Hello everyone, it’s Zainab, welcome or welcome back to my blog! Todays post is on a topic I’ve been meaning to talk about for a while, which is human rights. In this past few weeks, many negative things have been happening to do with human rights – yet they’re so vital for everyone.
So today, I’d like to use this post to discuss their evolution over time, their importance, interferences and more. Let’s get into the post!
What Are Human Rights
Human rights are rights we have simply because we exist as human beings – they are not granted by any state. These universal rights are inherent to us all
United Nations
Above is the UN’s definition of human rights – and they couldn’t have put it any better. They essentially are the basic rights that everyone is entitled to. Regardless of whether your country promotes them or not, everyone has a right to them.
The Evolution of Human Rights
Back in 1948, a document called the UDHR (Universal Declaration of Human Rights) was created by the UN which consisted of 30 protected rights that everyone is entitled to. Despite that this document was voluntary for countries, many countries did use this to adopt some of these rights and legally protect them.
An example is that the UK passed the Human Rights Act (HRA) in 1998 which protected 16 of the rights.
Although that the first original document was created over 70 years ago, even today these rights are vital for everyone and laid the foundation for so many governments and organisations to promote these rights and equality.
Why Are They Important
Human rights are important for the simple reason that they protect us. They allow people to embrace who they are freely no matter their background and they provide fairness to all humans. The UN website states that they have a principle of ‘universality‘ and are ‘inalienable‘ meaning they should be crucial to everyone and shouldn’t be taken away.
The UDHR document really began to pave the way for equality for parts of the world that chose to promote it’s values. This is due to the fact that it’s articles are necessary for every human no matter what. Some examples are:
- ‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.’
- ‘No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.’
- ‘Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression’
Read The Entire Declaration Consisting Of All 30 Articles
Interference Examples
An interference of your human rights is when they are breached and possibly compromised. This can be through many reasons such as changes in legislation, torture, etc!
Some recent examples of this was the UK government almost sending asylum seekers to Rwanda, in an attempt to stop people crossing the channel. This interfered with the right to seek asylum and also safety as sending them to Rwanda could’ve majorly increased the risk of human trafficking and exploitation.
The European Court of Human Rights did step in and stop the flight last minute due to the UK still being a member of the Council of Europe.
However, the fact that a country that has legally enforced human rights laws are shocking and could possibly by leading to more future breaches – and with the UK government thinking of introducing British Bill of Rights to replace the HRA (or reforming the HRA) is proving how human rights are being neglected.
Another mainstream example was the recent overturning of Roe vs Wade which led to a ban of abortion in many states in the US. Whatever your stance may be on this situation, it is still very disappointing for women no longer having a right to choose what they can do with their own bodies – especially since the US constitution has human rights that should be legally protected such as freedom. In the case of medical abortions, which could be vital to the mother’s survival, this is incredibly scary and could only be foreshadowing the future of their rights.
These were just 2 examples of breaches of human rights, unfortunately there are many more but I simply don’t have time to go into them, but please write a comment of anything you’d like to share to spread awareness!
Resources and Ideas to Help
Although issues of human rights interferences are on a national scale, there are still actions we can take to try and make help a difference.
Spreading awareness and educating others is a huge one as this is circular, once you educate someone they can educate another person and this will continuously go in a cycle until large conversations are opened.
Sharing petitions, protest details, and updates are also important if you’d like to try and directly make a difference about any human rights issues. (I have listed one that I’ve seen but if you all could share links to petitions and information in the comments, that would be greatly appreciated.)
Sources/Articles
UN Human Rights Office Website
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
BBC Article on Asylum Seekers to Rwanda
UN Expert on Sending Asylum Seekers to Rwanda
Thank you for sticking around and reading this post, I’m very passionate about this issue. As I stated in the post, if you’d like to share any information or stories please don’t hesitate to comment!
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Have a great day!
Zainab Chats 
As a history major, I can’t emphasise how vital humans rights are. They exist so that atrocities that were once committed do not happen again and breaching these rights will lead and have lead to horrible atrocities.
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Thanks for reading Pooja – it’s great to hear that insight! As part of your major, is a lot taught about the history of human rights or is it more inferred from your classes?
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It depends, some classes do focus on human rights while in others it’s inferred. I’ve always been interested in that sort of thing so I tried to take more classes about things relating to human rights.
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So true. Awareness of our rights can make a huge difference in certain situations. I mean to people who grew up in an environment that didn’t encourage expression and exploration, this is especially important.
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It definitely makes a huge difference – and will change the way we stand up to adversity! Thanks for reading!
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This is such an important topic to talk about and I’m so glad to see you talking about it. I didn’t know about the incident regarding the asylum seekers so thank you for making me aware of that as well. It’s really disturbing to know how countries are like literally choosing which rights to give us and which to not when we’re entitled to all of them.
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It’s definitely very disturbing – and surprising not everyone knows about the interferences so I just wanted to bring back the history to show while breaches are now more common, that doesn’t make them more okay!
Thanks for reading Alina! 😆
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It is amazing that you are here talking about such things and spreading awareness! Our own rights are definitely something we should be aware of! Lovely post- keep up the good work.
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Thank you so much Stara! Yes awareness about our own rights is so vital – thanks for reading!
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This post was so informative and thanks for bringing light to this topic! 🙂
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Thanks Suhani – and thank you for reading!!
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The human rights situation in Lebanon deteriorated further in 2021. More than 80 percent of the country’s residents did not have access to basic rights, including health, education, and an adequate standard of living, such as adequate housing and electricity, according to the United Nations.
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This is so heartbreaking to hear they don’t get their basic human rights – thank you for speaking up about this and sharing!
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Yeah…I’ve been living in Lebanon for 22 years, despite being half American. It’s getting harder. My husband’s financial situation is better than others but with 1 USD equal to 34,000 LBP when it used to be 1,500 LBP just 2 years ago, there has been major inflation and rising in prices. Most people don’t have enough to eat a healthy meal.
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Oh wow I didn’t know that! That’s crazy, more should be done to help!
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Other countries have sent millions of dollars in aid but the government is corrupt and most of the things sent are being smuggled to Syria by who knows.
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