Balancing Rights and Obligations in Human Rights

Running Head: Social Science
Social Science
Essay
System04104
6/25/2019

Social Science
1
Introduction
Human rights apply everywhere to all people and are the basic to humanity.
Understanding the human rights is an important thing as it shows the individual status as
human being. Human rights also show the collective status of people as the member of global
community of humankind. However, there are some ethical issues found between fulfilling
the requirement of rights and the obligations/responsibilities of people (Donnelly, 2013). To
understand the effects of human rights on our daily life and our responsibility towards these
rights, it is necessary for people to understand and recognise the need to make a balance
between rights and our obligation/responsibilities. This essay helps to understand the need of
balance between rights and obligations with some real life examples. This assignment also
helps to know that what factors or ethical issues forces people to make balance between their
rights and obligations in their daily life.
Discussion on Human Rights
People have their own dignity and value and human right is the basis that helps in
identifying and recognizing the fundamental worth and value of a person. Human rights are
the important part of people’s lives. The human rights of any country show the basic rights of
people and their responsibilities towards another people. These ideas and responsibility of
people also applies towards the community and world, which they belong (Lauren, 2011).
There are thirty types of human rights, declared in the Universal Declaration of
Human rights (UDHR). The UDHR is includes various human rights which is prepared by
different legal and cultural background representatives from all over the world from different
religions and culture (Fig. 1). The main aim of these human rights is to protect the basic
fundamental rights of people and provide equal and immutable rights to people in human
society and the objective of these rights to serve as a foundation for freedom, justice, and
peace around the world (Assembly, 1998). However, balancing the rights and obligations of
people in the country is a major challenge and it often causes ethical issues or violation of
human rights in the country (Engle, 2011). For example, according to the article 25 of
Universal Declaration of Human Rights people have right of proper food, safety, and housing
in country. Under this article, people have right to security and necessary social services in
case of unemployment, sickness, old age, or in those circumstances where life is beyond of

Social Science
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their control. The article 18 states that everyone right of freedom of thought and people can
think about their own religion or belief. People have also freedom to change their religion or
belief in both publically or in private. The people have also right to manifest their religion,
worship, God, practice, belief etc. to other people. The article 22 of UDHR states that as a
member of society, every person has rights of social security and is entitled to realization
(Assembly, 1998). The people have right to access international support and cooperation in
accordance with resources of the country or state and also right of getting free development
of his personality. These rights generally provide responsibility/obligation to people towards
the other people, community, and society. It shows that every people have equal rights that
provide freedom to live a happy life with other people in the society.
Fig.1 (Source: Lauren, 2011)
Discussion on obligations/responsibilities
The moral duty and obligation of people refers to their responsibilities towards the
basic human rights. In contemporary Australia, many people understand the human rights in
their own ways and may have different ideas and opinion about it. For example, a person