Universal Rights
Why is it so hard to identify rights that are truly truly universal?
It is possible that there is no such thing as rights that are Universal.
Rights usually have a cultural context. Philosophers have thought, spoken and written about human rights for thousands of years, but it is only in comparative recent years that these rights have been codified. Since the Second World War the major document embodying aspirations on human rights is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The murder of millions of civilians by the Germans was the obvious motivation for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However the Declaration went much further than expressing a right to life, liberty and property, as set out, for instance, by the seventeenth century philosopher, John Locke. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights sets out 30 articles containing human rights. This was a much more ambitious attempt at codifying rights than Locke who confined himself to life liberty and property.
Locke, for his inalienable rights, relied on two factors, the existence of god and a concept of a social contract. He relied on god to bestow what he termed natural rights and he relied on the concept of a social contract to explain why people obeyed a sovereign. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is not based on the rights being bestowed by god, but it says the rights are inalienable. The document does not explain why the rights are inalienable but it seems, the same as Locke, the authors presumed the rights are bestowed at birth. Article 1 seems to confirm this presumption.
Although Locke used the concept of a social contract to incorporate his three rights into the local law, the United Nations can claim no such contract. The United Nations as a collective is composed of separate sovereign states and apart from treaty obligations the United Nations can’t impose its concept of human rights on member nations. Even if human rights don’t exist outside their own legal
It is possible that there is no such thing as rights that are Universal.
Rights usually have a cultural context. Philosophers have thought, spoken and written about human rights for thousands of years, but it is only in comparative recent years that these rights have been codified. Since the Second World War the major document embodying aspirations on human rights is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The murder of millions of civilians by the Germans was the obvious motivation for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However the Declaration went much further than expressing a right to life, liberty and property, as set out, for instance, by the seventeenth century philosopher, John Locke. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights sets out 30 articles containing human rights. This was a much more ambitious attempt at codifying rights than Locke who confined himself to life liberty and property.
Locke, for his inalienable rights, relied on two factors, the existence of god and a concept of a social contract. He relied on god to bestow what he termed natural rights and he relied on the concept of a social contract to explain why people obeyed a sovereign. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is not based on the rights being bestowed by god, but it says the rights are inalienable. The document does not explain why the rights are inalienable but it seems, the same as Locke, the authors presumed the rights are bestowed at birth. Article 1 seems to confirm this presumption.
Although Locke used the concept of a social contract to incorporate his three rights into the local law, the United Nations can claim no such contract. The United Nations as a collective is composed of separate sovereign states and apart from treaty obligations the United Nations can’t impose its concept of human rights on member nations. Even if human rights don’t exist outside their own legal