Human Rights

Human rights are rights to which all people, regardless of nation, culture, race, gender, age, ability, or social position, are entitled. The concept developed from philosophical ideas put forth about natural rights during the European Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. Many nations incorporated them into their constitutions and other governing documents. However, the first formal international agreement on what constituted human rights appeared in the years following World War II (1939–1945). During the war, the German Nazi Party systemically killed over fifteen million people, including six million Jewish people, as part of a radical population policy that sought to exterminate entire groups of people. In December 1948, members of the newly formed United Nations (UN) adopted the Universal Declaration of...