Today marks the 73rd anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the starting point of the constitutional state, an expression that summarizes a process that aims to "take rights seriously". Until December 10, 1948, they had been the subject of a political, moral and even religious speech , but there was hardly any possibility of invoking the violation of a human right in a court of law. The opening of this path, first timidly and then vigorously, the emergence of a culture of rights, is surrounded by difficulties: the answers to what rights are, what they are, how they are interpreted, why these rights and how they are protected (concept, catalog, interpretation, basis and protection) have been varying synchronically and diachronically, and are the subject of an endless discussion. The solution to such divisive problems as those posed by illegal (and legal) immigration, abortion, euthanasia, access to housing, the limits of what can be imposed on those who live in or practice a culture or religion, respectively, etc., depends on them.

The noble aspiration behind the culture of rights - to ensure dignity in the face of possible abuses by those in power - rests on two implicit claims: that of a certain moral objectivity and that of cognitivism. Rights only work if there is a common dignity and if we can know how it is founded and what its central features are. Both claims are difficult to digest for global societies, where there seems to be little room for non-fluid realities.   

To this general difficulty is added, by latitudes and income levels, the increase of old problems that reappear with new vigor: in the underdeveloped world, inequality in distribution reaches levels that prevent the enforcement of economic, social and cultural rights, which in turn makes the enforcement of civil and political rights unfeasible (the right to vote does not acquire its most meaningful meaning plenary session of the Executive Council if it is not based on food, Education, etc.); in the world at , the destruction of the rule of law by populism frustrates the emergence of the constitutional state, of which it is the platform (with laws that no one understands, change continuously or do not apply to the populists).); in the world at development, the destruction of the rule of law by populism frustrates the emergence of the constitutional state, of which it is a platform (with laws that no one understands, that are constantly changing or that do not apply to the powerful, talk of rights loses part of its meaning); in the developed world, the exaltation of autonomy as a central anthropological feature ends, among other things, in a demographic winter, in lives that are satisfied with justice understood as formal equality, before the law, and not in the application of the law; in societies of loners who do not know solidarity (when what prevails is lack of solidarity, discourses such as the one we are trying to build in favor of the environment do not seem to be an easy fit).

tool On the other hand, rights, defined by Nino as "one of the great inventions of civilization", have been an important tool for combating the health, economic and social crisis generated by Covid 19. They guided state, international and citizen action so that the means employed to this end were adequate (suitable), necessary (or indispensable) and proportionate, and did not become a mere excuse for the abuse of power. In borderline cases such as this one, the contact with the inhuman, generated by a deep crisis, allows a collective glimpse of the characteristics of the human. This may be an opportunity to find lights that can be used in pursuit of the realization, at times utopian, of a culture of rights.