“Human rights”: the term doesn’t really do the work that we think it does.
According to natural law theory, a human right is a fundamental and inalienable possession which entitles one, naturally, to certain freedoms. Rights, the theory goes, are innately held by human beings by virtue of their human status, and these rights are in some sense discovered or revealed through treaties like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). To invoke human rights is to invoke an ethical demand, a kind of baseline standard for treatment.
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