The 15 Best Human Rights Essay Topics For High School Students

When you’re writing an essay for class, coming up with a topic can be the hardest part. If you can find one that you’re interested in it will make doing research and writing it a lot more fun. Human rights can be a hard subject to pick a topic for because there are so many different ones to choose from. From historical rights cases to national or international human rights law, to analysis of how current events may influence human rights cases, there are thousands of possible topics.

When writing a human rights essay, you should focus in on a certain topic, and a place or period of time. Then you should explore how it was influenced by other factors, whether something about it is good or bad, and how it could have been different if something about it changed. Use these sample topics to get started:

1. How have issues of torture in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center influenced the United States’ credibility in international human rights issues?
2. How is the proliferation of mobile technology such as cell phone cameras affecting the outcome of human rights cases?
3. How is the proliferation of social media affecting how human rights issues are handled in conflict zones?
4. What have been the most important factors influencing outcomes of trials at the international human rights court at The Hague?
5. How is abolition of the death penalty a human rights issue?
6. In what ways has the Internet influenced human trafficking in developed and developing countries?
7. Which countries have the worst freedom of press records, and how does that compare to their other human rights track records?
8. How are women’s reproductive health issues a human rights issue?
9. How are human rights affected when poverty is alleviated in developing countries?
10. In what region of the world do indigenous peoples face the most serious infringements on their human rights?
11. How is the ability to own land tied to human rights issues of ethnic minority communities in Southeast Asia.
12. How has globalization of the manufacturing sector affected protection of the human rights of manufacturing workers?
13. What are the largest human rights issue in post-Apartheid South Africa?
14. Is the UN Refugee Program effective at improving the welfare of refugees?
15. What human rights issues affect refugees once they are relocated to countries like the United States?