History Of Human Rights

Human rights has faced evolutionary challenges right alongside people and civilization.  While everything from our social structures, to our culture has advanced, human rights has come right along with it, bringing new understanding and equality to the citizens of the world.  Human rights is, in all essenece, are those rights that every person should be guarenteed.  They superceed the laws of nations, as well as the laws that come with culture and society.  Human rights declares that every person shall be granted that which is needed for survival, as well as that which is required in leading a normal and functional life.

The foundation of the understanding of human rights can be traced back to the philosophers and thinkers of Ancient Greece.  With great fortune, most societies and cultures throughout time have shown signs of developing human rights laws, or at least the general understanding for their need.  This shows some powerful evidence that cultured historical mankind has in it some inherent nature towards providing basic human rights.

The Ancient World

Ancient societies showed some signs of developing human rights.  There were several different societies of the ancient world who formally adopted human rights laws and guidelines, mainly relating to slave right, rights between the sexes and the rights of children.  Having human right laws for slaves may seem contradictory by today's standards for human rights, but for the time they were fairly ground breaking.  To treat slaves like people instead of like animals is at least some type of progress in the history of human rights.  Some of the formal laws passed in the ancient world were;

• Code of Ur-Nammu- 20501 B.C.- this set of Neo-Summarian laws established a very advanced set of legal guidelines for the society.  It worked with a series of crime=punishment laws, and included everything from murder to divorce laws, including laws about slave marriage to a native.
• Code of Hammurabi- 1790 B.C.- Babylonian law from the ruler Hammurabi which is consider the precursor to a consititution.  While some of the laws may be crude in nature, involving odd test to detect guilt, but it did begin a new level of women's right, especially for the ancient world.  One of the laws state that if a man weds a woman, yet never takes her to bed, then she is not his wife.

These two examples of human rights history are not the only two from the ancient world, but they are the only two that have solid evidence today.

Edicts of Ashoka and the Rise of Islam

In the Maurya Empire, what is now the area including and surrounding India, came the basic principles of civil rights, many of which came spawned from the Buddhist beliefs of the ruler of the time, Ashoka the Great.  The 3rd century B.C. became when his reign would further push human rights to the next evolutionary level.  During his time, after a bloody takeover, he began to put some of his newfound beliefs into legal and societal practice.  He began to allow prisoners time outside, stoped the slaughter of animals when it wasn't needed, provided equality between religious and cultural sects, and began allowing all people to attend universities.  Essentially, it gave every one of his citizens, regardless of caste or sect, the same rights and freedoms, making them essentially equal. 

Religion has also spawned several advances in human rights, one of which was the birth of Islam.  Muhammad, who was the founder of the Islamic faith, was a crusader for human rights during his lifetime.  While many of the foundings of human rights from the Islamic faith may seem crude, for the time (between 610 and 661) he made great advances in human rights at the time. While many western cultures denied women basic funadmental rights, they were in place during Muhammad's life, including issues women of the time faced, including violence, whether free or kept in a haram, laws against murder and rape, prisoner rights, such as the need to provide them with food, water, clothes, and other necessities.  His laws also addressed other womens issues of the time, including marriage, divorce and infanticide, which is where female infants are killed since boys were more desireable. 

The founding of Islam was actually one of the greatest advances in human rights during this millenia.