Human Rights have improved

   

Human Rights Issues

   Human rights have improved throughout the years, centuries even. Though the issues weren't entirely solved, they have improved from what they used to be. Many issues have appeared through history involving human rights. A couple issues being child labor, women's rights (which is still an ongoing fight) were mainly evident in the enlightenment period, and also black rights. John Locke came up with the concept of "natural rights". The idea that people are naturally free and equal. Locke's ideas on natural laws were not solely about a persons ethnicity or their citizenship.

Women's Rights

    As far as women's rights go, they have technically improved over time, but women are still discriminated against to this day, because of their gender. heir right to vote was huge when that law passed. Women had been fighting it for years. Things started to look better for women, as they started to take the issue into their own hands. Women's rights conventions started being held in the 1800's and by the 1960's birth control pills were being approved. Women have come a long way from what used to be someone who had to stay home and cook and clean, they are so much more than that now, they're looked at as equals for the most part. Though issues do still happen nowadays with women's rights. It's hard for a woman to get a higher ranking job than a man and women are also paid less  (.75 to very mans $1.00). As stated earlier, women's rights have absolutely improved from what they used to be, in fact things could be a whole lot worse.

Child Labor

    Child labor became huge in the industrial revolution. Kids as young as four were being put to work in factories under dangerous circumstances and deadly working conditions. Later, in the Victorian era, they were hired as chimney sweeps as well as in coal mines to crawl through the shafts that were too small for adults. Karl Marx was a very outspoken opponent of child labor. He once stated that "U.S Capital was financed by the capitalized blood of children". Nowadays, if children grow up in rich countries there is a very slim chance of them having issues with child labor, though in third world countries it is still very evident. Many children under the age of 16 are making a living for their families,. Though we may  have abolished it in first world countries, child labor is still a huge issue that we have been working on for years, and will continue to work on for many years to come.

Black Rights

    Black rights is the final issue I will address. African - Americans have been dealing with discrimination for many, many years. Thankfully, in the late 1700's slavery began to become illegal.. as time moved on, There began to be less and less problems with African Americans, though racism was still extremely popular. It wasn't until the mid 1900's that things really started to turn around. The march on Washington is by far one of the greatest demands on elimination of racism to have ever happened. This is where Martin Luther King Jr. made his famous "I have a dream" speech, that inspired so many then and still inspires so many today. After that, black rights became more evident to society, so they began to change things. We still do have people who are racist and people who discriminate, but again at least we aren't where we were in the 1950's. 

    In conclusion even though human rights have improved over the last few years, they are still a problem to our society now, we still deal with the backlashes of what people started to fix way back when, but never actually finished, I believe we still have a long way to go before human rights are not an issue any more, but I think we are doing the best with what we started to do in the enlightenment period with John Locke's idea of natural laws, maybe at some point we will all be equal, as I'm sure he had hoped for, or believed when he first thought of the natural laws.