So, what is a 'human right'?

Let's begin by getting your thoughts on it.

What is a human right?

Very quickly list the first 10 human rights you can think of.

Our lists are probably very different, but it is likely that there are some rights that would be common to most of us.

These might include:

• the right to life;
• the right not to be tortured;
• the right to food;
• the right not to be deprived of your freedom;

• the right to your own religion and beliefs;
• the right to say what you think;
• the right not to be discriminated against.

Many of our lists probably focused more on political freedoms than on economic or social rights.

For example, how many of us listed the right to health, education or employment, the right to a clean environment or the right to earn a living?

Click on the icon bellow and you will see a list of the rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Print this list and put it in your workfile. You will want to refer to it again as you do this course.

listofrights.pdf

No one claims that this contains every right that anyone might think of - but it is still a pretty good start. There is no country in the world that has succeeded in implementing all these rights.

Later we shall consider whether this is a complete list of human rights or whether there might be more rights that we want to add.

But for the moment, let us think about what makes a human right.

The phrase 'human rights' obviously has two parts.

The first is about the fact that rights belong to people because they are human. All human beings qualify to enjoy these rights by being born. They cannot be taken away because of someone's social status, nationality, ethnicity, skin colour or sex. These rights might be violated for any number of reasons, but they still exist and, in theory at least, they can be enforced.

The second part of 'human rights' is that these are rights. A right is something more than just a good intention. The right not to be tortured, for example, doesn't just mean that it would be a nice thing if torture didn't exist. It means that torture is strictly prohibited.

Rights may be violated for any number of reasons, but they still exist and, in theory at least, they can be enforced.

In the chapter on Monitoring, enforcing and protecting rights, we will introduce some of the ways in which rights can be enforced.