The doctrine that all human beings possess inherent rights by virtue of their humanity — rights that governments cannot legitimately violate and that the international community has a responsibility to protect — institutionalized after World War II in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and subsequent treaties, and contested ever since on questions of universality, enforceability, cultural specificity, and political instrumentalization.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted on December 10, 1948, three years after the Holocaust. The delegates who drafted it included a Lebanese Christian philosopher, a Chinese Confucian scholar, a French Jewish jurist, an American former First Lady, and a Chilean lawyer. They disagreed about foundations — whether rights came from God, from natural law, from reason, or from political agreement — and deliberately avoided settling the question. What they agreed on was the list: life, liberty, security, freedom from torture, equal treatment before the law, freedom of thought and religion. The UDHR has been called the most translated document in history. It has also been called unenforceable, culturally imperialist, and a tool of Western foreign policy. All of these descriptions contain truth.