In the modern age, human rights are all too easy to take for granted and anyone who believes that they have had their human rights violated have a host of top human rights law firms to choose from.
Things haven’t always been this way, however, and the existing human rights laws that are in place are in testament to the struggles for equality and justice experienced by people throughout history.
In this article, we will look at the history of the human rights movement and explain how they helped to form the modern courts and human rights law firms that we have today.
The origin of human rights
From the very earliest human civilisations there have been certain fundamental rules in place within society to protect an individual’s inherent worth as a human and safeguard the right to life, property, and liberty. These freedoms did come with a number of stipulations, and only applied to those who complied with the rest of the societies rules, but, from ancient Egypt to Mesopotamia, there has been a longstanding belief that humans should have rights of some kind.
Ancient Greece
The philosophers on Ancient Greece are credited with shaping and forming human rights law for the very first time. Plato, Aristotle, and others are seen as some of the first true advocates for the right to basic human dignity, rights that were protected to some extend by the founders on ancient Rome.
Some of the religious texts formed with Greek and Rome influences stated that humans have an ethical duty to respect human life and to be compassionate, and these texts went on to inspire many of the legal frameworks that we still use to their day.
Declaration of Independence
In the USA, there is no legal document that carries more weight than the Declaration of Independence. This document claims that all men are created equal and being born alone entitled you to certain unalienable rights that must be protected at all costs.
United Nations
In 1945, as World War II finally ended, the United Nations was established in an attempt to promote better global cooperation and establish certain human rights that must be adhered to, even in times of war.
This was codified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 which was perhaps the most important document ever in terms of the history of human rights law. In the decades since, there have been many other treaties and conventions that reinforced these fundamental rights in national and international communities but the content remains similar across them all.
Activism
No article about the history of human rights would be complete without mentioning the incredible men and women who spent their lives campaigning for universal human rights and fighting against inequalities.
Before a document laying out basic human rights had even been introduced, Mohandas Gandhi had dedicated his life to promoting non-violent resolutions to inequality within society and helped to bring independence to India in a way that promoted freedom and civil liberty.
Rosa Parks is widely thought of as the mother of the modern civil rights movement. She is most well-known for her quiet act of defiance on a bus in 1955, refusing to move for a white man, but even before that moment Rosa Parks was a dedicated activist, working with her husband for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Nelson Mandela spent 27 years of his life in prison as a result of his dedication to overthrowing the racist apartheid Government that governed over South Africa at the time. He was later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and as president of the nation worked to undo the institutionalised racism within society through collaboration and the promotion of human rights.
Martin Luther King is perhaps the most well-known advocate for African American civil rights in history. King spent his entire life campaigning for equality and was instrumental in the removal of segregation on buses and in other public spaces. By 35, King had one the Nobel Peace Prize.
In more recent times, Greta Thunberg has been perhaps the most high profile human rights activist, campaigning to draw attention to the climate emergency and won Amnesty International’s top human rights award in 2019.
