Define rights. Describe three ingredients of right.

(a) Rights are reasonable claims of persons recognised by society and sanctioned by law.
(b) From above definition, it is clear that, there are following three ingredients of rights:
(i) It is claim of an individual over other fellow beings, over the society and over the government. Our action should not hurt others and others’ action should not hurt us. The claims should be reasonable, for example, Serbs in Yugoslavia could not have claimed the whole country for themselves.
(ii) Eights should be recognised by the society which Makes certain rules to regulate our conduct. Recognition by the society turns these claims into right.
(iii) Rights must have sanction of law. For example, the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay had a moral claim not to be tortured but they could not go to anyone to enforce this claim. So, it is necessary that law should enforce these claims. Rights are just moral declarations unless, they are protected by the state.