Human Rights Violations

The concept of human rights are simple. It is that every human being is entitled to certain basic rights, under any circumstances, regardless of who you are. These basic rights include political rights, civil liberties and most importantly, your right to live and your right to physical safety. To violate these laws and deprive a human being of their basic human rights is to treat them as if they were less than a human, undeserving of their basic rights and therefore, to treat them in an undignified manner. In other words, a violation of such basic human rights is a human rights violation.

Although the topic of human rights is always evolving, and new interpretations of traditional definitions are constantly being challenged, the most basic human rights will never change. These most basic rights are to live and the right to physical safety. Any violation of these rights are indefinitely a human rights violation. Some of these acts of human rights violation include, but are not limited to, genocide, rape, torture, slavery, enforced sterilization, medical experimentation and starvation. Some of these human rights violations may sound very familiar. Certain human rights violations such as genocide, starvation, torture, rape and medical experimentation are a part of war, especially before there were laws of wars preventing these human rights violations from occurring. That is why international laws were developed.

Following World War II, many nations came together to come to an agreement of what was acceptable and what was not acceptable behavior during wartime. These codes and statutes evolved to eventually become international human rights laws. These set of laws are recognized internationally by various nations and impose limitations on the power of the nation in an effort to minimize suffering caused by the war to people and property. These international laws have made the heinous acts committed during wartimes, illegal and a human rights violation. Underlying laws that prohibit the various “crimes against humanity” is the principle of nondiscrimination and the notion that certain basic rights apply universally.

Not surprisingly, it is often the abuse of human rights that lead of human rights violations. Political and economic rights are often at the root of human rights violations. When certain groups are deprived of basic needs and rights such as adequate food and shelter, it is this very group that is excluded from society’s decision making process. This makes for social unrest and often times, results in justice conflicts. Justice conflicts often give rise to violence and social upheaval. Therefore, it is the human rights violation of one group that spurns the human rights violation of another.

Many wonder what can be done to improve human rights in order to prevent social uprising caused by human rights violations. That is a difficult question to answer as there is no solid definition of what defines human rights, so there can be no definite cure all to prevent all human rights violations from possibly occurring. However, we do know that we can prevent the violation of our two most important basic human rights; our right to live and to physical safety. Although, we are far from solving this problem, for the time being we can do our best and keep our hands to ourselves.