Human Rights

THE IDEA AND DEFINITION of human rights achieved universal characteristics after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948 by the United Nations (UN). Since then, the concept of human rights has become one of the most debated issues in both political and scientific arenas. To start, we apply the broader definition of the concept expressing all things belonging to human beings. Thus, the concept of human rights in its modern notion, are rights necessary for the survival and existence of human beings.

Since states on both the left and right have been guilty of suppression of particular human rights, conservatives have publicized the violation of various human rights within socialist regimes as a form of criticism of those regimes; while liberals have pointed to the violation of different types of human rights within capitalist countries and in some authoritarian regimes.

In its general terms, there exist two broad categories of human rights: negative rights determined through individual control and positive rights entitled by political and social structures that impose on others a restraint from action. The socially, economically, politically, and culturally diversified nature of modern society causes the definition of human rights to go beyond theories of natural rights, which are based on freedom defined negatively as the absence of constraint. Thus, human rights, overall, expand the concept of rights, including positive rights as well as negative ones determined by individual choice, such as the right to shelter, food, education, and medical care.

In this respect, there are four main sub-categories of human rights: civil rights, political rights, social rights, and cultural rights. It is clear in the discussions on human rights that all these rights are defined at the level of the individual. Besides that, in recent decades, there has been a strong emphasis on rights of collectives such as rights of women, rights of workers, rights of minorities, and so on, but the group rights are also justified as belonging to individuals.