Essay on Human Rights, Democracy, and the Issue of Starvation

This essay delves into the interconnectedness of human rights, democracy, and starvation, examining their philosophical underpinnings. It begins by defining human rights as universal entitlements, emphasizing the significance of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the importanc...Read More

Running head: PHYLOSOPHY OF SOCIAL LIFE 1
Human Rights, Democracy and Starvation
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PHYLOSOPHY OF SOCIAL LIFE 2
Human Rights, Democracy and Starvation
Human rights include the rights that are inherent to every person regardless of nationality,
sex, race, gender, religion, language or other statuses. They include a right to work and
education, right to life, freedom of expression and opinion, freedom from torture and slavery and
many others. All people are entitled to such rights without discrimination (Donnelly, 2013).
These rights should be universalized across the different cultures of the world since all human
beings are considered to be equal. All human rights are supposed to be universal with no
category that is more universal than the other. In this case, the rights need to protect every person
regardless of any differences in race, ethnicity, background, culture or affiliation. The 1948
declaration of human rights is a milestone document in human rights history. The UDHR
(universal declaration of human rights) document was drafted by different representatives who
had varied cultural and legal backgrounds from different parts of the globe and proclaimed the
general assembly of UN (United Nations) in Paris in 1948, tenth December to act as a common
achievement standard for all nations and all people (Donnelly, & Whelan, 2018). The document
sets out the fundamental rights of people to be protected universally and has since been
translated in to different languages. From the look of things about the document, the rights are
sufficient for human existence and are complete. This means that it would not be necessary to
add or deduct anything from them.
This includes the rights to the whole communities that seem to protect the rights for
groups of people in the community including the ones that are thought to be most marginalized
or discriminated against. The rights for whole communities for instance just involve the rights of
individuals extended to cater for the people who share the same characteristics and are meant to
protect the people in general which means they are also protecting each person as an individual

PHYLOSOPHY OF SOCIAL LIFE 3
(Russell, 2017). The reason is that no community or group of people that should consider itself
more superior to the other regardless of any forms of statuses that describes them. It is hard to
consider the community rights to have more weight than the individual rights. The reason is that
they protect people both individually and as a group meaning that the same way individual rights
are protected, as a person, the same happens when such people who share common
characteristics are together. In this case individual rights are as important as community rights as
they all serve to make life comfortable to the people at all means (Mayer, 2018). The community
rights are meant to protect the rights of such groups of people like the disadvantaged in the
community, or those people who are weak and normally fall victim to social discrimination,
assault, violence, or any form of mistreatment in the community. This shows that community and
individual rights support each other to achieve the purpose of protecting the people in a universal
manner.
Democracy involves a government system by the whole of the population or the various
members eligible of state, which is typically through representatives who have been elected. In
most cases, people exercise democracy through voting. In a democratic country or situation, the
rights of all people are protected and people can exercise freedom to do all things that do not
harm or endanger the lives of fellow people (Ciulla, 2013). Democracy serves as a universal
ideal through which human beings need to thrive. People can live democracy out by being able
to share their views as catered for by the rights of expression and opinion. This means that
democracy allows people to criticize any wrong doing regardless of the people who do it. When
people can go against any wrong doing even when it is being commited by the state government
without being harassed or coerced provided what they say or do falls under the universal law.
Democracy is always a good thing in the society since it can shape the way people live and

PHYLOSOPHY OF SOCIAL LIFE 4
respect one another unlike the other types of ruling (Haslam, Reicher, & Platow, 2010). In a
democratic world, people exercise democracy through the ability to vote in and out the type of
people they consider them good. This is unlike the case of other types of ruling systems such as
fascism, anarchism. The reason is that power is controlled by the majority of people and not a
small group of citizens.
Democracy is a contrast case with other government forms where power can be either
controlled by an individual as is the case with absolute monarchy or a situation where control
power is shared by a small group of individuals defined as oligarchy (Schumpeter, 2010).
However, in the current world it is not funny to find that these forms of governments exist as
one. This means that governments exist as mixed oligarchic, democratic and monarchic
elements. This is very confusing and has become quite hard to define any. Karl Popper defined a
democracy world in relation to tyranny or dictatorial rule by focusing on the opportunities that
make people able to control their leaders including ousting them without any need of having a
revolution. Fascism makes the form of authoritarian ultra-nationalism and radical right-wing that
is characterized by forcible suppression or opposing powers, dictatorial power or strong
regimentation of the society and/or of the economy. A good example of fascism is that happened
in Europe by 20th century. In simple terms democracy, though not possible enough is preferable
to monarchy, oligarchy, and fascism since people can exercise the freedom of electing the people
they consider respectful to human rights and ousting the leaders they think are disrespectful to
the rule of human rights (Giddens, 2013). It is not a case of people being stupid or not in a case
of democracy but rather a state of freedom that people enjoy over their leaders. A universal state
of democracy means that it is applicable to all people in a country both individually and as a
group of citizens within any country.

