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| Holocaust: te genocide of European Jews and others by the Nazi regime during World War II. |
| Multilateral: involving more than two countries or parties. |
Human rights, at their most basic level, seek to protect an individual’s right to life. Such protections range from the basic freedom from physical harm to highly complex forms of welfare assurance that encompass health, education, and the environment.
The very idea of human rights, as opposed to natural rights, emerged as a response to historical events that threatened the very right to exist for millions of vulnerable people. The horrors of the Holocaust led the people of the world to reassert the value of every human life and to create the international legal framework that ensured such atrocities would never occur again.
The practice of multilateral cooperation in matters involving violence had been well-established since the nineteenth century. A series of traditions and international agreements evolved to address the treatment of prisoners and soldiers on the battlefield. What was new about the genocides of the twentieth century was that they were perpetrated against noncombatant civilians who were largely defenseless.
Often, these extreme acts of violence were committed by governments against the very citizens whose rights those governments were meant to safeguard. International values and standards about the humane treatment of people in times of war needed to be extended to apply universally in all circumstances. It was clear that the rights of citizenship and strictly national enforcement mechanisms were no longer sufficient.
At first, the set of issues clustering around the topic of human rights and violence might not seem as controversial as some of the other issues this Brief will discuss later on. After all, who would object to the notion that governments and private citizens alike should not be allowed to kill or torture people? While such principles may seem to be clear cut in theory, they can become far more complicated when brought to bear on real-world situations. We will now turn to some of these debates.
Next: Torture and InhumanTreatment