Human rights originated from the aftermath of WW2, to protect against genocide, famine, destitution, the right to an independent life and so forth.
Well that's one view.
The broader and much longer running (millennia in fact) is that if a society is not going to descend into a tyranny (a word with very classical resonance) then there needs to be some sort of overarching framework that stops even the Monarch or the Senate from just making shit up.
Call it a constitution, call it a holy text - whatever you like. The fundamental principle is to limit the power of the state against the individual.
And it's from that concept that the notion of universal rights derives.
This is why anyone who pretends to think you can somehow divvy up rights as some sort of "who's in and who's out" board game is revealing themselves to be either too stupid to be allowed to vote, or too mendacious to be allowed to vote.
Divide and conquer is ever true.
When we had the fig leaf of being a religious country, then the concept of limiting the power of the state was outsourced to the Church. Because vast swathe of the population were well versed enough in the concept to work within it.
When you discard the big-cheese deity overview of life, then you really need to remember that those limits on the state no longer have any claim to being superior.
And overtime, left unchecked, the whole edifice will be slowly but inexorably removed.