The term human rights is almost as interesting for what it excludes as what it includes. For those conscious of speciesism, it is clear that many of the rights we would apply to humans are not exclusive to our species. The banning of cruel or unusual punishments for instance, would be no less necessary for humans as other species. The idea that there would be no overlap of rights between animal species is almost to deny our common evolutionary heritage. Emotions, senses, pleasure, pain, suffering, joy, memory, intimacy, relationships, community and so much more; there are many things pertinent to the need for rights that we share to varying degrees with other species. Different rights might be applicable to different types of beings and levels of sentience, but they are not wholly separate.

In discussing human rights it is vital to avoid slipping into a human-centred frame of reference that places us into a wholly separate sphere of consideration. This idea that all life on earth is meaningful only as it relates to humans, called anthropocentrism, has led to immense suffering in the non-human world. Religions codified this kind of thinking; for some achieving human existence is the penultimate goal of life before union with the divine; for others, humans uniquely possess a soul or humans alone are particularly important to their supernatural entities of choice. Many people reject religion but perpetuate a similar frame of reference, assigning humans a worth incomparable to any other species. A modern, evolutionary understanding should enable us to see our kinship with all life; with each level of sentient capacity requiring deeper consideration, especially the capacity to suffer. The reasons for forbidding many cruelties to humans are almost identical to the reasons for forbidding such treatment to other beings. Understanding this reality beneath a discussion of human rights helps ground our thinking in a firmer universal compassion.

The intention here is to discuss rights that are more specifically due to humans, with the caveat that overlap with more widely applicable rights is inevitable. Humans are unique, though it is hard to define exactly why; we have cognitive skills that seem either different or at least different in degree to other species, so it makes sense that we should have unique rights. Rights often differ just as a matter of practicality, it makes little sense to discuss the voting rights of birds or the human right to photosynthesis. 

Humans have always had customs and laws governing our behaviour towards one another. Often these were framed as religious or cultural duties intended to maintain order and enforce a stable hierarchy. Written examples of codes of conduct go back thousands of years from the Code of Hammurabi in Mesopotamia to the Edicts of Ashoka in India, the rights of ancient Roman citizens, the Magna Carta in England, the teachings of Confucious/Kong Fuzi in China and arguably most religious texts. These codes often referred to the rights and obligations of one group or another but also replicated some of the prejudice of their times; they often didn’t extend equally to women, non-citizens, slaves or lower classes. Religious doctrines often excluded the heathen, the untouchable, the non-conformist or even believers in subtly different versions of faiths. 

A more universal conception of human rights is a secular, egalitarian notion that only reached widespread acceptance in the twentieth century. Universal rights, especially in areas like suffrage, law, belief and freedom of expression, are a symbol that a society's governance has reached a basic level of civilisational maturity. We should consider the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1945 as one of the high points of human history. This document has been ratified by every member of the United Nations and sets out a highly progressive basis for individual rights. Despite some archaic gendered language common at the time, the authors of the preamble and text led by Eleanor Roosevelt make clear their universal intent:

“Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.” - Article 2, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Unfortunately, many countries, if not most who signed this declaration have yet to fulfil the lofty ambitions of the declaration. Some appear to have done little more than sign it as a matter of political expediency. Declarations have some moral power but without implementation and enforcement, they lack the political power to properly uplift a society. The universal implementation of the intent behind the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is one of the great future tasks of humanity. It is the responsibility of all people to do some part in furthering this implementation and this duty lands heaviest on those who possess greater freedom and resources. To properly exercise this profound duty, we must be well informed. We must be able to understand human rights in a global, historical and philosophical context.

States

States are seen as being the primary organ responsible for protecting the rights of their citizens. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that the elite of a state feel a strong duty of care towards their population, especially the parts of the population that are not key to their maintenance of power. Various communities within a society can justly feel that their interests are not properly represented by their governments. Even in functioning democracies, something like the tyranny of the majority can take place. Democracy also does not automatically negate other forms of power and there are many factors that can unduly influence policy and voting, such as money and disinformation, which corrode democratic forms. Because of the many issues surrounding the holding of power in even the best-run societies, some have questioned the entire concept of wider political organisation. Anarchists for instance have traditionally questioned whether the idea of states does more harm than good in the world, and others have argued for minimalist states. 

