Human rights are rights, freedoms, liberties, immunities, protections, and benefits that a country or international organization guarantees through its constitutions, laws, bills of rights, or other legal documents, for all people (or those who fulfill some qualifications) under its jurisdiction. Some of the most important historical documents that established human rights are: Bill of Rights (1689) in Britain, American Declaration of Independence (1776), the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789), the American Bill of Rights (1791), United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), and The European Convention on Human Rights (1953).

In the book Citizenship and Social Class and Other Essays (1950), British sociologist Thomas H. Marshall introduced his classification of human rights and citizenship: civil citizenship, political citizenship, and social citizenship. Marshall distinguishes these types not only analytically, but also sees them as historically succeeding each other in a process of continuous enlargement of rights. He argues that civil rights came into being in the eighteenth century, political rights emerged in the nineteenth, while social rights started to be recognized only in the twentieth century. Civil citizenship enables all citizens to have equal treatment before the law and also includes rights such as: the right to a fair trial, the right of habeas corpus, freedom of speech, religious freedoms, the right to work and own property, the right to participate in civil life, etc. Political citizenship is related to giving political rights to all adult citizens - the right to participate in elections, vote, and be elected to political office. Social citizenship refers to the existence of socio-economic measures by which the state guarantees the satisfaction of the basic socio-economic needs of all citizens. Social citizenship, which Marshall was most concerned with, is linked to the emergence of the welfare state and the "safety net" it creates. He theoretically connected social citizenship and the class nature of modern industrial society.

Sociologists Bryan S. Turner and David Held advocate for cosmopolitan citizenship and universal protection and recognition of human rights. Held argues that the United Nations needs to be reformed so that the UN General Assembly becomes a global assembly that would pass the most important laws - on the protection of civil, political, social, and cultural rights of individuals, world market regulation, and environmental regulation. Regional political organizations, at the level of continents, following the example of the European Union, would regulate regional relations. The nation-state would, on the principle of subsidiarity, decide on national issues. Human, political, and economic rights, as well as the freedom of all the inhabitants of the planet, would be guaranteed at the level of the whole world through cosmopolitan citizenship.

References:

Beck. Power in the Global Age (2005, in German 2002);

     -     World at Risk (2009);

Etzioni. The New Normal: Finding a Balance between Individual Rights and the Common Good (2014);

Meyer. World Society: The Writings of John W. Meyer (2009);

Nash. The Cultural Politics of Human Rights: Comparing the US and UK (2009);

     -     The Political Sociology of Human Rights (2015);

Turner B. Rights and Virtues. Political Essays on Citizenship and Social Justice (2008);

     -     Vulnerability and Human Rights (2006).