Human Rights are complex and contested social practice that organizes relations between individuals, society and the State. Comment

Human rights are those rights to which an individual is entitled by virtue of his status as a human being. 

The scope of human rights is very wide. They set the standards for the provision and expansion of civil, political and social-economic rights, and are not just related to individual, but also to society and state, thereby making it a contested and context topic in political theory.

Human rights constitute the very source of all rights of human beings. They embody the scheme of ideal rights. They provide for moral foundation of any system of rights, based on the concept of justice. As human rights sets the standards on which all other rights should be based. This shifts the pedal of debate from individual to societal. 

Human Rights as complex and contested social practice is seen as:

1. Social-welfare theory of rights postulates that rights are, in essence, conditions of social welfare. 
2. The state should set aside all other considerations and recognize only such rights as are designed to promote social welfare. As per utilitarians like Bentham, 'the greatest happiness of the greatest number' forms the base of rights. 
3. Social-democratic perspective on rights seeks to achieve the objectives of individual liberty and social justice together where the individual rights like liberty gets clashed with the social-democratic rights like equality of opportunity or say right to freedom of religion. Here it becomes difficult to include both narrow and broad perspective of human rights as seen their violation in countries like Myanmar, Middle Eastern nations, etc. 
4. The debate becomes contested when we apply Dworkin’s idea where “Human Rights as Trumps”, meaning they will always have a priority over the Rights of a State or Society. Though they area ssociated with the liberal discourse, but there is also a contestation over the communitarian and cultural relativist aspect of rights where it becomes difficult to give preference to which category of human rights. For this reason, political leaders from SE Asian nations have called for Asian Values (communitarian critique) which have a different priority of community and values than the liberal western view of Human rights. 
5. Multi-culturalist view - Multiculturalism which seems to be a policy aimed at developing and preserving cultural differences based on tolerance, find parallel existence of cultures which the individualist view of Human Rights goes against. In this regard, Will Kymlica suggests for a multicultural view of human rights based on membership rights as well. 
6. Bhikhu Parekh has gone a step ahead and argued that multicultural rights shouldn’t be just limitedt o liberal democracies, but to all places, and should also include minority rights. 
7. Debate over State based human rights - As western countries have not taken their neutral perspective though Human Rights, these seem to be politicized. In non-Western states, they are considered as attempts of regime change. 
8. Countries like Russia, China, etc have accused the western world for using Human rights for advancement of their geo-political interests. The rise of authoritarian governments and fallout of the Human Rights as seen in states like Myanmar (issue of Rohingyas), Afghanistan (rise of Taliban and the threat to minority Hazaras), etc.

To conclude, we can say that despite contestations and complexities, there is a need for dialogue among civilizations and a concept of multicultural citizenship (Bhikhu Parekh)and to have a much broad based view of Human Rights, as given by Karal Vasak as well in his Three Generation of Human Rights.