Part of our opinion on states will be a result of how we define them, however, coming up with a definition of states that encompasses the wide variety of political systems in the world is difficult. A deliberately loose definition would be that a state is a defined geographical area that is recognised as an autonomous political unit by the world's political community. This is slightly recursive, and it might be easier to externalise the definition to something more practical. We could say states are those recognised by the United Nations, with some grey are surrounding non-member observer states. Max Weber gave a more radical definition of the state as "a polity that maintains a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence", though this is not a universally accepted definition. It perhaps ignores that control over some states is vague or contested, with multiple groups holding power in different areas, or that in despotic states elites care little about maintaining legitimacy in their use of violence in holding power. Some might also point out that some more progressive states in our modern world are just as or even more concerned about avoiding the use of violence, internally or externally. This might have been less obvious in Weber's day, who died in the 1920s before the widespread social-democratic shift got underway in many countries, still, his definition appeals to enough people for it to persist. 

Concerning the meaning of states as a governing body over areas and their populations, ideas that states are the legitimate representatives or protectors of people's rights can lead to strange language. For instance, when a regime oppresses or murders people within the borders of their state, the victims are referred to as “their own people”. A familiarity with most of human history shows that elites have historically been based more on the oppression of “their own” people than on any form of consent. Far from universally caring about the populations they rule over and feeling responsibility for them, for many states the subjugation of "their people" is the primary purpose of elite oppression. Having power over someone does not in any just sense make them yours or allow you to speak for them, people cannot be claimed or owned in this way. Legitimate authority only comes from the consent of the governed, in a situation where everyone is free to contend with, freely question and revoke that authority. Legitimate authority can never be automatic, it must be able to justify itself ethically and practically as in the wider interests of all those under its scope.

Nationalism bids us see the world as collections of states, where individuals owe potentially murderous allegiance to the rulers of each state by virtue of the fact that they happen to be born or live within a given area. Like the corporation or religion, states benefit materially if they can convince the people to have a self-sacrificial loyalty to them, regardless of how much they have done to earn that loyalty. States would be best understood as administrative fictions; organisational units above local polities but not quite at the global level. The borders and membership of states should probably be much more malleable and flexible according to the consent of the governed. The practicalities of this would need to be thought through, not every handful of people who want to avoid paying taxes or keep slaves should be allowed to do so. A just world government to arbitrate such matters would probably be necessary, for this and many other matters, but it would require a level of civilisational maturity  

We may see many borders as irrelevant fictions that appear only on maps rather than landscapes, however, these fictions can powerfully govern people's lives and even deaths. There is a huge disparity in the social welfare that an individual can expect to receive based on which state they happen to be born or live within. There is no justice or fairness in this arbitrary reality and we need a deeper conception of humanity, of global community to address it. Far more of the resources of the wealthy should be expended helping build a resilient economic basis for increasing prosperity and flourishing for the less wealthy. People fall into romanticising the poor and the rich according to their ideological requirements, but it is their common humanity in all its frailty and potential that is most important. Not everyone who is poor is deserving, some are lazy, selfish, superstitious and unkind, but they still deserve the level of human dignity rich people with similar qualities would receive. We are all thrown into the world, and none of us has any special claim by birth to deserve more of its fruits than anyone else. There should be a non-negotiable level of material justice in the world, that which is required for human flourishing, regardless of what side of a border people happen to find themselves on. The surplus productivity of humanity, beyond that which is required to fulfil our basic needs while maintaining a healthy environment, can be argued over and competed for but a priority of any just system of economic organisation must be to provide a decent, universal and sustainable level of material existence to all people.  

