Understanding Human Rights as Lived Experience

Abstract

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) characterizes human rights as equal, inalienable, and interdependent. This chapter provides a comprehensive introduction to human rights – their historical and political origins, substantive meaning, and how they are put into practice locally, nationally, and internationally. It focuses attention on contestation and the human struggle at the center of human rights by examining the causes of human rights violations, how new human rights norms develop, and how advocates secure their protection. Special attention is given to the rule of law as a necessary safeguard of human rights and the threat that global climate change poses to the enjoyment of our human rights. We learn more about human rights and human wrongs by examining them in the contexts in which they occur. The case studies in this text and the stories of the people who have struggled within them invite us to link ideas with practices and to consider how we can build a more equal, just, and rights-filled world. They invite us to imagine how we might “live human rights” at home and abroad.