It all began in the second half of the 18th century. During that time, both Europe and the United States (US) were experiencing significant political changes. In both cases, various sectors had risen against the established monarchical order.
In the United States, the war for independence was underway. Remember that the US was a colony of the British crown. After a fierce conflict between colonists or patriots and Great Britain, in 1776, the victorious American patriots declared their independence (Declaration of Independence) from the British Empire. Although this manifesto was not a specific declaration of human rights, it did contain important elements about rights, drawn from the Virginia Declaration of Rights of the same year, establishing equality among men (all men are created equal) and the rights to life, liberty, and rebellion, among others.
In France, due to prevailing labor conditions and abuses of power against the populace, the people of Paris rebelled: the monarchy had to be not only abolished but eliminated; abuses must come to an end. Thus, the representatives of the people, in a constituent national assembly, decided to proclaim, in 1789, the Declaration of the Rights of Man (Déclaration des droits de l’Homme), a document that established the inalienability of certain rights inherent to all human beings.
“All men are born free and equal in rights.” Thus begins this document, which would lay the foundation for all future treaties on the matter. “The end of all political association is the conservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression,” states Article Two of the declaration. As can be seen, it speaks of liberty and security as imprescriptible rights. The French constitution of 1791 would reaffirm the prominence of human rights as a doctrine.
It has been said that the content of the French manifesto of 1789 was somehow related to a law approved in the English parliament in 1689, the Bill of Rights and Liberties of the Subject. However, the establishment of the right to liberty was not included in the English declaration, which also originated from a rebellion against the British monarchy, culminating in the establishment of a constitutional monarchy, subject to the will of the people’s representatives in the upper and lower houses of the English parliament (House of Lords and House of Commons). In fact, the acceptance of an earlier version, approved by the English parliament in 1689, conditioned the assumption of power by kings William and Mary, when they were offered the throne in 1688. The Declaration of the Rights of Man bears greater resemblance to that of Virginia, which first declared the concepts of equality and inalienability of certain human rights. The universality of human rights would be established at the conclusion of another major conflict: World War II. In 1948, at the United Nations General Assembly, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was proclaimed. The doctrine of human rights has expanded since then, as rights established in 1948 have been joined by other treaties related to civil, political, and gender issues, among others.
We can only hope that this day will serve to strengthen the universality, inalienability, and imprescriptibility of human rights.