1 - Human Rights as Protections of a Minimally Decent Human Life

Summary

The chapter introduces the concept of human rights, their justifications, and functions. Rights in general are explained as social guarantees against standard threats and human rights are introduced as universal moral rights that protect the conditions of minimally decent lives. Human rights are special rights because, unlike other rights, they are matters of international concern. That is, even though states bear primary responsibility to protect and fulfil human rights, if states are unwilling or unable to do so, the international community has obligations as secondary guarantors to provide aid or step in to end human rights abuses. The chapter also responds to two possible objections that are of particular relevance for the topic of this book: first, that as rights grounded in our nature as human beings, all human rights must be claimable by every person throughout history. And second, that we cannot have human rights to technologies or artefacts that are merely useful for realising other things, but only to what is of immediate necessity for decent lives, for example, water, food, shelter, clothing, and basic civil rights.