Have Human Rights Changed the World?

Have human rights changed the world?

UN & Peace and Security

Tulga.E

Human rights are not a young concept to the world. Since the very beginning of the human civilization, there have been human rights all along. Their usage, understandings, and acceptance throughout the world, however, have been rapidly increasing in the last 200 years. What are the human rights? Though there is no exact definition for them, the basic understanding of human rights is that, they are entitlements that every person in the world possesses. They don’t differ based on people’s ranks and genders, and they are basic freedom that all people should have and in that concept it indicates that every person’s rights are equal among others.

But in their deep and root meanings, one can say that the human rights are meant for humans to satisfy their basic needs because they basically first emerged out of human needs and capabilities. In other words, human rights are rights that every man and woman living in any part of the world should be entitled with.

In some studies of human rights, it is indicated that the human rights are of two types. Rights which are essential for dignified and decent human existence, and rights which are essential for adequate development of human personality. In the first type of human rights, it has the list of rights of basic human life’s needs, such as right to food, shelter, and health, etc. And the second type of human rights include the right to freedom, right to religion, and freedom of speech and opinion, etc.

The human rights concepts were very weak before the early millennia, there have been countless of wars, mass killings, abductions and trafficking of people, unjust prison sentences, tortures, murders, and extreme cases of inequality between genders, and slavery.

Since 1200s, nevertheless, the understandings and acceptances of basic human rights such as right to live, right to liberty, and right to property have been developing steadily. From...