I. Introduction

II. Religious OriginsTwo major ideas central to human rights:

1. All people have dignity
2. The fate of people everywhere is our concern

Religious roots:

1. Human beings and the likeness of God, humans as sacred
2. Responsibility to others (e.g. tithing [i.e. Zakat], “brother’s keeper,” etc)

III. Political Philosophy OriginsNatural Law

1. The Greeks
2. Hugo Grotius Natural
1. Law applies to nations  
2. “father of international law”
3. John Locke
1. Right to Life, liberty, and Property in State of Nature
4. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
1. Natural rights to liberty and equality
2. Sovereignty rests in the people

Natural Law, with an ideal state of nature and the idea of pre-political, pre-social rights, is a precursor to the idea of universal human rights. 

IV. The Political RevolutionsThe American Declaration of Independence [Link to Declaration]

1. Builds on natural law and religion to claim that “all men are created equal…with certain unalienable rights….[including] life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.”

French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizen [Link to Declaration]

1. Builds on natural law and specifically Rousseau to make a claim about the “natural, inalienable and sacred rights of Man.”
2. 17 articles of French Declaration resonate strongly with articles listed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

U.S. Bill of Rights [Link to Bill]

1. Amendments I, IV, V, and VI.
2. Standards for Civil and Political Rights

V. Between the RevolutionsLimited development of human rights, according to most historians

1. “Two Waves of Rights,” i.e. Revolutions and end of WWII

In the long 19th Century, rise of alternative, non-HR ideologies

1. Nationalism and fascism

BUT there are some proto human rights movements

1. Abolitionists
2. Women’s Suffrage
3. Freedom of Serfs

AND there are 19th Century laws of war, i.e. “humanitarian law”

1. Geneva Convention of 1864
1. Gives birth to International Committee of the Red Cross
2. Henri Dunant and Battle of Solferino [Link]

VI. Conclusion