Humanity and the world would be better served if we and our governments were more cosmopolitan - cognizant of our greater commonalities with all people. We also need a more powerful system of overseeing human rights, both positive (freedom to) and negative (freedom from) rights. Worrying about the potential pitfalls of increasing global governance is not just something to agitate conspiracy theorists. The handing of any significant level of power to a centralised body is fraught with risks. Despite this, however, we need some method of ensuring universal human rights beyond the interests and momentary political realities of international power. It is possible the world as a collective is not mature enough for such a system, though it is possible a powerful subset of nations could fill this role. It should possibly be comprised of all nations that are functioning democracies and have fulfilled key tenets of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This subset of nations would not be fixed, indeed one of the measures of its success would be that it continually expanded. This would not be to replace the UN as it stands, there is a necessity of having a supra-national body such as the General Assembly where every nation, regardless of its politics, is involved. We need international coordination on all sorts of matters. The pushing forward of our collective rights however is only going to be impeded by chaining it to the consent of authoritarian governments and smaller or subject nations who will do their bidding for the right price.

Entire nations and cultures are currently ruled by people who do not have their interests at heart and merely wish to govern and exploit the territory they inhabit. This can be for the use of resources, as living room for growing populations, or simply nationalistic inanities. National borders rarely if ever involved anything like consent of the governed, but rather resemble the agreements between rival gangs to avoid mutually destructive conflict by designating areas of victims for each to exclusively exploit. Oppression is unjust, regardless of whether we drape a flag over that oppression or not. While it is common to blame elites for nationalism, there seems to be an evolutionary tendency for people to be fervent supporters of whatever they see as their group. All tiers of society have often enthusiastically embraced ideas of nationalism. As Satre said "When the rich wage war, it is the poor who die", however, the poor seem to have often been all too easily convinced to send their children to die for the interests of the rich.

The Second World War is a chastening example of how evolutionary group identity can be abused as a mechanism for internal and external hatred. We tend to focus on the behaviour and personality of leaders such as Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito and Tojo, but immediately after the war, most thinkers were more focused on the character of the societies that elevated these people. There will always be bad people who seek power and have no scruples about using any tactic to get it. Our irrational selves can be manipulated for such purposes, even against our own interests. All things being equal, political leaders who try to engage citizens with truth and rational discussion will always be at a disadvantage to leaders willing to utilise a wider range of tools and strategies. The primary protection we have from this exploitation of our irrational selves is a rational, informed and politically mature population. We should of course try to limit overt manipulation, but it is just as important to ensure that people can perceive it when they are the targets of it. People need the historical and political knowledge to understand that "burning it all down" has and will probably never be a sensible strategy for progress. The tools of emotional manipulation are not complex, and like the magician's trick unmasked if people understand them they are unable to be fooled by them. 

We all share destructive in-built biases to care more about the people closer to our identity than others. If this is not to become a destructive force in the world, we must balance it within by making a conscious effort to care about those who don't share their identities. We should feel an instinctive sense of discomfort when anyone drapes themselves with any flag or identity too fervently, including the flags we share. When anyone uses terms like family, mother, father, brother, sister and our country/land/nation/people, zeroing in on our evolutionary in-group biases, we should recognise that we are being manipulated. In these moments we should be vigilant, thinking carefully about what we are being manipulated towards and away from; a more universal compassion or a manipulator's prejudices and power. 

Capitalism, consumerism and competition

Poverty brings with it many ills. Previously humanity could justify the disadvantage of so many people by the fact that we lacked the ability to provide a decent standard of living for all. In our technologically advanced world, we no longer have that excuse and must instead look to our ethics for the lack of global progress. In wealthy societies, overconsumption is now such a widespread problem that it is affecting our health and individual flourishing. The surplus production of wealthy societies, including many unnecessary and unhealthy luxuries, should be directed towards alleviating the underconsumption in poorer societies. Only once we have a common basic level of human dignity in the world, regardless of nationality or circumstance, will conspicuous consumption be anything but a garish display of our moral and philosophical shallowness.

Capitalism often takes the praise and blame for things that it correlates with but does not cause. Capitalism did not invent markets, war, inequality or human progress. The praise and blame for our world is not in capitalism but in ourselves. Those who treat it like an omniscient or omnipotent god, who imbue it with almost mystical power for either good or bad, would contribute more positively to the world if they understood it more as the amoral force that it is.

