No doubt the degree of success of rights depends on a number of factors, most important of which is the support of governments and the law. In most cases the claimed rights are directed towards the state.

(i)That is, through right people make demands upon the state. When someone asserts his or her right to education, he/she calls upon the state to make provisions for their basic education. Society may also accept the significance of education and contribute to it on its own. Different groups may open schools and fund scholarships so that children of all classes can get the benefit of education. But the primary responsibility rests upon the state. It is the state that must initiate necessary steps to ensure that my right to education is fulfilled.

(ii)Rights of citizens place an obligation upon the state to act in certain types or ways. Each right indicates what the state must do as well as want it must not do. For example, my right to life obliges the state to make laws that protect me from being injured by others.

(iii)If a society feels that the right to life means a right to a good quality of life, it expects the state to pursue policies that provide for clean environment along with other conditions that may be essential for a good or healthy life. In short, I can say that might right here places certain obligations upon the state to act in a certain way.

(iv)Rights not only indicate what the state must do, they also suggest what the state must refrain from doing. My right to liberty as a person, for example, suggests that the state cannot simply arrest me at its own will. If it desires to put me behind bars it must defend action, it must give reasons for curtailing my liberty before a judicial court. This is the why the police are required to produce an arrest warrant before taking me away. Rights in this way put some constraints upon authority of state-actions.

(v)Rights ensure that the authority of the state is exercised without violating the sanctity of individual life and liberty. The state may be the sovereign authority; the laws it makes may be enforced with force, but the sovereign state exists not for its own sake but for the sake of the individual.

(vi)It is the people who matter more and it is their well-being that must be pursued by the government in power. The rulers are accountable for their actions and not forget that law exists to ensure the good of the people.