The idea of a human right to liberty and natural rights originates mainly from philosophical and cultural debates during the Age of Enlightenment era (17th–18th centuries in Europe), which led to the American Revolution (1776), the French Revolution (1789), and later developments (such as the abolition of slavery in the United States in the 19th century and the granting of voting rights to women in the 20th century).
These human rights were enshrined in several famous declarations, including the United States Bill of Rights (1789), the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789), and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the UN (United Nations) (1948). Over the years, additional conventions were adopted by the UN, such as the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979), and others. Declarations from the American Humanist Association (1933, 1973, 2003) and the International Humanist and Ethical Union (1952, 2002) also reference human rights.
One of the most important declarations – the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) – establishes human dignity as an absolute and universal value that is binding at all times, in all places, without exception. Nowhere and at no time is it permissible – nor even possible – to strip a person of their membership in the human family, or of their worth and dignity, for any reason.
The declaration was formulated in the aftermath of the Holocaust, in which the Nazis sought to deny people their humanity and their belonging to the human family, and thus also their most basic human rights. Jews, Roma (Gypsies), people with physical or mental disabilities, homosexuals and lesbians, communists, and others were defined by the Nazis as “sub-human” (Untermensch), and hence as beings who could be stripped of all rights, exterminated without any regard, and used as raw material just like animals.
The assertion that human dignity is an absolute and universal value, which applies equally to all human beings at all times and without exception, is a direct counter-response from the world that fought and defeated Nazism, choosing to enshrine as a supreme value precisely the principle that the Nazis had most vehemently attacked.