With that caveat out of the way, it does seem fair to blame capitalism as the reigning economic ideology of our age; an age where we have the resources and ability to create a fairer world but fail to do so. Unfortunately, capitalism has become an ideology for many rather than a simple, blind economic tool; treating it as an infallible force hands human lives over to something that lacks a sense of right and wrong. It is not what is present in capitalism but rather what it lacks, a conscience, wisdom, empathy and compassion that leaves it unable to guide human societies to consistent moral outcomes. The almost semi-religious reverence for capitalism in much of the economics community needs to be tempered with an understanding of capitalism's highly consequential, and often brutal limitations. A system that only cures poverty or other ills if it can make a profit in doing so is not a system suitable for governing our world.

There has perhaps been too much focus on the systems governing society rather than on the philosophies and character of the people within the systems, especially those who wield power. History has so far shown that no system can stand being ruled by a corrupt and selfish class. It seems undesirable for either communism, capitalism or any other economic system to win a comprehensive victory at this point in human understanding. Humans are incredibly intelligent and adaptable, almost any system could work given enough shared goodwill and intent. History tells us that many countries have managed to provide a high standard of living for their citizens with mixes of ideas from socialism, capitalism, liberalism and other systems. We seek the perfect system, ignoring that we don't have any perfect mechanism to design or run such a system. Good societal governance is more about human psychology and tempering the weaknesses common to all of us - selfishness, laziness, in-group preferences and so on, as it is about implementing the complex systems that intellectuals delude themselves into believing they have perfectly thought through. Radicals and revolutionaries might target overthrowing the elites, but history tells us that another elite similarly configured with common human flaws will take their place; the history of governance by people who overthrew existing orders is patchy at best, especially by radical revolutionaries blinded by their own hubris. Some elites are so evil that overthrowing them is a moral necessity, but power should not remain in the hands of the people with the passion and viciousness necessary to overthrow a ruling regime.

Capitalism, especially in its libertarian strands, says that property ownership is a right that overrides almost all others; as they say "possession is nine-tenths of the law". This belief says that you have the right to own as many luxury goods as you desire, and this right overrides someone else's need for basic housing, healthcare or food. I once heard a libertarian capitalist say that if even 1% of their money was taken by the government and used to help people that would be too much. How easy it is to support opinions that benefit ourselves, to regard with contempt the people in different life circumstances to ourselves.

I once would have said that I didn't care how rich some people were, but I did care how poor some people were. I have come to see that as a disconnected view of human psychology. The widespread obsession with personal consumption and status has left behind too many people, feeling like irrelevant pawns in a larger game. Some inequality is tolerable when it reflects greater contributions to the common good, I think most people would agree with the fairness of rewarding those who work the hardest and give the most. Currently inequality, however, is marred by high status often being sourced from anti-social and anti-environmental endeavours, and it comes at the expense of wider human dignity. We would wish to have a society in which we can understand and respect the people who occupy its positions of greater power. Instead, too many elites deserve not respect but contempt, especially as some of the most contemptible occupy themselves in waging an ideological war in their own interests; what we once would have simply described as class war.

Individualism, family and group identity

Evolution has given us a bias to caring more about people who share our genes, without giving us an infallible means of testing who actually shares our genes. We instead use loose heuristics such as accent, language, similarity, familiarity etc, all things that would have worked well for most of our evolutionary history. This also isn't a human trait, this is a trait that predates the human cognitive miracle, we do this without being conscious of it. This gives us a strong group identity, lurking away in our subconscious, that can be manipulated or simply misfire. Racist, nationalist, religious and many other forms of conflict are related to this group identity. Studies have shown this bias can be artificially stimulated on the flimsiest of pretexts, eye colour is used in some instances, in others a wristband or just arbitrary groupings. We also have the bias our senses give us to focus on our own desires; even if we can learn not to regard people who seem different to us with automatic suspicion, their lives aren’t real to our senses. Our evolutionary programming therefore doesn't necessarily help us in expanding our circles of compassion, something so much needed in the world. Both of these biases lean us towards self-interest and need to be overcome if we are to deal justly in the world.

You might agree with this logic, but you could just as easily deny it, you could say we should lean into our evolutionary programming. If so, I do not believe I could rationally dissuade you from this position. Humans have the intellectual freedom to believe anything, no matter how ridiculous, as the persistence and power of quite irrational religions have shown. This is another reality we need to contend with if we wish to make positive change in the world. 

