Jonathan Rauscher
Mr. Finch
ENC 1101-086
30 October, 2012

Universal Human Rights: Perspectives of Friedman, Poe, and Yoshino
In the past, civilizations used to trade with others through ships and sailing across the oceans to deliver goods. Today, trade is done through air travel, freighters on the seas, and countries working together to build product. A car that is designed in North America could be assembled in China, with a CPU chip from South Korea, door frames from India, and leather from Germany. The world today is much different in terms of trade and interaction. Now, everything is on a global scale, and almost everything is interconnected, and Thomas Friedman simply describes this as the world being “flat” in his work The Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention. This includes human rights, which can be considered one of the most basic pieces of foundation for society. With that in mind, one must try to evaluate whether it is possible, with the world as flat as it is today, to create and maintain universal human rights. First, one must identify what human rights means in context. According to the United Nations, “Human rights are rights inherent to all human beings, whatever our nationality, place of residence, sex, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, language, or any other status. We are all equally entitled to our human rights without discrimination.” (United Nations) This states that humans are born with rights that cannot be taken from them, and those that are taken is unjust and should be rectified immediately. The definition is just the foundation of universal human rights. The United Nations have created a document for Universal Human Rights, called The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In this document, it is listed as to what human rights are, and what human rights every person is entitled to universally. As with the Constitution