An Exploration of Human Rights

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The countless women and girls of the Democratic Republic of the Congo who are raped and beaten at the hands of the military experience gross and widespread violations of their right to “life, liberty, and security of person” as endowed upon them by Article 3 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights . On the reverse end of a tragic dilemma, these same forcibly recruited soldiers acting as agents of the state experienced a violation of their right to not “be held in slavery or servitude” as is set forth in Article 4 of the aforementioned statute . Many Syrians, citizens of a nation in the throes of a brutal civil war, are undergoing torture and detention at the behest of their own government’s forces which starkly encroaches upon both their rights not to “be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment” nor to “be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention, or exile” as are promulgated by Articles 5 and 9 respectively . In yet another corner of the globe, ethnic Tibetans and Uighurs have their rights to “protection against any discrimination” trampled upon systematically by the ruling Chinese Communist Party in a direct contradiction to the protections afforded by Article 7 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights . These are merely a few of the myriad examples of human rights violations occurring on a widespread basis across the world with varying degrees of severity and frequency. Ostensibly, human rights are inalienable, universal, irrevocable, and to be staunchly defended. While this platitude is agreeable in theory, in practice a far less lofty reality is the norm. Certain incursions by certain actors warrant one set of responses, or lack thereof, whereas othe...

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... International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, December 2001.

Human Rights Watch. World Report 2013. New York, NY: Human Rights Watch, 2013.

Nickel, James. “Human Rights.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, Spring 2014., 2014. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/rights-human/.

“The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” Accessed May 5, 2014. http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/.

U.S. Army Center of Military History. “The United States Army in Somalia 1992-1994.” Accessed May 7, 2014. http://www.history.army.mil/brochures/Somalia/Somalia.htm#p5.

United Nations Security Council. “Security Council Approves ‘No-Fly Zone’ Over Libya, Authorizing ‘All Necessary Measures’ to Protect Civilians.” Department of Public Information, March 17, 2011. http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2011/sc10200.doc.htm.

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