Hamblett

Madelyne Hamblett
Ms. Thompson
AP Lang, Block 1, Skinny B
7 May 2015
When Will the Struggle End?
Throughout childhood, people often dream about what they will be when
they grow up. Some kids dream of being firefighters, astronauts, or ballerinas while
others dream about being lawyers, doctors, or mad scientists! Many do not grow up
to have the careers they once dreamed of, but they find the careers of their dreams
as an adult. However, imagine not being able to pursue the career that makes you
happy. Imagine being confined to specific roles that society has predetermined for
you. Whens basic rights are violated, it is the same as denying them their dreams
and restricting them to a predetermined way of life. While this seems cruel, it is a
common struggle people face every day. It is incontrovertible that the groups who
have been most vulnerable, throughout history and into the present, to these human
rights violations are women, children, and minorities.
Now, the struggle against human rights violations and the fight to end this
struggle are not new. The English philosopher John Locke first expressed this idea of
human rights as natural rights, toward the end of the Renaissance, and the idea of
natural rights states that all individuals were endowed with inalienable rights by
nature and cannot have these rights taken away from them. The term human
rights was later introduced by the American writer Henry David Thoreau in his
work Civil Disobedience (Hitt 13). These ideas of human rights are the basis of

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many important movements, and they are displayed in documents such as the
Declaration of Independence, The English Bill of Rights, and The French Declaration
of the Rights of Man. Nevertheless, the fight against human rights violations did not
truly become a global topic until after World War II and the mass genocide of the
Jews. After the egregious events of World War II, a General Assembly was amassed
by the United Nations, and they made a Universal Declaration of Human Rights to
set a standard for human rights (Human Rights). Even with all these efforts to
establish a basis of what rights all people around the world deserve, many persons,
specifically women, children, and minorities, continue to be denied these rights.
Indeed, women have been the subjects of many human rights violations
throughout history, even leading into the twenty first century. For example, while
the right to vote is now considered a basic right, women only gained this right with
the 19th Amendment in 1920 (Hitt 121-122). This exemplifies just how inferior and
servile men have perceived women as throughout history. Women have been
confined by society to specific roles without their basic rights, such as the right to
the pursuit of happiness, considered: For millenia women have dedicated
themselves almost exclusively to the task of nurturing, protecting and caring for the
young and the old (Hitt 37). Women have continuously been excluded from the
many decisions and actions that make up our history; women have been part of
history since the beginning of time but have really only participated in history for
the last hundred years. Even in the latest century of the modern age, women are still
being taken advantage of, as Greece and Japan were amoung the countries that
allowed thousands of women to be imported and sexually exploited as prostitutes

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(Human Rights). It is disgusting how flagrantly these womens rights have been
ignored as they are used as sex slaves by countries that seem to promote womens
rights. It is obvious, from the many examples provided by history, women and men
have constantly been on unequl playing fields throughout history. This inequality
may be due to womens physical differences from men such as womens naturally
smaller size and less musclular build. Differences among people often cause
segregation, and the act of segregation puts groups at different statuses and makes
them unequal. Women have been segregated throughout history as shown in their
segregation from certain career paths. Womens differences have made them more
vulnerable to this segregation or abuse of human rights than most groups, and they
are not the only ones.
In the same way, children have faced many abuses of their basic rights as
humans. Millions of children around the world, including in developed countries
such as England and the United States, are subject to poverty, violence, rape, and
cruelty, (Haugen and Musser). Children are often seen as less than human due to
their size and age, and this discrimination perpetuates the disregard of their basic
rights. Laws often add to the inferior status of children by not considering them fully
functioning and competent individuals until the age of eighteen. In China around
1922, workshop owners were violating many human rights; these owners would
purchase children from regions scarred by famine and work them as slaves,
sometimes to death (Archer 74). The word purchase demonstrates the inferiority
with which people treat children. Children are often treated as property that can be
exchanged or disposed of as easily as it can be bought. To an even more extreme,

