We still have a ways to go when it comes to protecting universal human rights around the globe
15 Human Rights That Still Aren’t Universal—But Should Be
Updated on May 19, 2025
Freedom from gender discrimination
As far as we’d like to think we’ve come in terms of gender discrimination, we still have a long way to go—especially in terms of the rights outlined in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), Voss says. But even if a country has ratified CEDAW, that doesn’t necessarily mean they eschew gender discrimination. Take Saudi Arabia, for example: They have ratified CEDAW, but the country’s male guardianship law essentially takes agency away from women.
“Human rights are concerned with human dignity, and there is arguably little dignity without the ability to choose one’s own fate,” Voss explains. “Women in Saudi Arabia are not allowed to do many of the things Western women take for granted, including deciding on their marriage partners or when or where they would like to travel. Further, the guardianship system does not protect women from abuse within the home, which is particularly problematic since most abuse happens within homes—both in Saudi Arabia and in most other countries.”
That said, Saudi Arabia is slowly making progress. In February 2025, the country introduced new Personal Status Law regulations limiting male guardianship and strengthening women’s rights in divorce, custody and financial matters.
Freedom of speech
In China, the government censors and monitors phones, the internet, email and other forms of communication to ensure that unpopular views are suppressed, Smith-Cannoy says. While limitations on freedom of speech apply widely to everyone in China, minority groups that the state targets—including Tibetans and Uyghurs, among others—are especially prone to imprisonment.
“The United States Congressional-Executive Commission on China maintains a Political Prisoner Database that has kept track of cases of political prisoners in China between 1981 and 2018,” Smith-Cannoy says. “During those years, the Chinese government has arrested 9,116 political prisoners. Those that do publicly speak out against the government can be subject to imprisonment or capital punishment.”
Freedom of assembly
China also does not guarantee the right of freedom of assembly for its citizens. “Not surprisingly, when people do gather and protest as they did in Tiananmen Square and [did] in Hong Kong, the Chinese response is harsh and brutal,” Smith-Cannoy explains. According to Human Rights Watch’s 2025 report on China, under President Xi Jinping’s rule, efforts to centralize control have led to increased repression throughout the country, including when it comes to freedom of assembly. One example of this took place on June 4, 2024, when police arrested at least nine people for lighting candles, holding placards and turning their phone flashlights on near Victoria Park, where the Tiananmen Massacre commemorations took place before 2020 (when a national security law went into effect).
Right to education
Millions of children and young people—especially girls—are currently denied access to education in Afghanistan, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). This has been going on for years, but the situation got even worse in 2021, when the Taliban took control of the country. Between August 2021 and December 2023, at least 1.5 million girls were prohibited from accessing secondary education. While girls under the age of 12 are still permitted to attend school, enrollment dropped from 6.8 million in 2019 to 5.7 million in 2022. Additionally, since December 2022, “women have been banned from universities, denying access to higher education to more than 100,000 young women,” UNESCO reports.
Right to own property
According to Article 17 of the UDHR, everyone has the right to own property. Unfortunately, that doesn’t always happen in practice. For example, in Uganda, a combination of factors—including colonial legacies, border disputes and illegal evictions—means that not everyone is afforded the right to own property. This is especially true for disadvantaged groups, including women, who own between 5% and 26% of the registered land in the country and are routinely displaced from their own property.
Right to marriage
Though we have made great strides towards marriage equality over the past decade, not everyone enjoys the right to be wed. For example, in Russia, the LBGTQ+ movement is considered “extremist” under the law, and marriage equality is not a protected right. Russian courts have even gone so far as to dissolve a de facto same-sex marriage (between a cisgender man and a transgender man) in November 2024, despite the fact that same-sex marriages are not recognized in Russia. That’s only one example of Russia’s restrictions on LGBTQ+ rights. In November 2024, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law a bill prohibiting citizens of countries that allow gender reassignment from adopting Russian children.
Freedom from slavery
Although slavery is technically illegal in all countries, it still very much exists in various forms. One example is the government-sponsored forced labor in North Korea, which has become “deeply institutionalized and raises a broad range of serious human rights concerns,” according to a report by the UN Human Rights Office. According to the UN, there are six types of forced labor in North Korea: labor in detention, compulsory state-assigned jobs, military conscription, the use of revolutionary “Shock Brigades,” work mobilizations and work performed by people sent abroad by the government to earn money for the country. This system of forced labor “acts as a means for the state to control, monitor and indoctrinate the population,” the UN reports.
Right to personal security
Although everyone should be entitled to the right to personal security, that’s not the case in all parts of the world. For example, there has been an epidemic of gender-based violence in Ukraine since Russia invaded the country in 2022, with more than 1.7 million women and girls remaining internally displaced, according to UN Women. Furthermore, there are an estimated 2.5 million people in Ukraine—predominantly women and girls—who require services related to gender-based violence prevention. While some of the gender-based violence is domestic violence—which often goes unreported—much of it over the past three years has been sexual violence related to the conflict.
