<P> While belief in the sanctity of human life has ancient precedents in many religions of the world , the idea of modern human rights began during the era of renaissance humanism in the early modern period . The European wars of religion and the civil wars of seventeenth - century England gave rise to the philosophy of liberalism and belief in human rights became a central concern of European intellectual culture during the eighteenth - century Age of Enlightenment . These ideas of human rights lay at the core of the American and French Revolutions which occurred toward the end of that century . Democratic evolution through the nineteenth century paved the way for the advent of universal suffrage in the twentieth century . Two world wars led to the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights . </P>
where did the concept of human rights come from
the era of renaissance humanism in the early modern period