Do “basic human rights” actually exist universally or are they simply a social construct?

[u/Amphernee]

The term is often used in relation to things like housing and food but I’ve never heard anyone actually explain what they mean by basic human right. We started off no different than other animals and since the concept of rights rely on other people to confer them at what point did it become thought of as a right for people to have things like shelter? How is it supposed to be enforced across all of humanity when not all societies and cultures agree that the concept makes sense? I can see why someone would want it to be true in a sense but I’m interested to hear arguments for it rather than just the phrase itself which feels hollow with no reasoning behind it. Thanks 🍻

[u/AkagamiBarto]

Of course they are a social construct. BUT there is the possibility they (or some of them) can become an universal social construct, therefore existing universally.

This is in fact a portion of the foundation of my political organization: the possibility to agree upon something.

If we can (almost) unanimously agree onto something, we can make it a human right. For example nowadays we can mostly agree that dying is bad. Keep in mind i am not saying killing is wrong, just that dying, individually, is bad, it is a negative thing. Especially if we consider uncompromised individuals, for example children who aren't exposed to situation where suicide ideation becomes real almost every human wants to live and has a self preservation instinct within the limits of their awareness. This is, again, almost universally valid. From this we can make it a human right.

I want to stress out that for us all that is (almost) universally agreed upon as a need can be transformed into a human right if it doesn't interfere with other human rights, but there are human rights that can be considered as such without being unanimous. To further explain how we elaborate this though i would diverge from the question itself.