Are Human Rights Truly Universal?

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Are human rights truly universal? In this essay I am going to answer the question’ are human rights truly universal?’ There are many definitions on what human rights are. I believe that the main definition is ‘that they are fundamental rights that humans have by the fact of being human, and that are neither created nor can be abrogated by any government’. This definition means that human rights apply to every single human in this world. However there are other ways of explaining human rights one would be that they are based on religious beliefs, ethical teachings that are the same in many countries and therefore are considered universal. Another possibility is that human rights are modern western concepts, which then means that human rights cannot be reflected as universal. It is important to investigate this question because accepting that human rights are western invention it can cause problems in different countries that have different cultures. For example torture may become legal in a country like Nigeria due to their different culture. The term universal means that it can be applicable everywhere or in all cases. Definition can be found on ( www.definitions.net 2001). If human rights are truly universal then in every case there should be the same action taken regardless the culture or what country the person is from. In my opinion I would take the view that human rights are truly universal especially because they seem to correspond well with religion and culture of the whole world. In this essay I will first outline the religious and cultural concepts of human rights, and then I will go on to look at the western part of human rights. I will end the essay by comparing both aspects and by concluding it. Human rights were declared in 1945 by the United Nations, this was right after the Second World War. The human rights were there to reaffirm faith in the
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