Cursory Overview of the Theoretical Foundations of Human Rights and Main Principles of Some of the Fundamental Human Rights

This chapter, specifically prepared for the courses taught in post-Soviet countries, aims to show that the value of studying human rights should be searched for in their very intimacy to our everyday’s life, since human rights are not something abstract or distant to ourselves and our environments. It introduces the fundamental features, foundations of human rights, and a brief history of the concept of human rights. This chapter also explores why human rights are universal and do not belong to a particular culture or civilization. The relativist approach to human rights, which may ensue either from moral and [unbalanced] cultural relativism, is criticized. By introducing the various categories of human rights such as ‘civil and political’, ‘social’, ‘absolute’, ‘non-absolute’, and ‘substantive’ human rights, it argues that norms of human rights have deep philosophical roots and are constantly growing and developing. The chapter provides a comprehensive background on the adoption of the major documents in the field of human rights such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) of 1948. It also moves further to cover the freedom of thought and the freedom of expression by distinguishing the two notions and subsequently introduces the underpinnings of freedom of conscience and religion