Human rights play a part in virtually all aspects of your life.

One way to begin understanding the importance of human rights is to look at significant aspects of your life: your private or home life, your relationships with the people around you, your work or economic circumstances, and the government authorities responsible for serving and protecting you.

In all aspects of your life, you have the same basic rights as everyone else does, regardless of your race, color, sex, language, national or social origin, economic or other status, and political or religious beliefs. Everyone, throughout the society and world in which you live, has a moral and legal obligation to respect all your human rights and fundamental freedoms.

The world's nations proclaimed the following human rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the foundation for today's understanding of human rights.

Your rights include:

• Freedom of opinion and expression

• Freedom of religion or belief

• Freedom of assembly and the right to join, or refuse to join, groups and organizations

• You have the right to marry a partner of your choice and to raise children, as well as equal rights within a marriage and if it terminates.

Everyone has the right to have a nationality, to participate in civic activities, to vote for government representatives, and to run for public office. Your legal rights include:

• Equal protection under the law

• Freedom from arbitrary arrest

• Fair trial and presumption of innocence until proven guilty.

• No one, under any circumstances, may subject you to torture or to other cruel or degrading treatment.

You have rights to:

• An education

• A standard of living adequate for health and well-being, including food, clothing, housing, medical care, and necessary social services

• Everyone has the right to own property.

• You have the right to work, and you have rights to:

• Fair working conditions and fair pay

• Form and join a labor union

• Freedom from slavery and servitude is another basic right.

This outline of some basic rights is merely an introduction to your human rights. Understanding human rights is an ongoing process. As people such as you expand their understanding, they often discover ways to gain greater respect for human rights within their communities, nations, and the world.

Some of the rights listed here may be self-evident to you--for example, freedom of religion or freedom from arbitrary arrest. In other places or cultures, these rights may not be taken for granted. Likewise, you may find yourself questioning some rights taken for granted in other countries. Some people have to struggle harder than others to protect particular rights.