In his 2015 book, Key Concepts in Politics and International Relations, Andrew Heywood wrote:
In certain parts of the world, human rights have come to be accorded a near-religious significance. Supporters of human rights argue that they constitute the basic grounds for freedom , equality and justice , and embody the idea that all human lives are worthy of respect. In that sense, human rights can be said to give political expression to moral values found in all the world’s major religions and these transcend conventional ideological divisions. As such they have been accepted as one of the cornerstones of international law , sometimes being viewed as superior to state sovereignty and thereby being used to justify humanitarian and even military intervention (as in cases such as Iraq and Serbia in the 1990s).
…human rights are merely moral assertions and lack any empirical justification; that it is difficult to view them as absolute because rights, such as the right to life and the right to self-defence, are often balanced against one another; and that it is not always clear when a person should be regarded as ‘human’ and therefore entitled to human rights (which is particularly controversial in relation to abortion). Political objections come from conservatives and communitarians, who point out that it is nonsense to suggest that individuals have rights that are separate from the traditions, cultures and societies to which they belong.
