Human and Civil Rights - Essential Primary Sources

Human rights are the basic freedoms, liberties, and protections to which all persons are entitled. Human rights are not specilic to one government or religion. They do not differ in times of war or peace. Human rights are constant and inalienable rights, possessed by all people. Ideally, governments should promote and protect human rights through systems of law.Today, human rights include life, liberty, and security of person; the freedom of religion, thought, political expression, movement, assembly, speech, and organization; due process of law, education, employment, health, property ownership, cultural preservation; the right to marry and found a family; and freedom from discrimination, unjust punishment, persecution, tyranny, and oppression.The modern concept ol human rights developed over diree centuries. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the concept of natural rights emerged. Natural rights are not subject to any political, legal, or religious system. They are inalienable rights that humans possess from birth...