| > In general, whenever it comes to human rights - or civil rights as Americans like to call it Not to detract from the point you are making, but just to clarify, I would not use the terms 'human rights', 'civil rights', or 'civil liberties' as synonymous. Legally, they have very different technical meanings, but colloquially they not used interchangeably either. A very rough distinction legally: human rights are those which are bestowed by virtue of being born. Many (though not all) of the rights listed on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights[0] require no active action on the part of a government entity; rather, it would require active action not to respect those rights. Civil rights are those which are bestowed civilly, but are not inherently violated in the absence of government (or another third party). An example of the distinction colloquially: until very recently, marriage equality activists had to be very careful not to describe gay marriage as a 'civil right' in certain contexts, because among the African American community, 'civil rights' has a very specific meaning, and using it to describe the plight of (white) LGBT individuals[1] was not always received well. [0] http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ [1] Today we think of gay marriage as a relatively innocuous issue within the LGBT community, but it used to be quite divisive. It was seen as an initiative that affected mostly the white and wealthy members of the community, whereas issues such as LGBT homelessness affected primarily non-white members. |