Reflections on Human Rights

The concept of human rights is not something new to me. As a young child, I was exposed to the intricacies and complexities of its definition, scope, breadth and challenges in modern society, especially as applied to the Philippine setting. This was in no small part to my mother, who worked for fifteen years in the Commission on Human Rights as an administrative officer.

So what is human rights? The United Nations through its promulgation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights begins with Article I by saying: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”

As a secular humanist and as a freethinker, I in fact share the definition articulated by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and would therefore define human rights as the fundamental and essential right of all human beings to define themselves according to their hopes, dreams and potentialities with the end in view of attaining a full, happy, fulfilled, dynamic and reflective life. Human Rights therefore is the ungrund upon which man is able to achieve his human potentialities to the fullest without restraint, control, repression or violence. It is to define man as man himself sees fit him to be. It is to be free to think, act, and live as one sees proper and dignified with consideration of the collective harmony, order and peace that defines successful human societies, for in fact and in truth, man cannot attain the concepts of human rights – of freedom, of development, of enlightenment and of reason without the supportive and comforting structure of human societies.

Human Rights is the product of human evolution in thinking and in social relations. It is the realization that man in society can be subjugated to a mere cog in the great machinery of civilizations that have, undeniably, been a potent force in human history. It is in this light that the concept of Human Rights was gestated and eventually born. It is the realization that man is more than just a piece in the puzzle, he is the puzzle that makes human existence exciting and liberating, and that hence, man’s capacity to further himself within the constructs of mutual respect and recognition in open and secure societies is the best way to cultivate man’s potentialities.

Furthermore, Human Rights is itself the product of the philosophical and political ideas of the last five hundred years in the ideas of Locke, Hobbes and even of the ancient Greek philosophers such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle as well as the historical events that shaped Europe in the English and French Revolutions. Although the concept of Human Rights is European in origin and character, its message is universal and timeless.

Human Rights then is the externalization of man’s quest to define himself in this world as a responsible, creative, positive, dynamic, integrated, and most of all, reflective force. Human Rights is not just giving people the avenue to be free from repression and unmitigated violence, it is the recognition that man is a work in progress, a clay molding himself, seeking himself, learning from himself to learn about the world, to learn about existence itself and to marvel at the immense mysteries and complexities that is life itself.