Where did the UN get the ideas for human rights? The reality is we all had rights but certain affiliations or a lack of an affiliation to the group may have risen or lowered the quality of the rights we had, sometimes diminishing to a point where they didn't really exist. But since those times we as species have created several documents that define individual rights such as the Magna Carta, English bill of rights, French deceleration on the rights of man and citizen and the U.S constitutions some of the more notable entries in the world of rights. These rights were championed and protected by western governments but the rights of individuals had not yet become a worldwide phenomenon. As the second world war came to a close and the true horrors of the Nazi atrocities reached across the globe and the emergence of the UN led to an international effort to ensure that such terrible genocides could never again be committed, and thus was born the universal declaration of human rights. The declaration championed by the late FDR's wife Elanor Roosevelt promised 50 specific rights these rights built the ideal minimum living conditions for every individual unfortunately in many places across the world these rights are being denied and in others people see their rights slowly slipping away. But in all reality, Human rights despite their shortcomings have positively influenced the world around us.Human rights are agreed to by nations and violations are difficult to deal with as each state has the right to its own soverignty and violations of this sovereignty can be seen as acts of war and the international community resorts to employing the usage of sanctions and other methods of indirectly punishing a nation for breaking human rights but sometimes sanctions aren't enough such as the situation in the Bosnian war where the UN allowed for states to intervene in the conflict amid the massive amounts of reported atrocities but many still viewed that action as not enough or as a massive overstepping of the UN's authority. But despite military intervention, Human rights continue to be violated all across the world in countries like China, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Turkey and many others and the only way to seemingly deal with these violations is by taking deliberate actions that could lead to war such as bombing Syria.
Despite the massive inability for human rights to be enforced across the globe we must respect and value our human rights as they are important cornerstones for a democracy which serves the people and losing our human rights would only see the loss of democracy which can be seen in turkey where the country narrowly voted on giving the authoritarian strongman Erdogan vast powers amid a cracking down on the freedom of press and opposition party leaders and other breaks against human rights by taking Turkey as a example the world should protect what human rights we have so that we may protect our democracy and deal with the breakdown of human rights in foreign countries.
Sources
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/14-shocking-global-human-rights-violations-2013
https://myhumanrights.wordpress.com/how-are-human-rights-enforced/
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/16/world/europe/turkey-referendum-polls-erdogan.html?_r=0
Great article on some of the important origins and reasons for creating the human rights system. Especially because individual rights are so important to international society today, it is cool to read about how these rights came into the world and were eventually assigned to every human on Earth.
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