PHYLOSOPHY OF SOCIAL LIFE 5
‘Famine, affluence and morality’ involves the work of writer and socialist Peter Singer of
1971 that became published in 1972 under the public and philosophy affairs (Singer, P. 2016). It
claims that the affluent people in the community have the obligation to donate more resources
towards the humanitarian causes than has been considered in the western cultures. Singer is right
about the aspect of sharing wealth to the people who are in need of help in the society. As human
beings, we ought to have an inherent obligation to help people who are starving in the society. It
should be a rule and not simply a decision for affluent people in the community to help the poor
and other people starving or in need of help. People need to share foodstuffs and clothing to the
starving people or give them any form of help that helps deliver them out of poverty instead of
having a community where the most affluent control resources discriminatively (Giddens, 2013).
This behavior should not be determined by the aspect of whether one is responsible or not as a
person but it is a culture that needs to be cultivated for in the society. There should be rules to
determine how people share resources with the most vulnerable in the society including the
national government. The state government should be in support of a responsibility of the
affluent people sharing and contributing to humanitarian causes in the community. Such people
can work hand in hand with the government to ensure that poverty is fought against in the
society.
People can be as responsible as the American people who normally take it as an
obligation to help the vulnerable people in the community. This is possible even at a better
practice than the Americans do it. However, this form of responsibility is not possible without
the support of the state government whereby they define ways of initiating this culture among the
citizens (McCrink, Bloom, & Santos, 2010). It is not possible whereby the people in leadership
are more self-minded and fail to care about the people they lead. In this case leaders are to show

PHYLOSOPHY OF SOCIAL LIFE 6
the direction of how resources can be equitably shared among the people in a country. Starvation
can be ended by having people in the community empowered through employment, education
and support in relation to personal businesses. The government can increase chances of people
with merit to have some form of employment that makes them independent financially. By
educating the citizens, they make them able to get a job and earn to change their livelihoods and
that of their families. To the people lacking skills of education, they can be enabled to start their
small businesses that determine how they live in the community (Ainscow, Dyson, Goldrick, &
West, 2013). Investing in operations that give employment to the people should be the work of
the government. At the same time, resources need to be well distributed across the country
through increased taxation on the wealthiest groups in the society based on the level one has.
This would ensure that even when the people cannot be personally responsible to share with the
poor, the government does it through taxing and sending help to the poor in the community. As
an individual, I can do something to help myself in my life such as starting a business and using
the profits to help those who starve in the community.

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References
Ainscow, M., Dyson, A., Goldrick, S., & West, M. (2013). Developing equitable education
systems. Routledge.
Ciulla, J. B. (2013). Leadership ethics. International Encyclopedia of Ethics, 1-7.
Donnelly, J. (2013). Universal human rights in theory and practice. Cornell University Press.
Donnelly, J., & Whelan, D. (2018). International human rights. Routledge.
Giddens, A. (2013). The third way: The renewal of social democracy. John Wiley & Sons.
Haslam, S. A., Reicher, S. D., & Platow, M. J. (2010). The new psychology of leadership:
Identity, influence and power. Psychology Press.
Mayer, A. E. (2018). Islam and human rights: Tradition and politics. Routledge.
McCrink, K., Bloom, P., & Santos, L. R. (2010). Children's and adults' judgments of equitable
resource distributions. Developmental Science, 13(1), 37-45.
Russell, B. (2017). The forms of power. In Leadership Perspectives (pp. 193-201). Routledge.
Schumpeter, J. A. (2010). Capitalism, socialism and democracy. routledge.
Singer, P. (2016). Famine, affluence, and morality. Philosophy & public affairs, 229-243.
Oxford University Press, USA.