Where do human rights come from? Are they something that exist only in international documents?

Go back to your list of 10 human rights.

How many of these are contained in the UDHR?

How many of them are also traditional values in the community or society where you live?

The chances are that all - or nearly all - of the rights that you listed are to be found in the UDHR and in treaties and standards that have been written and adopted since then.

Most of the rights you have listed are probably also to be found as widely held values in your society.

Here are some examples of commonly held values:

• guests should be made welcome in your home;
• the dignity of human beings should be respected;
• no one should go hungry;
• everyone should be able to live in a basic shelter;

• people should not be deprived of their freedom unless they are a threat to society;
• anyone accused of a crime should have the chance to defend themselves;
• people should not squander the resources of society that are the inheritance of future generations.

Common values in your society

Taking this list of values as an example, list some more common values that are found in your own society.

Of course, these values will be expressed in different ways in different societies. And many societies do a bad job of sticking to such values in practice.

But the point is that human societies have many common values that are far greater than the different cultures and social and political structures that separate us.

The values behind rights

In the box below are 7 rights from the UDHR and other treaties. For each of the rights click on one or more of the categories of values - the ones that you think best describe the aims behind each right. These are values that try to describe the principles behind the rights in the UHDR and other human rights treaties.

It is important to understand that the "correct" answers are simply the ones that the authors have chosen, as a way of prompting you to think about the links between rights and values. Do you agree with the answers that we have given?