Human Rights, definitions

The United Nations defines human rights as “those rights that are inherent in
our nature and without which we cannot live as human beings. Human rights are
freedom and entitlements inherent to all human beings”.

Human rights are also defined as “legal and moral entitlements that have
evolved as a basis for constructing how state power is used and particularly to limit
its use against the rights of the citizens

French philosopher Jean Jacques Maritain stressed why man has rights. “The
human person, he said, possesses rights because of the very fact that it is a person, a
whole, master of itself, and of its acts, and which consequently is not merely a
reason to an end, but an end which must be treated as such”.

Our National Hero Jose Rizal had this to say – “To me man is the masterpiece
of creation, perfect within his conditions, who cannot be deprived of any of his
component parts, moral as well as physical, without disfiguring and making him
miserable. God, fountain of wisdom, does not expect man, created in His image, to
allow himself to be fooled and blinded . . . Men were not created by God to be
enslaved, neither were they endowed with intelligence in order to be misled, nor
adorned with reason to be fooled by others”

Senator Jose W. Diokno, considered to be the father of Philippine Human

Rights, excerpts from his speech during the martial law period - “No cause is more
worthy than the cause of human rights. Human rights are more than legal concepts;
they are the essence of man. They are what make man human. That is why they are
called human rights. Deny them and you deny man's humanity.”

Supreme Court Associate Justice Ricardo Paras, in one of his landmark Social
Justice decisions – In the very beginning of human existence, human rights also
existed – rights implanted in human nature by God. Man loved justice because he
feared to suffer injustice; man loved dignity – for in his dignity he found
companionship with God. But man was inadequate and silent, man could not
appreciate the value of his human rights – and so he became a tool of those who
thrived on his ignorance; he became a cog in the machinery of human oppression;
and gradually, through the centuries, he lost the rights he never had an opportunity
to exercise