The recognition of human rights is correlated with peace and prosperity. Despite this, the type and level of recognition and protection for human rights vary significantly across countries. Many countries around the globe, purport to rightly recognize human rights through their constitutions, statutes, or international treaties, however questions arise when these rights which were guaranteed to be protected, these rights in practice vary from state to state, at least in some commentators’ views, from what the scope of the rights is, or should be.
At the other extreme, human rights have a distinctive if uncertain status in those legal systems where they are not even supported by conventional positive sources – no constitutional protections, treaties and conventions not signed, and no protection in statutory law or judicial decisions. Human rights represent the moral dimension of globalization, the affirmation of universal standards to which we can look for guidance for the humanization of capitalism, the revitalization of democratic control, and the protection of the values that give meaning and importance to human life.
More particularly, in their affirmation of the equal worth and supreme value of every human being, human rights set the parameters and goals for any legitimate human organization. Therefore, it may seem appropriate to see human rights as a source of ideas for determining the normative ordering of global capitalism and its governmental structures.
Human rights have the advantage of universality based on morality and hence it also has global applicability. Human rights apply to all societies and all people. They cannot be excluded from any sphere of human life, including the economic world of production, services, and markets. We cannot say, for instance, that human rights have to do with politics, or policing, or administration, but not with economics, or business, or religion.
Moreover, human rights have, by common acceptance, high if not overriding moral importance, so that, once admitted to these spheres, they cannot be relegated to the status of optional extras, things that are good to take into account when and if we have the time and resources to do so.
Human rights are not only universal, and therefore intrusive, they are also morally imperious, and therefore cannot be ignored.
All living persons have human rights. It is not required to be a particular kind of person or a member of some specific nation or religion to have human rights. In the idea of universality, the concept of independent existence is included. People have human rights independently of whether they are found in the practices, morality, or law of their country or of any culture.
This idea of universality is often required to meet several qualifications. However, first, some rights, such as the right to vote, are held only by adult citizens or residents and apply only to voting in one’s own country. Second, various rights are subject to the nature of crime one commits such as, the human right to freedom of movement may be taken away temporarily from a person who is convicted beyond reasonable doubt of committing a serious crime. Third, some human rights treaties primarily focus on the rights of vulnerable groups such as minorities, women, indigenous peoples, and children.
Further, the concept of morality supplements the notion of human rights, since what is considered to be wrong and unnatural human behavior, such behavior is condemned by the law, hence every human or living person is provided with a set of unalienable rights, which recognizes these rights and act as a protective measure. These rights are commonly referred to as human rights and are used to claim protection against the State. Similarly, the concept of Morality is important when we discuss human rights.
Morality descriptively to refer to certain codes of conduct which are put forward by a society or a group (such as a religion), or accepted by an individual for his/her behavior, or normatively, morality refers to a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational persons.
Furthermore, the concept of universal morality or moral universalism refers to the meta-ethical position that some system of ethics, or a universal ethic, applies universally, that is, for all similarly situated individuals, regardless of culture, race, sex, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, or any other distinguishing feature. The debate arises, when we attempt to consolidate a certain set of rights as human rights, wherein certain rights are questioned, not recognized by every state because in various cases, what is considered to be moral in one part of the world, is considered to be normal in another part of the world.
Hence, there exists a need to recognize the concept of universal morality, which would truly strengthen the concept of human rights around the globe and result in providing relief and protection to those who face torture, cruelty, and other inhuman practices.
