What happens when human rights are broken?

Answer 1

Quite literally anything can happen.

Human rights are not an absolute, they are an ideal. In a perfect world, everyone would live peacefully and not encroach on one another.

But since there are people who choose to believe their ideas and comfort are more important than the health and happiness of others; you end up with people who simply do not believe in the human rights of other people.

Once you choose to disregard the concept of human rights; there is no level of depravity which has not been done by one man against another. Torture, rape, murder, slavery, prison without fair trial; the list of human atrocity and degradation that has been invented throughout history is beyond measure and stretches to the limits of human imagination.

The very concept of human rights, what they are and who they should be applied to has been debated and fought over since the dawn of documented civilization and possibly even before that.

The entire reason our legal systems are so complex is because even the concept of human rights is not something fully agreed upon and without every possible detail being spelled out, someone, somewhere is going to skirt around those laws and violate someone else and their rights.

Some would say, morality is subjective; laws therefore reflect what consensus we as a society are able to agree upon should be bestowed and protected as rights.

In civilizations where those laws fail to protect the weak or the innocent, than anything is possible. I could give you an number of sick or depraved answers and my words would not come close to the truth of just how disgusting or disturbing reality can become when human rights are completely ignored.

On a small scale you have individuals who may victimize one person at a time; serial killers violate a persons human rights and perform any manor of depraved activity upon someone before killing them, or simply keeping them as pets until they die.

On a larger scale, the worst of all human rights violations is generally considered 'genocide' where in an attempt is made to entirely exterminate another race, creed, religion or society. Entire armies have been sent on genocide missions, towns and cities wiped off the face of the earth, its people raped, tortured and ground into dust.