The concept of Human Rights offers many possibilities for holding discourse. What are rights in their totality? Are they simply human ideas or do they originate from nature? Where do the rights of man begin and end, and do rights extend beyond the species of Homo sapiens? Who can limit our rights and can it be accomplished against our wills? Alternatively, is any idea of a right a pacifier for humanity? Is it a sugarcoated fiction told to placate humanity within its own social strictures? I intend to review and answer all these ponderous questions to the best of my ability, entering literary dialogue from many noted historical philosophers to give the reader the best possible vignette of the issue.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) sets out a list of over two dozen specific human rights that countries should respect and protect. These specific rights can be divided into six or more families: security rights that protect people against crimes such as murder, massacre, torture, and rape; due process rights that protect against abuses of the legal system such as imprisonment without trial, secret trials, and excessive punishments; liberty rights that protect freedoms in areas such as belief, expression, association, assembly, and movement; political rights that protect the liberty to participate in politics through actions such as communicating, assembling, protesting, voting, and serving in public office; equality rights that guarantee equal citizenship, equality before the law, and nondiscrimination; and social (or "welfare") rights that require provision of education to all children and protections against severe poverty and starvation. Another family that might be included is group rights. The Universal Declaration does not include group rights, but subsequent treaties do. Group rights include protections of ethnic groups against genocide and the ownership by countries of their national territories and resources. (Anaya 2004, Baker 2004,...