The writers and thinkers of the 17th and the 18th centuries...

The writers and thinkers of the 17th and the 18th centuries made commendable efforts in giving currency to their ideas regarding the natural, undeniable and inalienable human rights. Jean Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire and Montesquieu, who belong to this category of writers and thinkers, are great benefactors of human society, and it may be said that their services are in no way inferior to those of the great inventors and discoverers.

Their basic idea was that human beings have a series of natural and inborn rights and freedoms which are absolutely inalienable and untransferable and cannot be renounced by anyone under any pretext. All people, including rulers and subjects, white and black, rich and poor, are equal. The result of this social and intellectual movement first manifested itself in England, then in America and afterwards in France. Revolutions were brought about; systems were changed and charters were signed.

Gradually, the movement spread into other countries. In the 19th century, new economic, social and political ideas emerged in the field of human rights. New developments led to the appearance of socialism, the participation of workers in industrial profits, and the transfer of government from the society of capitalists to defenders of labour class.

Till the end of the 19th century, all talks and whatever practical steps were taken in human rights sphere, were mostly confined to the rights of the nations as regards the governments and the employees versus the employers. In the 20th century, the question of women's rights was raised and for the first time in ~948, the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed the equality of rights between man and woman in clear terms.

All social movements in the West since the 17th century had revolved around liberty and equality. As the movement for women's rights was the latest in the series, and the history of women's lot in Europe, from this point of view, was extraordinarily bitter, the UN's Declaration of Human Rights talked of nothing but liberty and equality. The protagonists of this movement maintained that it was complementary to the movement for human rights.

They held that without ensuring women's liberty and equality it was meaningless to talk of human liberty and human rights.