Freedom from discrimination
As human beings, we should also enjoy freedom from discrimination, but this is something most countries struggle with, at least to some extent. According to Amnesty International, people with physical disabilities suffer widespread discrimination in Iran. This is in part because the country’s laws do not prohibit discrimination against those with disabilities. Although there are laws providing services for Iran’s citizens with disabilities, many haven’t been implemented. Children living with disabilities routinely face stigma and discrimination from government social workers and health-care workers.
Freedom of religion
Freedom of religion is also not respected in China. According to Smith-Cannoy, for the approximately 11 million Uyghurs living in China, who are predominantly Muslim, the right to practice their religion has been significantly repressed. “The Chinese government is running Uyghur internment camps in the western Xinjiang region,” she says. “Men, women and children are confined in these camps and subjected to squalid conditions.” In addition to imprisoning more than a million Uyghurs since 2017, the Chinese government has subjected the remaining 10 million to intense surveillance, forced labor and forced sterilization.
Freedom to control your health
The World Health Organization’s Constitution (1946) envisages “… the highest attainable standard of health as a fundamental right of every human being.” Unfortunately, health care is not a universal human right. The United States is the most prominent example of this, given that affordable, adequate health care is not accessible to many citizens. Because health care in the U.S. is structured around making a profit, the cost of even basic prevention services can be exorbitantly high without health insurance. The problem is that in 2024, 27.1 million—or 8.2% of the population—did not have health insurance. According to KFF, the main reason for this is the high cost of health insurance.
Freedom from torture
Though the UN Convention Against Torture was enacted in 1984, many countries still engage in practices considered torture. Russia, for example, tortures Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilian detainees in at least one of the country’s detention centers, Human Rights Watch reported. A 2025 report from the UN Council on Human Rights determined that Russian authorities’ use of torture and enforced disappearances “amount to crimes against humanity” and are “part of a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population and pursuant to a coordinated state policy.”
Right to participate in free elections
The right to vote is something many take for granted. But for people in some countries, like Belarus, it’s not a guarantee. According to a press statement from the U.S. Embassy in Belarus, the 2025 presidential election in Belarus cannot be free or fair in the country’s current repressive environment. “The Lukashenka regime’s systematic efforts to silence any dissent have determined the outcome of the election long before any ballots are cast, depriving the Belarusian people of the opportunity to choose their own leaders and determine their own future,” the statement reads. The U.S., as well as many European allies, have determined that free and fair elections cannot happen when only regime-approved candidates can even appear on the ballot, political opponents are imprisoned or exiled, and independent media outlets no longer exist.
Right to bodily autonomy
The UN’s Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights calls for the protection of human dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms. The first human right mentioned in the document is the right to bodily autonomy—or the right to make decisions about your own body. For example, the right to bodily autonomy encompasses the right to reproductive health care—the ability to make decisions about how, when and if you’re going to get pregnant, including access to abortion and contraception.
Unfortunately, not all countries grant this basic human right. Reproductive rights in the United States, for example, have been eroding for years—most notably in the 2022 overturning of the landmark case of Roe v. Wade (1973), which established women’s constitutional right to have an abortion, rooted in the right to privacy. The right to bodily autonomy also covers the right to live free from violence, as well as ending harmful practices like child marriage.
Right to childhood
Adopted in 1989, the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child is the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history. The convention makes it clear that childhood is separate from adulthood and lasts until the age of 18. It also specifies that childhood is a protected time, during which children are entitled to special care and assistance, and must be allowed to grow, learn, play, develop and flourish with dignity. These protections include the right of children not to be forced to get married. However, child marriage is still a problem in countries like Iraq, which, in early 2025, passed a law allowing clerics to interpret Islamic law addressing the matter—meaning potentially permitting marriages for girls as young as 9 years old.
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Sources:
- M. Joel Voss, PhD, assistant professor of political science and public administration at the University of Toledo; interviewed, May 2025
- Heather Smith-Cannoy, PhD, associate professor of political science, social justice and human rights at Arizona State University; interviewed, May 2025
- United Nations: “What are human rights?”
- Equality Now: “Saudi Arabia’s New Personal Status Law: A Step Forward for Women’s Rights, But Is It Enough?”
- Human Rights Watch: “World Report 2025: China”
- UNESCO: “Protecting the right to education for all Afghans”
- CBS News: “Russia bans adoption of its children from countries that allow gender transition”
- United Nations: “Forced labour by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea”
- Amnesty International: “Iran: Authorities must halt gruesome plan to amputate fingers of tortured prisoners within days”
- Office of Health Policy: “National Uninsured Rate at 8.2 Percent in the First Quarter of 2024”
- Human Rights Watch: “Russian Torture, Daily Brief 6 May, 2025”
- U.S. Embassy in Belarus: “Denouncing sham elections and continued repression in Belarus”
- Brennan Center for Justice: “Roe v. Wade and Supreme Court Abortion Cases”
- United Nations: “Convention on the Rights of the Child”