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children in countries all over the world such as Colombia, Uganda, Sri Lanka, etc. are
being used as soldiers in armed conflicts (Human Rights). The idea of using
children as soldiers shows the double standard with which children are often
treated. Children are too young to have a voice or a say in their life, yet children are
old enough to fight and even kill for a cause. Childrens opinions and thoughts are
often disregarded, as adults often think they know what is best for a child. When
adults assume they know what is best for children, the childs basic rights of making
choices and having a vote in their own life is suppressed. As substantiated by the
many examples, adults often do not know or do what is best for children; in fact,
children often experience things many people should never have to due to the denial
of their rights. Children have been made vulnerable to denial of their rights by their
size, age, and status in society.
Finally, minorities, from racial to ethnic to religious minorities, have had to
endure many intrusions to their rights as well. A national minority is a group of
citizens who make up a small portion of the population and have linguistic, religious,
or ethnic distinctions from the surrounding majority, yet there is no exact way to
determine whether a population counts as a national minority (Lerner, Lerner, and
Lerner 405-409). If you cannot define who the minority is, then it is hard to say
whether or not their rights are being impinged. While there is no exact way to define
which groups qualify as a minority, there are many groups who have been widely
accepted as a minority. These accepted minorities have the right to preserve and
develop their customs, language, religion, and anything else associated with their
cultural heritage; however, people of minorities also have the right to choose

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whether or not to be treated as a person of a minority without feeling disadvantaged

from either choice (Lerner, Lerner, and Lerner 405-409). Many people throughout
history have abandoned their culture or heritage for fear of discrimination and
persecution. Those who did not abandon their culture or heritage by assimilating
with the majority and ridding themselves of their differences were often expelled
from their homeland, killed, or suppressed by the majority. From the days of
Israelites suffering under the Pharaoh (Archer 3) minorities have been suffering
from human rights violations. The Israelites were an ethnic and religious minority
that the Egyptians exploited as slave labor. The Egyptians feared the Israelites
differences in beliefs and appearance and thought they would try to take over their
homeland. Another example of a minority is The Roma who have for centuries
faced discrimination in almost every country where they reside as a national
minority (Lerner, Lerner, and Lerner 405-409). Roma people are an ethnic
minority, and they are so often vulnerable to human rights violations because they
are located among the many different ethnic majorities of Europe. Roma people also
have a very different culture from those in Europe. African Americans in the 1950s
and 1960s are an example of a racial minority who experienced horrible abuses of
their basic rights. However, it is not just ethnic, racial, or religious minorities that
have faced human rights injustices. People of different sexual orientation have also
been and continue to be denied their rights especially concerning the issue of
marriage (Human Rights). People often fear what they do not understand, and this
fear often turns into abuse of those who are different. Even in our modern world

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with so much knowledge, those who are different are denied there rights on unfair
grounds particularly for the reason that they are not like everyone else.

In conclusion, women, children, and minorities have by far faced the most
discrimination, persecution, and abuse than any other groups. These abuses, more
often than not, come in the form of the denial of basic rights or freedoms that all
individuals are given by nature. These groups are often targeted for their apparent
differences and supposed vulnerabilities. Women, children, and minorities are
commonly considered weaker for their size, whether it be their size in number or
their physical size, and for their status in society. The only way to stop these abuses
of rights is to stop seeing these differences as weaknesses because in fact they are
not; the idea that differences indicate weakness is one that has been acquired. It will
require the enlightening of society to correct the misconception that disparities
among people are weaknesses and to begin to accept everyones differences.

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Works Cited
Archer, Jules. You Can't Do That to Me!: Famous Fights for Human Rights. New York:
Macmillan, 1980. Print.
"Creation of UN Commission on Human Rights." Human and Civil Rights: Essential
Primary Sources. Ed. Adrienne Wilmoth Lerner, Brenda Wilmoth Lerner, and
K. Lee Lerner. Detroit: Gale, 2006. 38-41. Opposing Viewpoints in Context.
Web. 13 Jan. 2015.
"Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities." Human and Civil
Rights: Essential Primary Sources. Ed. Adrienne Wilmoth Lerner, Brenda
Wilmoth Lerner, and K. Lee Lerner. Detroit: Gale, 2006. 405-09. Opposing
Viewpoints in Context. Web. 13 Jan. 2015.
Hitt, Laura. Human Rights. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven, 2002. Print.
"Human Rights." Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection. Detroit: Gale, 2014.
Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 13 Jan. 2015.
"Introduction to Human Rights: Opposing Viewpoints." Human Rights. Ed. David M.
Haugen and Susan Musser. Detroit: Greenhaven, 2013. Opposing Viewpoints.
Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 13 Jan. 2015.