(Part One: An Introduction) - The Anarchist Impulse in the History of Human Rights

One of the most fundamental characteristics of modern human rights theory is the positioning of the state as the primary subject of obligation. In the framework of international human rights law, the state is not merely one of several actors that can influence the fulfillment of rights, but rather the institution that bears the primary obligation to respect, fulfill, and protect human rights. Consequently, in modern philosophical, legal, and sociopolitical discourse, human rights and anarchism are often understood as two mutually contradictory concepts. The existence of the state is viewed as a prerequisite for the protection of human rights, while anarchism—which rejects hierarchies, including the state—is seen as precluding the possibility of fulfilling rights. However, this assumption harbors a paradox that is rarely questioned.

The history of human rights is almost always told as the history of civilization’s progress. This narrative is certainly not entirely incorrect, but it leaves out one conclusion drawn from historical facts that is rarely discussed: throughout the history of civilization, every time the state has expanded its capacity to dominate people, history has responded by giving rise to a new set of rights designed to limit the state.

This question shifts the way we interpret the history of human rights. Rather than viewing it as a history of an ever-expanding list of rights, the history of human rights can be interpreted as a step-by-step effort to limit political power. Because, every time a state, a monarchy, or whatever it may be called attempts to expand its domination over people, history responds by narrowing the scope of legitimacy for that political power. 

The history of human rights is not a history of the rulers’ generosity, but rather a long history of humanity’s distrust of unchecked power.

At the very least, there is one premise for opening this discourse: if, from the outset, human rights theory itself asserts that human rights violations are directly understood as acts of the state (by commission), and violence by non-state actors is interpreted as a human rights violation when the state fails to prevent, stop, investigate, or provide redress for such violations (by omission), then from the very beginning, modern human rights theory has been built on the assumption that the most serious threat to human freedom lies in institutionalized public power—and that power is called the state.

The Genealogy of Human Rights as an Instrument for Limiting Political Hierarchical Dominance

So far, the earliest trace of this common thread of thought can be traced back to the 13th century through the Magna Carta, signed by King John of England in 1215, which is often cited as one of the foundations of the modern constitutional state—not because it recognized human rights in the contemporary sense, but because, for the first time, a ruler was forced to accept that his power was not above the law. The clauses on due process of law and the prohibition against deprivation of liberty without legal basis marked the birth of an idea that would later become the core of the rule of law: political power must be subject to rules that bind it. The Magna Carta did not yet address universal equality; in fact, most of its provisions protected only the nobility. Yet its significance lies in something far more fundamental: absolute power began to lose its moral legitimacy.

This journey continued within the British constitutional tradition through the Petition of Right (1628), the Habeas Corpus Act (1679), and the English Bill of Rights (1689). All three emerged from a long-standing conflict between the monarchy and Parliament over the limits of state authority. The king could no longer levy taxes unilaterally, detain anyone without legal grounds, or use military power to subjugate citizens without oversight. Little by little, the scope of his power was narrowed.

Magna Carta did not ultimately put an end to monarchical absolutism, but in its own way, it established a constitutional tradition that, for centuries thereafter, consistently manifested in efforts to limit the scope of political power. Following its signing in 1215, the demand that rulers submit to the law evolved through a series of constitutional instruments in England. The Petition of Rights of 1628 limited the authority of King Charles I by prohibiting the collection of taxes without parliamentary consent, arbitrary detention, the forced quartering of soldiers in citizens’ homes, and the imposition of martial law in peacetime.

Five decades later, specifically in 1679, the Habeas Corpus Act strengthened protections for individual freedoms by guaranteeing that anyone detained had the right to be brought promptly before a court to have the legality of their detention reviewed, thereby limiting the state’s ability to exercise coercive power arbitrarily—a process that culminated in the adoption of the English Bill of Rights 10 years later, ending the dominance of absolute monarchy by affirming the supremacy of Parliament and restricting the king’s prerogatives. This document prohibited the king from suspending or disregarding laws without parliamentary consent, imposing taxes unilaterally, maintaining a standing army in peacetime without legislative approval, or imposing cruel and unusual punishments.

