ABSTRACT
A human right is an entitlement to treatment that a person enjoys simply by virtue of being a human being. Human rights are universal, meaning that possession of such rights is not contingent on belonging to a particular state or culture. Although the concept can be traced back to the eighteenth-century Enlightenment – the ‘rights of man’ – it is only in the twentieth century that a human right became a major concept in political discourse. The widespread ratification by states of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was created in 1948, three years after the end of the Second World War, has changed world politics; although individuals are frequently denied their human rights, even by states purporting to respect them, the fact of the existence of human rights has shifted international politics from being based simply on nation-states’ interest to one based on the recognition that individuals have claims against their own state. But human rights are open to the criticism that they are the product of a particular time and place – post-eighteenth-century Europe, or the West – and their ‘imposition’ is a form of imperialism. They can also be criticised for elevating individualism above collectivism, and ‘negative’ rights (to be left alone) above ‘positive’ rights (to a particular level of resources).
