Are human rights universal, and thus applicable to all human being?

Throughout the course of history, many cultures and civilisations have developed ideas about the intrinsic worth and dignity of individual human beings. The prototype for the modern idea of human rights was developed in early modern Europe in the form of natural rights. Natural rights were God-given rights considered to be fundamental to all human beings and therefore inalienable, first represented by the US Declaration of Independence. Such thinking gradually acquired an international dimension during the 19th and 20th centuries through attempts to set standards for international conduct, evolving this universal perspective of human rights into a political belief known as universalism. Nevertheless, the thrust of more recent attacks on human rights has been to challenge universalist assumptions that underpin them, creating a battle between universalism and relativism. The latter asserts that ideas and values are valid only in relation to particular social, cultural and historical conditions, implying that there are no universal truths. Human rights and other theories of universal justice must therefore either be abandoned altogether or be used only in a strictly qualified way that takes account of the political and cultural context within which the ideas emerged. Most Human Rights theories have been developed by European philosophers, therefore some may argue that Human Rights is a Eurocentric concept. It is fair to believe that theories made by European philosophers should not be universal.