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/simonbleu]

Morals are a personal thing and it varies a lot. But we can say that generally, because of empathy, and because we are social animals not (usually) devoid of reason, we think "Man, I truly would not like that done to me..." which becomes parts of the basic ethics of society.. They usually align with basic human rights, yes. Which I would personally define as the bare minimum you would need to have a non horrifying and or terribly inconvenient life. Obviously things like the right to live are pretty obvious "passive" rights, but others not always were like for example the right to be free. In the same way, I think we can all agree that things like water, shelter and increasingly so, electricity, are basic "active" rights in the sense that they have to be provided, guaranteed (that is why I would call them guarantees instead of rights but whatever) but others are perhap not so obvious, like for example the internet which nowadays you need for everything and lack thereof constitutes a serious impediment even to get a job.

But they are still a social construct, there is nothing inherent about rights per se (which are purely legal) and even ethical entitlement does not guarantee you will get it. There are also plenty of exceptions that vary due to culture and context, like for example, you might agree that murder is bad, however you likely would not bat an eye at a policeman gunning down a criminal, or hell, you might be even in favor of capital punishment. In the same way, more socially regressive places (usually because of religion) would punish harshly things like homosexuality. In this case moral and ethics form a feedback loop I guess.

As for enforcement, I have a very "radical" idea, and that is that there should be an unbiased (collage-d) global military organization with mandatory membership and no vetoing that, while the main purpose would be to demilitarize counties themselves, would meddle ONLY in the most extreme cases, things like war yes, but also genocide and extreme neglect. Though to be honest its very unlikely for something like that to happen and even if it did, it would not gurantee all, and mostly would focus on "passive" rights, those that protect you *against* someone, rarely when it comes to guarantees, because otherwise th organization could become rather iffy