Human Rights: Issues and Contentions by Oforma Eze

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Human Rights

First, rights refer to the moral or legal entitlement over something. Human rights are rights inherent in all human beings by virtue of being human. Everybody is entitled to enjoy them regardless of race, sex, nationality, ethnicity, language, religion, or status. Human rights can also be explained as privilege to be enjoyed by human beings. Such rights include right to life, freedom of speech, freedom of movement, freedom from slavery, freedom of religion, right to education, right to personal liberty, freedom from torture, and many more. Everyone is entitled to these rights, without discrimination.
Furthermore, Heywood (2007:326), seem to have summarized what human rights entail when he rightly observed thus:

"Human rights are rights to which people are entitled by virtue of being human; they are a modern and secular version of natural rights. Human rights are ‘universal’ in the sense that they belong to all humans rather than to members of any particular state, race, religion, gender or other group. They are also ‘fundamental’ in that they are inalienable…”

        The question of human rights has remained a bone of contention since the evolution of man. The universal Declaration of human Rights (UDHR) was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948 to ensure that all nations preserve and respect these rights. That day marked a new dawn in a quest to liberate man from injustice, forced labour, exploitation and other forms of man’s inhumanity to man (Eze, 2015). Human rights can be in the form of legal, political, social, economic and civil rights. Before the UDHR in 1948 other historical legal documents had tried to incorporate and protect human rights. Some of the historical legal documents that made provisions for human rights include:

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