Much progress - even if it sometimes seems like a drop in the ocean. Think of the abolition of slavery, the enfranchisement of women, the countries that abolished the death penalty, the release of prisoners of conscience as a result of international pressure, the collapse of apartheid in South Africa, the cases brought before the European Court and the laws changed as a result. Think about the fact that the gradual development of a culture of...
Try to point out to others that your rights have been violated; demand that they be respected. Let the other party know that you know they have no right to treat you this way. Highlight relevant articles in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Human Rights Convention or other international instruments. If relevant laws exist in your own country, cite them as well. Let others know what happened: put it in the press, write to your...
Absolutely everyone. Criminals, heads of state, children, men, women, Africans, Americans, Europeans, refugees, stateless persons, the unemployed, workers, bankers, persons accused of terrorist acts, charity workers, teachers, ballet dancers, astronauts… Absolutely everyone. Criminals and heads of state are human beings too. The power of human rights is that they recognize everyone as equal in terms of possession of human dignity. Someone may...
They came about because human beings have a moral and spiritual essence in addition to the physical. Human rights are needed to protect and preserve everyone's humanity, to ensure that everyone has the life he or she deserves.
Human rights are what, according to moral norms, everyone living in the world is endowed with simply by virtue of being human. In seeking our rights, we tend to appeal to our own government from a moral point of view: this is not the way to do it, because it is an invasion of my morality and an affront to my personal dignity. No one, neither man nor government, can ever take away our human rights.
Even today there is no country in the world where all human rights are fully respected. In some countries violations may occur more frequently than in others, affecting a larger or smaller proportion of the population, but every violation, even a single one, is a problem that should not arise and should be dealt with. A person whose rights have been violated in a well-established democracy is not likely to feel any better about the fact that...
