Human Rights

Concepts and Evolution of Human Rights

Yubaraj Sangroula

Definition of Human Rights

Introduction

To define or give a precise singular meaning to human rights is a difficult task, if not impossible. Reasons behind it are two fold. Firstly, human rights are intrinsically and inalienably related with human life; they are necessary for freedom and the maintenance of a reasonable quality life. It is, therefore, not only undesirable but also difficult to reduce them into a 'concept'.[1] Human rights are directly associated with tangible or factual conditions of human life and as such are indispensably connected with condition of advantages and disadvantages. Deprivation of human rights results in disadvantageous condition rendering human life subjected to injustice. Human rights are thus objective phenomena rather than perceptions. Secondly, quite different from empirically testable concepts as described above, human rights are taken as values intertwined with natural rights, and as such they are not perceivable as tangible objects. In such obscure conditions, they are perceivable as values[2] such as humanity, liberty, equality, equity, justice, morality etc.

In concrete and objective forms, human are defined as fundamental, inalienable and absolute claims, powers, privileges and immunities that inhere in persons for they being born as human beings. Rights in broader sense[3] comprise human being’s claims, power, privileges and immunities. Some of these rights are alienable and inalienable. Inalienable rights can neither be taken away not given away. Those rights of human being which are inalienable are generally defined as “human rights”. But they are also called human rights because they belong to ‘all people’ irrespective of their racial and social origin, religious faith, political ideology, sexual or color differences. Since the legitimacy of such rights is not outweighed by other considerations, they are also called ‘absolute rights.[4]

In generic...