Conclusion

As stated in John Rawl’s philosophy of the “original position” the abstract chances of our birth and circumstances have for too long determined our chance of human flourishing. Human rights are at root the idea that all those experiencing life should be shielded as much as possible from unnecessary suffering so that they can have the best chance of living well and fulfilling their individual potential. 

It matters to us if we live in a just world because our happiness is interdependent with each other. For selfish individuals being surrounded by the suffering of others means little, but for what I hope is the majority of people the suffering of others creates a psychological burden. It is thus not only for those who are most at risk of their rights being violated that we should struggle but also for our own psychological well-being. The experiences of others in the world we live in are important to us when we contemplate our own meaning of existence.

There has been a dramatic improvement in human life in recent history and this is often attributed to capitalism. Whilst I suspect it has more to do with political freedom, moral progress and technological advancement, I care less about the path to a better world than the end goal. Whatever system would lay a claim for guiding us into the future, and I imagine it will be a fluctuating combination of democratic socialism, liberalism and capitalism, it must lay out a clear path to that better world. It needs to, amongst other things, explain how it will go about ending poverty and providing universal human rights. This should be not in some far-off future, or dependent on market conditions, but in the near term and independent of uncontrollable assumptions.

As individuals, we should take opportunities to join our voice to calls for a just world, and if those opportunities to speak don’t exist we should help make them a first priority. Information and ideas are a battleground, and if we do not participate, we cede the space potentially to people with greater resources and self-interest. We should also support others in making positive changes. If able we should donate a percentage of our income to effective altruistic organisations trying to alleviate the suffering of the less fortunate. We should join ourselves to political parties and movements trying to create a kinder, fairer world.

Suffering in life is inevitable, but together we can do much to alleviate and avoid it. By freeing people as much as possible from suffering we give them a chance to be their best selves, and contribute to world culture and learning from which we all benefit. We are focusing too much on our individual, often trivial desires; marketing, political operatives and corporations have colluded in encouraging our biases towards these individualistic behaviours, at the expense of our other more positive, holistic biases a healthier society might prefer to encourage. It is not the celebration of our individual selves that we want to discourage, quite the opposite, we want individuals to acknowledge and reclaim their power, but not to do so at the expense of or in competition with others. 

Many people on all sides of politics will tell you that the individual doesn't matter, but believing this fiction is a toxic self-fulfilling prophecy. Each of us is desperately needed in the wider struggle. We all play a part in constructing the collective conversation of the world. The rights of sentient beings everywhere are governed by our shared sense of meaning and our philosophies. We need to claim our power, our part in the wider ideological system of humanity, and push it towards more just and beautiful ends.

Human rights, animal rights, a better world, these are worthy and meaningful things that a moral life must touch upon. Being a supporter of human rights is almost like a tax on our mental resources we must take on to be a responsible and progressive member of humanity. To waste our human potential by spending our lives gazing into a mirror of ourselves, is not only shallow and empty but leaves others who so desperately need our help to suffer. 

Gandhi's quote is no less true for being perhaps overused - Be the change you want to see in the world. 

Actions

If you need help getting started, here are some suggestions.

Spend some amount of your mental resources educating yourself about human rights, and keep your knowledge reasonably updated. A decent way to engage would be to join one of the many active organisations promoting human rights, from the UNHCR, Amnesty International, Medicine Sans Frontiers, Global Witness, Human Rights Watch and so on. They have email lists or memberships if you have the means, but ideally, you would preference email lists that span organisations, for instance, I have a Google Alert set up for this purpose. In addition to this, take some time to orient yourself on the major human rights concerns in the world. You can do this by reading the annual human rights reports put about by whatever organisation in the space you trust. Periodically, maybe every year or two, scan over them again to ensure you are up to date. If you see a protest for human rights, make a point of going along, and maybe dragging someone else with you, make a day of it. Keep an eye on petitions and letters you can write, Amnesty is especially good for this, but communicating with local politicians and so on is also powerful. Consume responsibly, we are voting for a certain sort of world every time we give our resources away. Finally, of course, if you have the resources, donate; even a small regular amount is a good start.