Many important events and revolutions contributed towards the development of human rights. First, the earliest charters of human rights are to be found among the three British Constitutional documents, namely the Magna Carta (1215 AD), the Petition of Rights (1628 AD) and the Bill of Rights (1689). These three documents were the forerunners of the modern bill of rights.
It was late in the 17th and the 18th centuries that the necessity for a set of written guarantees of human freedom was felt as a new philosophy of governance. The dignity and rights of man was the dominant theme of political philosophy of the 18th century.
The Constitutional settlement in U.S. and the attached Bill of Rights provided a model for the protection of human rights. For many years this U.S. model stood almost alone till a more detailed incorporation of rights was made in the Constitutions of various Countries all over the world. While the British, American and French documents gradually elaborated important civil and political rghts, te October Revolution of Soviet Russia in 1917 brought to forefront the social, economic and cultural rights. This socialist revolution left a lasting impact on developing the new concept of human rights that recognised economic, social and cultural rights as human rights.
This new concept of human rights giving equal treatment to both sets of rights became a characteristic feature of many constitutions that came into existence after the Second World War.
