Human rights

These rights are considered inherent and inalienable, meaning they belong to every individual simply by virtue of being human, regardless of characteristics like nationality, ethnicity, religion, or socio-economic status.

This document outlined a comprehensive framework of rights that countries are encouraged to protect, setting a global standard for human dignity, freedom, and justice.

[1] From this foundation, the modern human rights arguments emerged over the latter half of the 20th century,[7] possibly as a reaction to slavery, torture, genocide, and war crimes.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.Philosophers such as Thomas Paine, John Stuart Mill, and Hegel expanded on the theme of universality during the 18th and 19th centuries.

The League's goals included disarmament, preventing war through collective security, settling disputes between countries through negotiation, diplomacy and improving global welfare.

Established as an agency of the League of Nations, and now part of United Nations, the International Labour Organization also had a mandate to promote and safeguard certain of the rights later included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR): the primary goal of the ILO today is to promote opportunities for women and men to obtain decent and productive work, in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity.The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a non-binding declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948,[18] partly in response to the events of World War II.

The declaration was the first international legal effort to limit the behavior of states and make sure they did their duties to their citizens following the model of the rights-duty duality.

[19] Canadian law professor John Humphrey and French lawyer René Cassin were responsible for much of the cross-national research and the structure of the document respectively, where the articles of the declaration were interpretative of the general principle of the preamble.

The final three articles place, according to Cassin, rights in the context of limits, duties and the social and political order in which they are to be realized.

Inducement consists of the use of incentive systems, including the threat of sanctions, to deter violations and promote adherence to human rights standards.

Domestic contestation and engagement refers to the notion that external actors can impact a state's behavior by participating in its internal political and social processes.

[38] Female genital mutilation and force-feeding of daughters is argued to be similarly driven in large part to increase their marriage prospects and thus their financial security by achieving certain idealized standards of beauty.

[40] Measures to help the economic status of vulnerable groups in order to reduce human rights violations include girls' education and guaranteed minimum incomes and conditional cash transfers, such as Bolsa familia which subsidize parents who keep children in school rather than contributing to family income, has successfully reduced child labor.

[42] Many examples of legal instruments at the international, regional and national level described below are designed to enforce laws securing human rights.

[44] 47 of the 193 UN member states sit on the council, elected by simple majority in a secret ballot of the United Nations General Assembly.

[57] Established in 2001, the AU's purpose is to help secure Africa's democracy, human rights, and a sustainable economy, especially by bringing an end to intra-African conflict and creating an effective common market.

The commission has three broad areas of responsibility:[59] In pursuit of these goals, the commission is mandated to "collect documents, undertake studies and researches on African problems in the field of human and peoples, rights, organise seminars, symposia and conferences, disseminate information, encourage national and local institutions concerned with human and peoples' rights and, should the case arise, give its views or make recommendations to governments" (Charter, Art.

Over the course of the 1990s, with the end of the Cold War, the return to democracy in Latin America, and the thrust toward globalization, the OAS made major efforts to reinvent itself to fit the new context.

[66] The IACHR is a permanent body which meets in regular and special sessions several times a year to examine allegations of human rights violations in the hemisphere.

These approaches include the notion that individuals in a society accept rules from legitimate authority in exchange for security and economic advantage (as in John Rawls) – a social contract.

In the 17th century, Thomas Hobbes founded a contractualist theory of legal positivism on what all men could agree upon: what they sought (happiness) was subject to contention, but a broad consensus could form around what they feared (violent death at the hands of another).

He wrote that "even the will of an omnipotent being cannot change or abrogate" natural law, which "would maintain its objective validity even if we should assume the impossible, that there is no God or that he does not care for human affairs."

Locke turned Hobbes' prescription around, saying that if the ruler went against natural law and failed to protect "life, liberty, and property," people could justifiably overthrow the existing state and create a new one.

[88][89] Interest theories highlight the duty to respect the rights of other individuals on grounds of self-interest: Human rights law, applied to a State's own citizens serves the interest of states, by, for example, minimizing the risk of violent resistance and protest and by keeping the level of dissatisfaction with the government manageableThe biological theory considers the comparative reproductive advantage of human social behavior based on empathy and altruism in the context of natural selection.

Similarly, without livelihoods and a working society, the public cannot assert or make use of civil or political rights (known as the full belly thesis).

The international community must treat human rights globally in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing, and with the same emphasis.This statement was again endorsed at the 2005 World Summit in New York (paragraph 121).

In particular, the concept of human rights is often claimed to be fundamentally rooted in a politically liberal outlook which, although generally accepted in Europe, Japan or North America, is not necessarily taken as standard elsewhere.

This view is countered by Mahathir's former deputy: To say that freedom is Western or unAsian is to offend our traditions as well as our forefathers, who gave their lives in the struggle against tyranny and injustices.Singapore's opposition leader Chee Soon Juan also states that it is racist to assert that Asians do not want human rights.

They also do not account for the fact that the UDHR was drafted by people from many different cultures and traditions, including a US Roman Catholic, a Chinese Confucian philosopher, a French Zionist and a representative from the Arab League, amongst others, and drew upon advice from thinkers such as Mahatma Gandhi.

No international treaties exist to specifically cover the behavior of companies with regard to human rights, and national legislation is very variable.