While the Magna Carta planted the seed that rulers are subject to the law, the Bill of Rights expanded that principle into the foundation of constitutional government: the legitimacy of the state no longer derives from the will of the king, but from the law and political consent.

Interestingly, none of these historical milestones came about because the state voluntarily decided to impose limits on itself. Every restriction has always been the result of political crises and social conflicts, fueled by resistance against the atrocities born of power. The early history of human rights, therefore, has never followed a peaceful path. It emerged from the clash between authorities seeking to maintain their dominance and a society striving to reclaim its freedom.

The late 18th century brought far more radical changes. The American Revolution produced the Declaration of Independence (1776), which declared that all men are created equal and possess unalienable rights. However, the revolution that most decisively shaped the course of modern human rights actually took place in France. The French Revolution of 1789 not only overthrew the Bourbon monarchy but also challenged the very basis of the legitimacy of the entire European political order. The king was no longer considered to derive his power from the divine right of kings; sovereignty was transferred to the people.

It was in this context that the Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen (Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen) was adopted on August 26, 1789. This declaration introduced principles that would later become the universal language of human rights: all human beings are born free and equal in rights; freedom, property, security, and the right to resist oppression are natural rights; and laws are valid only if they reflect the general will. The state is no longer understood as the owner of human beings, but rather as an institution that derives its legitimacy to the extent that it respects their rights.

This development marked a fundamental shift in modern political history. Whereas in the Middle Ages the law served primarily to protect the state from its people, since the French Revolution the law has been directed toward protecting the people from the state itself. It is this shift that subsequently became the foundation for all subsequent developments in human rights. From the Magna Carta to the French Declaration, one pattern has repeatedly emerged: individual rights, as a struggle for freedom, have evolved through the limitation of political power.

However, history does not move in a straight line toward freedom. The 19th century and the early 20th century, in fact, revealed a new paradox. Modern states that had adopted constitutions, parliaments, and various forms of representative government also experienced an unprecedented expansion of state power. The Industrial Revolution strengthened the power of the state not by broadening its political legitimacy, but by drastically increasing the state’s capacity to control society. Industrialization generated economic growth that increased tax revenues, enabling the formation of a more complex bureaucracy, and was supported by technological developments such as railroads, the telegraph, and mass production, which enhanced the state’s ability to administer its population, mobilize resources, and organize military forces on an unprecedented scale.

The increase in the state’s capacity brought about by the Industrial Revolution transformed the modern state from a mere guardian of order into an administrative machine capable of regulating the population, mobilizing resources, and organizing violence on a scale previously unimaginable. In other words, the more modern a state becomes, the greater its capacity to intervene in people’s lives. This paradox rarely receives attention in popular narratives about the development of human rights. Democracy has expanded, constitutions have proliferated, and civil rights have been extended; yet at the same time, the state’s capacity for domination has also increased. In turn, the strengthening of the state gave rise to two of the most extreme consequences previously unimaginable: World War I and World War II.

The outbreak of World War I from 1914 to 1918 was a manifestation of what modern states are capable of when nationalism, industrialization, and militarism converge in a single arena. Millions of people were mobilized through conscription; millions more were killed by the technology of war produced by industrialized nations; while all of society’s resources were directed toward sustaining the national war machine. Once again, the outbreak of World War I—an unprecedented, heinous tragedy—dismantled the thesis that the state, as a political power, can be reformed simply by changing its form. The state remains the state, and power remains power, both possessing an expansive desire. And whenever that desire for domination is pursued in any form, it will invariably manifest as oppression of human beings. 

The trauma of World War I gave rise to the conviction that the system of international relations must be reformed. Through the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, the League of Nations was established as the first organization of states aimed at preventing war through collective cooperation. The League of Nations was founded on the hope that states could rein in their political ambitions through international mechanisms. In many historical narratives, the formation of the League of Nations is understood as a progressive step toward a more peaceful world order.

