This chapter explores the political context of human rights and how it is shaping the future. Hannah Arendt's famous phrase, ‘the right to have rights’, defines the complex relationship between democracy, human rights and civil society. Human rights are not simply the super-ego (conscience) of politics, but constitute the very substance of democracy by conferring a universal set of rights on the citizen. These rights are the pillars of modern Western civilisation, embracing both individual liberty and social justice. Human rights have been historically contested by tyranny, symbolised by the concentration camp, which created conditions and places where human rights were actually extinguished during the first half of the twentieth century. Guantanamo Bay prison and media reports of the existence of ‘rendition centres’ remind us that this form of exclusion and detention is also part of contemporary political reality, legitimated by ‘the war against terror’. Refugee camps that have emerged in a vast array of internment facilities during the twenty-first century also remind us that the language and practice of human rights is deeply contested in contemporary society. President Trump's wall project is a metaphor for a new medievalism, in which the external world is culturally constructed as ‘the enemy’ and needy strangers have no right to a place in society.

While Hannah Arendt was understandably concerned about the plight of refugees in post-war Europe, the United Nations Convention on Human Rights (1948) and the welfare state broadened public discourse and understanding of human rights to embrace both individual liberty and social justice.