Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable
fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she
or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and
egalitarian. These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in
local, regional, national, and international law. The doctrine of human rights
in international practice, within international law, global and regional
institutions, in the policies of states and in the activities of non-governmental
organizations, has been a cornerstone of public policy around the world.
The idea of human rights states, "If the public
discourse of peacetime global society can be said to have a common moral
language, it is that of human rights." Despite this, the strong claims
made by the doctrine of human rights continue to provoke considerable
skepticism and debates about the content, nature and justifications of human
rights to this day. Indeed, the question of what is meant by a
"right" is itself controversial and the subject of continued
philosophical debate.
Many of the basic ideas that animated the human rights
movement developed in the aftermath of the Second World War and the atrocities
of The Holocaust, culminating in the adoption of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights in Paris by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948. The
ancient world did not possess the concept of universal human rights. The true
forerunner of human rights discourse was the concept of natural rights which
appeared as part of the medieval Natural law tradition that became prominent
during the Enlightenment with such philosophers as John Locke, Francis
Hutcheson, and Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui, and featured prominently in the
political discourse of the American Revolution and the French Revolution.