However, a genealogical analysis reveals something different—something that, once again, is almost never discussed: Although the League of Nations was established as part of the states’ efforts to maintain peace, the key historical fact behind its formation was actually that states had failed to do so. The very existence of the League of Nations is an acknowledgment that the system of sovereign states that had developed since the Peace of Westphalia (1648) lacked adequate mechanisms to prevent war on a global scale. In other words, this first international institution comprising modern states was born as a response to a crisis produced, ironically, by those same modern states—a response that embodied a hope that did not last long.

History later recorded that throughout the 1930s, the League of Nations failed to stop Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931, Italy’s aggression against Ethiopia in 1935, or Nazi Germany’s expansion in Europe. The organization, formed to keep states in check, lacked sufficient power when its member states chose to disregard international law. Behind these failures lies a far more fundamental reality: no international institution is capable of restraining a state if that state itself refuses to be restrained.

These failures reached their peak when World War II broke out—a tragedy that spanned 1939–1945 and radically altered the course of international law and human rights. If World War I demonstrated the capacity of states to destroy humanity through industrialized warfare, then World War II showed that modern states are also capable of systematically organizing violence against their own people. The Holocaust, concentration camps, mass killings, medical experiments on humans, forced deportations, and the use of atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki demonstrated that the greatest threat to human life does not stem from the absence of the state, but rather from the presence of a state wielding nearly unlimited power.

Hannah Arendt examined this tragedy through two complementary works. In The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), she demonstrated how totalitarian states destroy the most fundamental protections afforded to human beings by stripping them of their political status as subjects with rights. When a person loses the protection of the state, they lose not only their citizenship but also the space in which their rights can be recognized.

Meanwhile, in Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963), Arendt demonstrates that extraordinary crimes do not always stem from personal hatred or individual madness. Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi responsible for the genocide of the Holocaust, is not portrayed as a monster, but rather as a bureaucrat carrying out his duties with administrative obedience. Evil becomes banal precisely because it is carried out through seemingly ordinary state procedures, and violence no longer requires a bloodthirsty tyrant; it merely requires an obedient apparatus. Although Arendt’s thesis has received much criticism, it at least demonstrates that, within the logic of the state exercising its power, evil is the norm.

For more than seven centuries, the development of human rights has shown a consistent trend: every expansion of protection for individual rights has always been followed by efforts to narrow the scope of legitimate political power. History has since provided a tragic justification for the reasons behind this trend. Just as the modern state reached the peak of its organizational capacity, humanity witnessed yet another of the greatest humanitarian tragedies in modern history.

Just as with World War I, World War II demonstrated that the greatest threat to human dignity stems, once again, not from the absence of the state, but from the presence of a state with an almost limitless capacity to organize domination and violence. This experience does not prove the failure of the concept of human rights; on the contrary, it demonstrates that the greater the state’s capacity to dominate, the more urgent the need for a set of universal principles capable of limiting that power. Thus, the history of human rights is not one that crumbles in the face of the state, but rather one that continues to evolve in response to the expansion of state power itself.

From the ruins of World War II, the United Nations (UN) was founded in 1945, followed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) on December 10, 1948. The existence of both—often understood as milestones in the birth of the modern human rights regime—simultaneously represents the international community’s recognition that the state is the only entity capable of committing human rights violations, making it the most serious threat to human life, freedom, and dignity. Therefore, the UDHR does not merely compile a catalog of universal rights but reaffirms a principle that has evolved since the Magna Carta: political power derives its legitimacy only to the extent that it respects human dignity, and when that power exceeds those limits, it is human beings who must take precedence, not the state. In this sense, the core spirit of the UDHR remains the liberation of humanity from political domination, as evidenced, among other things, by the principle of the universality of human rights—the fundamental principle that fundamental rights and freedoms are inherent to every human being worldwide from birth, regardless of ethnicity, race, religion, gender, nationality, or social status, and cannot be revoked by the authority of any state.

At this point, the principle of the universality of human rights has far more fundamental implications. If human rights are inherent to human beings simply by virtue of their humanity, then the existence of these rights conceptually precedes the state and does not depend on the state’s recognition, grant, or will. The UDHR thus does not merely extend the protection of rights beyond the boundaries of citizenship, but in principle limits the relationship between rights and the state: a person does not have rights because the state grants them, but rather the state is burdened with obligations because human beings already possess rights. In this sense, the universality of human rights contains a logic that fundamentally limits the state’s claims over human beings. National borders, citizenship, and political sovereignty cannot serve as grounds for determining who is entitled to dignity, freedom, or protection.

