Human rights law: tool for achieving equality and social justice

Modern human rights law developed out of customs and theories that established the rights of the individual in relation to the state. These rights were expressed in legal terms in documents such as the English Bill of Rights of 1688, the US Declaration of Independence of 1776, and the French Declaration of the Rights of the Man and the Citizen in 1791. Initially international relations and international law were predicated on the doctrine of national sovereignty, according to which each nation retains sole power over its internal affairs without interference from other nations (Ferreira-Snyman 2006). Early international law involved only relations between nation-states and was not concerned with the ways in which states treated their own citizens.