What Is a Human Right?

A human right is a claim that every person holds simply because they are human, not because a ruler granted it or because they belong to a favoured group. That makes it different from a privilege, which can be handed to some people and withheld from others, and from a purely legal right, which exists only where a particular law creates it. Thinkers have grounded human rights in human dignity, in reason, in religious teaching, or in agreements between peoples, and they still debate which foundation is strongest.

Over centuries, documents such as Magna Carta, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights widened the circle of people who counted. Each widening came through argument and struggle, because those who held power rarely surrendered advantages willingly. Studying rights historically shows that today's list is the product of choices, conflicts and compromises rather than something that appeared all at once.