The Origin of Human Rights

Article by Sarah Murphy-Young. Edited by Harriet Di Francesco. Additional Research by Ellie Veryard.

Events of the 20th Century scarred humanity. Bringing a whole generation of young men to their knees, World War I set the stage for the rise of Bolshevism and the Soviet Union while defeated Germans fell into the arms of a terrifying regime which oversaw the systematic slaughter of 6 million Jews. It was these most atrocious acts of repression and execution, revealed in the aftermath of World War II, that encouraged the UN General Assembly to adopt the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on the 10th December, 1948. Today, translated into 375 languages, the document seeks international consensus on the normative rights of all human beings and serves as a model for numerous international and domestic treaties and declarations.

Article 1.  

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.

Article 2. 

Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.

Although the foundation of the human rights movement finds itself in the Early Modern period, it must be noted that legal commitments to equality, freedom and tolerance can be traced back to Antiquity. Notable documents that addressed civilian rights in the Ancient period include the Code of Hammurabi (c. 1780 BC, Mesopotamia) which established rules concerning the rights of men, women, children and slaves, and the Cyrus Cylinder (c. 6 BC, Persian Empire) that not only protected the rights of all citizens to liberty, security and property but also banned slavery and allowed free religious practice. In Europe, the Magna Carta (c. 1215 AD) would become the earliest significant influence in the development of common law, the Bill of Rights and the United States Constitution while establishing its most enduring legacy of Habeas Corpus. While today, human rights are often associated with secular and liberal society, religious documents are often considered the precursors of their establishment. The Vedas, the Bible, the Qur’an and the Analects of Confucius are all early written sources that address the duties, the rights and responsibilities of men and such religious documents have laid a foundation on which the human rights vision has grown, especially in Christian Europe.

Article 3. 

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Article 19.

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression. During the 17th and 18th Century, reason was advocated as the primary source of authority. Enlightened philosophers, most notably John Locke, developed the concept that by reason of humanity alone, humans were given fundamental and inalienable rights. Locke maintained that individuals were governed by an over arching moral framework of God’s supreme command and from this divine and natural law all men, had the right to life, liberty and property.

The theory of human rights did not escape debate. While conservative political thinkers such as Edmund Burke condemned the doctrine in fear of social upheaval, others like Jeremy Bentham were concerned that effective legislation would be replaced by a declaration of desires; “hunger,” he wrote, “is not bread.” Nevertheless, inspired by the concept of natural rights, the subsequent revolutions in America and France during the 18th Century set the human rights movement in motion and while the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” would be famously coined in the American Declaration of Independence in 1776, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen in 1789 would establish the universality of rights, bound to humanity rather than citizenship.

It would be foolish to suggest however that the principles of human rights were resolutely upheld by revolutionaries. In France, the spirit of Liberté, Egalité, and Fraternité descended chaotically in a spiral of suspicion, violence and blood lust while the fight for the rights of man would shortly be stifled by nationalism incubated in the Napoleonic wars. America too, the self-appointed guardians of international human rights, continued to support slavery and their sustained removal campaign of the indigenous population, resulting in an estimated 100 million deaths in what historian David Stannard has called the American Holocaust.

Article 21.

Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives. The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government.

Article 23.

Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

The Industrial Revolution (c. 1750-1850) and the consequential shifts in power, society and economy brought into new debate the rights of individuals and the duty of the State to the people. The publication of the Sadler Report in 1833 ensured that the human rights abuses and appalling social conditions in the factories of Britain could no longer be ignored by the ruling classes and persuaded them to implement various reforms. During this period of economic, social and political development, serfdom was abolished in Russia, slavery was prohibited across Europe and the Americas, workers were granted higher wages, better working conditions, the right to strike, child labour restrictions and fewer hours while the campaign for women’s rights took shape, stirred by anti-slavery campaigns and suffocated by the “feminine ideal”. Although the term natural rights had fallen into disfavour, replaced by the concept of human rights, the philosophical expansion of the rights concept by individuals such as Thomas Paine, John Stuart Mill and Henry David Thoreau would go on to influence great figures of the 20th Century such as Emmeline Pankhurst, Leo Tolstoy, Jane Goodall, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. Human rights would now be invoked and claimed in the contexts of anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, anti-slavery, anti-apartheid, anti-racism, feminist and indigenous struggles around the world as well as become a foundation in which to build countless humanitarian organisations such as Amnesty International, the Human Rights Watch and FIDH.

Article 27.

Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.

Article 28.

Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

Although they seem to carry strong authority on the international stage today, you only have to pick up the nearest paper to read about the latest human rights violation. It is clear however that reactionary forces have not nullified the progress of human rights; the belief in the universal doctrine has developed in protest of tyranny, oppression and barbarism and will continue to be a uniting social reaction to atrocities committed against humanity. While the Human Rights doctrine is a product of European historical experience, it attempts to reflect and protect our common humanity across the globe and is the highest expression of collective human conscience.

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