The problem arises when this principle is simultaneously institutionalized through the international human rights regime, which designates the state as the primary entity mandated to fulfill human rights. Herein lies a tension that goes deeper than mere questions of implementation effectiveness: human rights, in principle, assert that rights take precedence over the state, yet their institutionalization subsequently positions the state as the entity empowered to ensure the fulfillment of those rights. The state, therefore, is no longer merely the object of restrictions but assumes the position of the primary implementer of a mandate that, normatively speaking, never originated from it. Rights that, in principle, belong to human beings are then translated into obligations of the state; something that was not originally granted by the state must ultimately be demanded through the state. This is where the contradiction of the institutionalization of human rights begins to emerge: not in the universality or the principle of liberation inherent in human rights, but in the imposition of this mandate upon the state’s architecture as the primary vehicle for its implementation.

This marks a new, more complex phase of development. While the journey from the Magna Carta to the UDHR demonstrated a consistent trend toward narrowing the scope of state dominance through the recognition of individual rights, the modern human rights regime subsequently placed the state in a different position. The state is no longer viewed merely as an entity that must be restricted, but also as the primary duty-bearer responsible for respecting, protecting, and fulfilling these rights. In other words, the state becomes the primary entity held accountable for respecting, protecting, and fulfilling human rights.

This is precisely where the most common criticism of the relationship between anarchism and human rights lies: if the fulfillment of human rights depends on the state as the duty-bearer, how can anarchism—which rejects the state as a form of political hierarchy—reconcile itself with human rights? However, this tension can actually be interpreted from the opposite perspective. The dependence of human rights on the state does not in and of itself prove that the state is a prerequisite for human freedom; rather, it reinforces the most fundamental anarchist critique—that the state is an organized concentration of power, which in practice must be continually limited because it has a structural tendency to produce domination and oppression.

In this sense, the state’s obligation to respect, fulfill, and protect human rights can be interpreted not as a justification for the state’s existence, but as a normative acknowledgment of the dangers inherent in the concentration of state power itself. This is because the concept stems from a simple yet fundamental assumption: only the state possesses the authority, the monopoly on the legitimate use of force, and the capacity to formulate, enforce, and impose laws on all citizens. Therefore, human rights violations are fundamentally understood as the abuse of public power by the state, whether through active actions such as arbitrary arrest, torture, and the suppression of freedom of expression (by commission) or through the state’s neglect or failure to prevent violations committed by non-state actors (by omission), as explained at the beginning of this article.

This framework demonstrates that, from the outset, modern human rights theory was not built on the assumption that the state is inherently a protector of rights. On the contrary, it arose from the recognition that the state is the institution with the greatest capacity to infringe upon human freedom and dignity; therefore, state power must always be limited and subject to oversight. In this sense, the state bears obligations not because it is assumed to be the most moral institution, but precisely because it is the institution with the greatest potential to abuse power. The greater the authority held by the state, the greater the demands of international law to limit the exercise of that authority through human rights norms.

However, at the same time, this is precisely what gave rise to the next paradox: the project of human liberation, which from the outset was built upon the limitation of state power, in its subsequent stages actually came to depend largely on the state itself for the realization of those very rights—an irony that arises as a logical consequence of the fact that the institutionalization of human rights as instruments and mechanisms was initiated precisely by the very states that are the root cause of the problems human rights seek to resolve from the outset.

Although shrouded in paradox and irony, ultimately, as an introduction, this essay presents one main thesis: anarchism, at the very least, need not import its critique of the state into human rights. For the impulse of anarchism has been inherent from the very beginning in both the history and the conceptual and principled architecture of human rights itself. What subsequently gave rise to the paradox was not the principles of human rights, but rather the historical and political decision to institutionalize this project of liberation through institutions that, from the very beginning, were the primary agents of its oppression.