Human Rights

Human Rights are the rights you have simply because you are human. They are universal and they apply to all kind of people: poor, rich, teachers, the garbage man, old, young, children…. To any of us.

At first there were no human rights. If you were with the right crowd, you were safe; but if you weren’t, then you weren’t.

They started in Babylonia with Cyrus The Great. He proclaimed that all slaves were free to go. The ideas of The Emperor travelled quickly to India, Greece, Rome…

In Rome they had what it was called Natural Law. That means that a King could be above of what they understood, on those days, by human rights.

People rights were recognized in England in 1215 agreeing that not even people of power could go over them. They wrote the “Carta Magna”.

They defended that all men are created equal.

Then America was born. France fought for their own rights and many things happen in history around this subject again. It wasn’t so easy to give the same meaning everywhere to human rights.

The roman concept of natural law became Natural Rights. Although once more (by year 1800), someone called Napoleon became Emperor of the World and the rest of countries in Europe which were against this fact defeated him and his army.

Meanwhile all this was going on in Europe, in India a young boy called Mahatma Gandhi leaded Indian protests and defended that all humans are equal and must have the same rights, not just in Europe.

However, two World Wars interrupted the intention. Hitler, Mussolini….. 90 million people were in Nazi’s camps. Human rights were near to extinguish.

Therefore the countries of the world bended together and created the United Nations in 1945 to reaffirm faith in fundamental rights in

the dignity and worth of human person. Besides all this, they should analyze what human rights should be.

In 1948 Eleanor Roosevelt announced the Universal Human Rights. Whereas when they were signed they didn’t have the force of law. It was optional.

That’s why again great people as Luther King and Mandela fought pacifically in order to guarantee Human Rights and abolish discrimination. It lasted 2 more decades to achieve it.

What is more, Human Rights should be more than words written on pages or on commercial ads. Those important words should become a reality, and not only a history lesson.

Nowadays, lots of people are fighting for that reason and they are not giants or super heroes…. They are kids, fathers, mothers, teachers, free thinking individual who have decided not to be silent.

There are 30 Human Rights and they should be our daily choices as human beings. We should act with responsibility and treat each other in a respectful way and apply the wise and deep sentence: what you don’t want for you, don’t do it to others. Help and protect the weak.

To sum up with my essay I would like to add that despite the strength of humans to have these Human Rights written and understood them as law, we still don’t respect lots of them in the world. Why there are millions of people starving and dying one person every five seconds; why there are millions of adults who are unable to read; why there are thousands of people in prison for speaking their minds……

I was familiar to all Human Rights because as a student you have a perspective of what kind of things happen in life and what is denounced in the daily news.

I sincerely believe that there is still much work to do.

Vocabulary: the gerund of “to die”=dying, to extinguish, to bend.