and prosecute those who commit serious violations of human rights.