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Do human rights exist if no one is willing to protect or enforce them?

This is a very deep question, and it reminds me of the famous thought problem, "If a tree falls in the woods, and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"


Our entire understanding of human rights (as an idea and as "things") is based on the fact that there have been times and places where human rights were not explicitly defined and people chose to abuse these otherwise naturally understood concepts. For example, we might feel that it's common sense that no person should be murdered or be forced to labor without adequate pay. When we look at the reality of our global history, both of these rights to life and livelihood have been violated a number of times. If we, as individual cultures and as a globally connected species, create a social contract regarding human rights, we can better try to prevent violations and have appropriate responses in place. 


Even though we are such a highly connected global community, we still experience divisions on the basis of language, ethnicity, location, and religion. Some people may feel that these divisions are enough to justify the violations of others who do not fall into our own identity group, but this is not true. Human rights are inalienable and hold true for all people. The fact that to this day there are those who might wish to violate the rights of others really speaks to how much we need to have human rights guidelines explicitly laid out. If every person were to agree and know in their hearts and minds what constitutes human rights and respect or violation of these rights, we might not need to have explicit guidelines. We might not even have a need for the idea of human rights if everyone had an internally understood and outwardly practiced concept of respect for the human person. 


I think that to answer your question in a philosophical sense, no, "human rights" as an idea does not exist if there is nobody around to violate or enforce respect for others. When I am alone by myself in a room, there is nobody to violate my human rights, nobody to enforce it, and so the idea of human rights does not even come into play. In a greater and more practical sense, I do believe that human rights exist regardless of the presence of an enforcer. Even if there is nobody in a room with me to violate my personhood, I still have a right to life and livelihood.

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