Have Human Rights Always Been a Part of Human History?

Have human rights always been a part of human history?

Human rights are a set of rules which all countries across the world should abide by; this paper will discuss how human rights have progressed over time and prove that Human Rights have not always been a part of human history, by mainly focusing on the slave industry from the past to the present. As well as showing how Human Rights have evolved through the ages looking at laws created by certain nations and how those laws have influenced Human Rights. This paper will also look at a number of nations from around the globe to see how they deal with things in their society as well as looking at theories of rights, which determine how people live their lives.

Over the years there have been many definitions of what human rights are ‘Human rights are those fundamental freedoms and entitlements that each person possesses by virtue of nothing more than their status as human beings’ (Hoffman, D & Rowe, J 2006:1). History states that Human Rights first started in the Persian Empire and that they were created by Cyrus the great ‘we come upon the declaration of the first generally accepted charter of right nations by Cyrus the Great’ (Borbor, D. 2008:101). Along with this, history also says that Cyrus the Great eradicated slavery gave people the chance to choose their own religions and the right of freedom of expression. Cyrus the Great created the Cyrus Cylinder which was basically a set of laws that people in his empire needed to abide by. ‘There were three main premises in the decrees of the Cyrus Cylinder: the political formulization of racial, linguistic, and religious equality, slaves and all deported peoples were to be allowed to return to home; and all destroyed temples were to be restored’ (Ghasemi, S. 2012).

However one can’t say that this is classed as Human Rights, they were only laws that were formed in his empire not laws that had been created for everybody in the world. They say that Cyrus the...