What is a “human right”?
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depending where you live? UN/Amnesty International and other organizations recognize 30 articles in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights https://www.standup4humanrights.org/en/article.html but generally clean water, shelter,food,security, in some countries also an income, healthcare, privacy, movement, freedom of religion or marriage, electricity, heat, legal represetation, maternity leave and other concepts seem worthy
Answer: as with all laws/rules, it is not “Fact”. It’s a concept that we apply to the concept of a just society. As such, it is subject to interpretation and no person or society is a master of the definition. But generally, it is the assumption that people are entitled to food, water, shelter, and peace. From there it can be expanded to include things like meaningful work and universal healthcare. Basically, anything that we can all agree is necessary to meet human needs.
There are answers her enumerating what are examples of human rights, but if you are asking for a definition, it would be those things to which all humans are entitled and which all governments must strive to ensure for all of their people if they are to be considered a legitimate government.
Okay, so imagine everything of comfort just ends right now (don’t imagine the reasons why, it’s not important to your immediate future) … what do you need to survive the day or the week? Water is most important… next up is food and some way to manage the cold nights.
These immediate needs are (or should be) considered by any upbuilt modern society to be a human right. The right to survive. The right to not starve when foodstuff is all round you or to die of exposure when a shelter is available.
I feel something important has been missed. Rights are more than just needs. They represent commitment to something larger than ourselves, larger than a regime, even larger than a tribal or national identity. A commitment to the idea that people deserve to be able to live their lives in certain ways, always.
Chief among those ways is agency, or self-determination, meaning that you decide what you will do, and that decision meaningfully steers the course of your own life. That’s not unbounded for any of us, but it’s the foundation of societies that are considered free.
Importantly, in this thinking or belief, rights do not come from the government, or a constitution, or the UN. We are “endowed with them by our creator.” Whatever you believe about how we came to be, the idea is that part of that being is inherently deserving these things—life, liberty, etc.
The institutions like constitutions, bills of rights, governments, courts, jurisprudence, traditions, norms, are tools we use to protect and uphold these rights. We’re not at all perfect at it; it’s a fight with many fronts. But I believe it’s worth fighting for.
In truth, a human ‘right’ is a fiction. Human ‘rights’ are all made up. In reality, they are privileges taken as entitlements. As these rights can be given, they can also be taken away.
If the human right to fresh, clean water really existed, there would be no drought. If the right to freedom existed, there would be no slaves. And so on.
Rights are things that we, mutually in communities, agree to offer each other. Like a security. Not, necessarily, limited to only humans either.
If you and I promise to ensure, to our best abilities, that both of us will always offer food to each other, unconditionally, then we have just created a ‘right’. If we agree to do this because we believe that a human cannot do without it, it becomes a ‘human right’. These need not be ‘live-threatening avoidances’; we could offer simple comforts like ‘every man should get a comic-book’ and that would then be a right, too.
A lot of people really mythologise what ‘rights’ are and pretend that ‘inalienable rights’ means ‘you’re literally immune to harm’ but that’s not true; they’re just common agreements of protection among a group of people.
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