Abstract:
"Human Rights" is a fairly new name for what was formerly called "the rights of man". It should be remembered that it was Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, in the 1940s who promoted the use of the expression "Human Rights" when she discovered, through her work in the United Nations, that the rights of men were not understood in some parts of the world to include the right s of women. In fact, the "rights of man" had, in turn, replaced the original term "natural rights" which was logically connected with natural law.
As the idea of natural rights returned to favour around the time of World War II, and people generally being convinced that they do have rights, there began to be no fixed limits to the rights that people claimed or were said to possess. No doubt, the UN is responsible for a great deal of this. At the time of its foundation, the UN was charged with what Winston Churchill called the "enthronement" of the rights of man. Henceforth, the UN has been producing a plethora of instruments pertaining to human rights and from them have emerged the new standards of human rights. ...
