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Social Rights, Social And Disciplinary Approaches To Human Rights

Decent Essays

What do the following events have in common: an authoritarian government shutting down independent media; sickness among the impoverished due to a lack of clean drinking water; refugees fleeing sectarian violence or religious persecution; gay men and women organizing a campaign to demand the right to marriage and equality; human trafficking of women and children for sexual exploitation; violations of habeas corpus; or a repressive military regime advocating genocidal state policy towards members of an ethnic group? Today, it would be difficult to talk about any of these events without invoking human rights and yet human right were not an issue of international attention until after WWII. The primary objective of this course is to introduce students to human rights even if they enter the class with little formal knowledge about them. Throughout the course we will take different disciplinary approaches to human rights—philosophical, theoretical, legal, literary, health, etc. Human rights can be defined as fundamental rights which all humans are entitled to by being human. These rights can neither be created nor abrogated by any government or any other political authority and at their core they are designed to uphold human dignity. Broadly conceptualized, they include, but are not limited to civil, political, social, economic, and cultural rights. More specifically, some of these rights include the right to life, liberty, education, equality before the law, right of

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