Human Rights: Reclaiming the Foundational Policy Intent

In 2025, Power to Persuade has invited articles on the theme of the relevance of rights for 21st century policy. This post from Everyday Human Rights, an independent, non-political human rights educational consultancy, argues for the continued relevance of human rights frameworks as a tool for policy makers.

When discussing the relevance of human rights in the modern world, it’s helpful to review the original policy intent behind their creation. Understanding the collective nature of the agreed principles, their history and purpose better positions us to see how human rights are intended to be applied in everyday policy decisions and can help us maintain human dignity, even in the face of competing priorities.

Rights Have Always Existed to Build Collaboration

Throughout human history, certain natural rights have shaped how people interact with one another (Paul Gordon Lauren, 2003). Ancient civilisations, religions and Indigenous cultures are often grounded in concepts of inherent human worth, dignity and reciprocal obligations. The starting point for human rights is the idea that they are inherent entitlements – they belong to us simply because we are human, not because a government grants them. The idea of a common code of behaviour to build trust and cooperation has always existed.

From Individual Choice to Global State Obligations

Following the devastation of World War II, this idea of inherent rights shifted from an individual choice to a framework for global state obligations. Drawing on ancient wisdom and key political thinkers, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and its subsequent treaties were formalised on the principles of respect and dignity, along with international monitoring mechanisms to ensure accountability. This was a deliberate policy move to ensure future state action remains within ethical boundaries and prevents oppression.

A Standard That Endures

While history is full of examples of governments and authorities failing to respect, protect, or fulfil standards, this does not negate the framework’s fundamental purpose: acting as a common standard and guiding principles. The human rights framework serves as a common, shared standard regardless of whether a country’s actions comply, and offers mechanisms to track and monitor progress. These articulated rights represent the policy intent – the international consensus on the minimum ethical standard of treatment. They provide an ethical guardrail against which all state action is measured.

It is essential to highlight the indivisibility and interrelatedness of the rights. While not all rights will be at play in every situation, a comprehensive assessment of competing rights of all relevant stakeholders ensures that the end outcome is reasonable, necessary, justified and proportionate. The original policy intent was to create a comprehensive interlocking shield for human dignity for all. When policymakers prioritise the rights of one group over another, it ultimately weakens the integrity and legitimacy of the state and opens the door to legal and reputational risks.

Human Rights as a Relevant Tool for Strengthening Reputation and Legitimacy 

Today, human rights frameworks remain helpful tools that act as a shield against the misuse of authority. As long as we have power dynamics between groups of people, rights remain relevant. Current challenges facing our society include affordable housing, climate change, food security, AI, data privacy, and the treatment of children in care, all of which are human rights challenges. Human rights approaches offer us an important internationally recognised blueprint for legitimate and effective governance in the 21st century.

In 2025, it is well recognised that governments across the globe face legitimacy challenges with low public trust. This is supported by the findings from the Pew Research Centre in the US and the Scanlon Institute of Australia. This distrust stems not only from policy outcomes but from a perceived lack of fairness, accountability and transparency. In this context, the human rights approach acts as the macro-level expression of procedural justice. Procedural justice dictates that people are more willing to cooperate and grant legitimacy to authorities if they feel they have been treated with dignity, respect and neutrality – regardless of the final outcome. Research taken from the field of policing, by Tom R. Tyler highlights this link between procedural fairness and voluntary public compliance.

Benefits of a Human Rights Approach

When policy-makers adopt a human rights approach, they are committing to human rights standards: dignity and respect, participation and voice, and non-discrimination. By consistently applying these standards, policymakers build community trust in government.  Even if a controversial policy must be enacted, a rigorous, rights-based process acts as a buffer for social stability and helps achieve and sustain public trust.

Policies that follow a comprehensive human rights assessment naturally recognise the full breadth of rights at play and whom they impact, and carefully balance implications, working towards a solutions-based approach to mitigate risks to the lowest possible level for all stakeholders.

The Continuing Relevance of Balance

Now, more than ever, effective social policy requires a skilled assessment of how our policy and practice on the ground accurately account for the totality of human rights implications. Thorough rights assessments provide a pathway to assess policy risks to people, communities and society in a holistic way, inviting us to problem-solve to ensure that our practices undertake a balanced process that encroaches on rights only in the least obtrusive way possible. We take deliberate steps to consider the rights of the vulnerable. By developing and delivering policies and services in this way, we continue to uphold community safety and social cohesion in a dignified way for all.

Everyday Human Rights is an Australian consultancy passionate about supporting leaders and advocates how to achieve better outcomes for vulnerable people and their communities through relevant human rights education.  They have supported community service organisations, community groups, alliances, multiagency working groups, councils, government departments and educators.

Moderator: Ruth Pitt