ABSTRACT
Human rights theoretical virtues and consequence are seemingly selectively chosen, awarded and challenged legal, political or judicial arenas. The political approach points to the enormous gains in moral consciousness and the tangible gains in moral practice arising from the human rights movement as it has developed since the end of the Second World War. This chapter focuses on the existence conditions and underlying strengths of human rights. Married to the global human rights crisis is the alleged existential inadequacy of orthodox definitions of human rights as those rights that all persons have in virtue of their humanity. Sorting out these moral values and cognate moral duties associated with human rights is but one challenge faced by any attempt to explicate the idea of human rights. The chapter considers correlative duties and political functions. It discusses following two core themes: democratic core and enabling human rights.
