Human rights are those rights and freedoms by acquiring which one achieves one’s potential in various fields. Since the dawn of human civilisation, human beings have been striving for human rights. Undoubtedly, there has been a marked progress since the time of slavery when human beings were no better than chattel, yet a lot is yet to be achieved in this field.

In pre-modern cultures, the concept of human rights did exist but it suffered from serious limitations. Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, extensively wrote on the rights of citizens to property and participation in public affairs. However, citizens included only free members of the Greek city-States and slaves were outside the purview of human rights. Slavery, in fact, was justified as a natural phenomenon both in Greek and Roman society.

For a ling time, the Divine Rights of Kings Theory prevailed in Europe. The sovereign was supposed to be the representative of the almighty God and answerable to Him alone. In the seventeenth century, Thomos Hobbes founded a contractualist theory postulating a social contract between the sovereign and the subjects. However, the citizens were to submit to the commands of the sovereign to avert anarchy in society.

John Locke further enriched the concept of social contract. It was his considered view that in case the sovereign failed to protect the life, liberty and property of citizens, they had every right to overthrow the unjust government. It was French philosopher Jean Jacques Roussean who propounded the theory of the Social Contract in an elaborate form. His famous dictum that man is born free but is everywhere in chains signifies that the bondage of man by man is the creation of the powerful and the mighty and is against the law of nature. So, human beings have every right to strive for the natural law of human rights and they have the inalienable right to elect their rulers.

Two major revolutions occured in the 18th century and these greatly enriched the concept of human rights. The United States of America declared independence from the Great Britain in the year 1776. Its Declaration of Rights of 1776 stated:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

However, the above declaration covered only the free citizens and the slaves were kept outside the ambit of rights. Slavery was the most inhuman form of bondage till the time of Abraham Lincoln, who abolished slavery. He emphatically argued that since he would not like to be a slave, nor would he be a master. The bold step of abolition of slavery resulted into civil war which saw a lot of bloodshed.

The French Revolution of 1789 was another important milestone in man’s journey in the quest of rights. This revolution, which led to the overthrow of the monarchy and execution of many members of the then ruling elite, had three ringing slogans: Equality, Liberty and Fraternity. This great revolutionary upheaval inspired people all over the world and marked the end of feudal aristocracy and the onset of bourgeois democracy.

The Second World War saw large scale death, destruction and suffering. As a sequel to Hitler’s notorious theory of racial purity and the Aryan race, there was horrific persecution of Jews who were gassed to death in large numbers. This is the most glaring and revolting instance of man’s cruelty to man in human history.

The UNO which came into being after the Second World War took up the issue of human rights in all seriousness. It adopted a resolution in its General Assembly on December 10, 1948. Its Article I states: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” Article II of the Declaration makes no distinction on grounds of race, gender, colour, language, birth or status. The Declaration categorises rights into two groups as follows:

(a) Civil and Political Rights:

Right to life, liberty and security of person; freedom from slavery and torture; equality before law, protection against arbitrary arrest, detention or exile; the right to fair trial; the right to own property; freedom for political participation; freedom of thought, expression, religion etc.

(b) Economic, Social and Cultural Rights:

Right to work, equal pay for equal work, the right to join Trade Union, the right to education, the right of free participation in cultural life etc.

All members of the UNO are signatories to the above Declaration of Human Rights and are expected to practise it in letter and spirit. The UNO has also evolved a mechanism to monitor the violation of human rights anywhere in the world and suggest ways and means to correct the distortion. However, these rights, political, economic, social and cultural, are not legally binding. The UNO has no coercive apparatus to enforce the Declaration.

In practice, all the assertions are pious platitudes. There is a yawning gap, a painful hiatus between rhetoric and reality. Some powers, especially the powerful and mighty, treat this Declaration with contempt. The latest illustration is the American War in Iraq and Afghanistan, ostensibly to fight terrorism, but in reality to capture the oil resources in Iraq and establish its hegemony in the Middle East after the demise of the USSR. The brutal Army rule in Myanmar is an illustration of the gross violation of human rights and the UNO has utterly failed to enforce this declaration there.

The yawning gap between rhetoric and reality in the matter of human rights is best illustrated metaphorically in Gerge Orwell’s novel Animal Farm where he states: “All animals are equal but some are more equal than others.”