Human Rights Paper Topics

The United Nations (2015) expresses human rights as being inherent to all human beings regardless of nationality, residence, sex, ethnic/national origin, color, religion, language or any other human designated divisions. As humans, it is a commonly accepted principle that human rights without discrimination should be the norm rather than the exception (United Nations, 2015). Human rights and civil rights related protocols are generally expressed in the form of law, treaties and international law (United Nations, 2015). Though history has illustrated that humans have an innate ability to provide the most selfless deeds to one another, there is also a darker side to this equation. In the same capacity, humans have demonstrated a propensity for committing horrific acts against one another for various rationales. As a sub context of human behavioral studies and human governmental studies, human rights has emerged as a discipline of study unto itself. Carrying elements of sociology, psychology, history and political science as well as other perspectives, human rights exploration can be considered an interdisciplinary phenomenon.

Human Rights Paper Topics

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45 Research Paper Topics on Human Rights

While there are some general attributes of human rights, they are primarily established with the benefit of hindsight. The standards and perspectives of one culture or one generation can differ greatly to the next. As a result, it can be stated that what human rights looks like in practice could vary from one perspective to the next. In addition, examining human rights topics from a contemporary perspective on a contemporary issue could be challenging as a result of controversy or debate surrounding the issue. When selecting a topic, students should consider whether or not they wish to examine a human rights issue with a popular established meaning or a contemporary subject where accord has yet to be reached. For example, examining African American slavery from a contemporary perspective would have a clear negative connotation as it is agreed upon to be a human rights violation. In the Civil War era, however, no such accord on the subject had been reached. More contemporary topics, like The Patriot Act or Gay marriage are still controversial in regards to how they relate to human rights.

Once the student selects which perspective they wish to take on the subject of human rights, the interdisciplinary lens of inquiry can be selected. Employing primary, secondary and peer reviewed data is useful for gaining a balanced understanding of the subject. Below is a list of some topics that would fall within the spectrum of human rights paper topics. This list can be used verbatim or it can be used to serve as an idea generator for other human rights related topics. The nature of human rights topics are such that there is a great deal of diversity and potential to satisfy even the most selective of students.

1. Racial profiling by the police
2. Human trafficking in the 21st Century
3. The Holocaust and revisionist history
4. The Armenian genocide
5. Japanese and Chinese interaction in the Second World War
6. The Chinese Exclusion Act
7. Becoming visible: The LGBT movement
8. The roots of racism
9. Chattel Slavery in colonial America
10. Christopher Columbus and the Arawak Indians
11. The Trail of Broken Treaties
12. The American Indian Movement (AIM): Modern indigenous relations
13. Intimately oppressed: Howard Zinn on women’s rights
14. The African American female experience
15. A history of the Bill of Rights
16. International law and human rights
17. Human rights in Machiavelli's The Prince
18. Human rights in Night
19. Human rights treatment in modern cinema: Schindler’s List and Platoon
20. Vietnam: America’s unpopular war
21. Islam and female oppression
22. Women’s suffrage in the United States
23. Separate but equal: A history of integration
24. Modern racial relations: Ferguson, NYPD, George Zimmerman and beyond
25. The civil rights movement: Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.
26. The Brown Berets
27. Revolt of the Cockroach People: Acosta and the Chicano experience
28. The Grapes of Wrath: Steinbeck’s treatment of human rights
29. The Black Panther Party for Self Defense: Militant human rights movements
30. Reinventing revolution: The Zapatista Movement in Chiapas
31. Human rights and the modern labor movement
32. Joe Hill: Music, justice and protest
33. Mental illness and retardation: A struggle against stigma
34. Communism and the pursuit of political equality
35. The right to remain silent: What this means to the accused
36. A jury of your peers: Analysis and commentary
37. (Contemporary Issues) The Confederate Flag: Heritage or symbol of oppression
38. Brown vs. Board of education
39. The Patriot Act: The line between safety and human rights
40. Drug testing
41. The voting rights act of 1965
42. Jim Crow and human rights
43. Roma: Gypsies and human rights
44. The West Memphis Three
45. The rights of the convicted

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References

United Nations. (2015). What are human rights? United Nations Human Rights. Retrieved from http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Pages/WhatareHumanRights.aspx