J.D. Vance’s comments devaluing childless women, Donald Trump’s lies about Haitian immigrants and the Project 2025 agenda to dismantle U.S. civil rights laws show that many current-day Republicans do not believe all people deserve to be treated with dignity and equality. But in fact, every person has inherent human rights that are not contingent on who we are or whether a government recognizes our rights. 

The modern conception of human rights was articulated 75 years ago in the wake of World War II. Adopted by the United Nations on Dec. 10, 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was drafted by a committee with representatives from all regions of the world and chaired by first lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Article I of the declaration states: “All people are born equal in dignity and rights.”

Human rights are understood to be universal, indivisible and interconnected. With all 193 U.N. member states as signatories, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has since served as a blueprint for international human rights treaties and social movements across the globe.

In 2011, the U.N. issued a declaration asserting that everyone has the right to know, seek and receive information about their human rights and fundamental freedoms. Human rights education in the United States, however, is negligible. Very few K-12 schools teach human rights and only 7% of Americans can name their human rights. How can we fight for our human rights, or defend the rights of others, if we don’t know what they are?

In the U.S., we focus on civil and political rights — the right to be free from discrimination, the right to vote and assemble, and the right to free speech. But human rights encompass so much more. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights includes economic rights, such as living wages and a fair economy; as well as social rights, including health care, food, shelter, education, welfare and social security.

It also encompasses cultural rights, including freedom of and from religion, freedom of language and freedom of dress. Environmental rights to clean air, water and land are in the declaration, as well as sexual rights to have or not have children, to access birth control and abortion, to sexual pleasure, to marry or not, and to define one’s family.

Whereas civil and political rights are conditionally granted by governments, human rights are unconditional. They are not dependent on citizenship, personal characteristics or government action to create and bestow them on us. They are intrinsic to all human beings. While judges and lawmakers can deny and reverse our civil rights, as we have seen with abortion in the United States, human rights persist by virtue of our humanity.

Activists around the world have long leveraged the human rights framework. The U.S. civil rights movement began as a human rights movement: W.E.B. DuBois, the Civil Rights Congress and Malcolm X all called on the United Nations and the global community to redress human rights violations against people of African descent. Civil rights leaders, such as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., helped inspire creation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965). But the racist political climate in the United States at the time led activists to pursue a narrower civil rights framework.

In recent years, U.S.-based activists have relied on human rights principles in American courts and turned to international tribunals to seek redress when national laws failed them. One example is the case of Jessica Lenahan, whose daughters were abducted and killed by her estranged husband in 1999 after police in Castle Rock, Colorado, repeatedly refused to enforce her domestic violence restraining order against him.

After losing her case against the Castle Rock police before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005, Lenahan filed a complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which ruled that the U.S. had violated her human rights. A more recent example of U.S. activists using human rights frameworks is when Philonise Floyd, brother of George Floyd who was murdered by police, testified before the U.N. Human Rights Council. This testimony led to an international probe into police killings of Black people in America and into violence against political demonstrators.

In October, the Smith College Human Rights Initiative and the Program for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality are co-sponsoring two human rights panel discussions that are open to the public.

The first, “From the Margins to the Center: How Black Women Advance Reproductive Justice Policy,” features reproductive justice policy leaders Marcela Howell, Regina Davis Moss and Sapna Khatri on Oct. 16 from 6 to 8 p.m. in the Campus Center Carroll Room. Doors will be open from 6 to 7 p.m. to view the Black Reproductive Justice HERstory Walk Exhibit, and the panel will be held from 7 to 8 p.m.

The second panel, “Liberating Spirit,” features renowned human rights lawyer Ann Beeson on Oct. 22 from 7 to 8:15 pm in the Neilson Library Browsing Room.

Transgender rights activist Katherine Cross once said that “unknown rights are no rights at all.” As our civil rights are attacked and dismantled at ever increasing rates, it is more important than ever that we all learn our human rights.

Carrie N. Baker is a professor in the Program for the Study of Women and Gender at Smith College and a regular contributor to Ms. Magazine. Carrie Cuthbert is a human rights educator and director of the Human Rights Initiative at Smith College.