The phenomenon of human rights has its genesis in the legal documents which provide more rights for a certain category of people in society. Regarding the fact that both oral warranties and agreements were not sufficiently reliable and complete ways to protect human rights, the authorities were unwillingly or mostly under a public pressure, made up and signed legal documents in which this area was legally regulated. In general, these documents may be given a wider meaning for the promotion of the values based on one's freedom to decide on his/her own interests and there not to be impeded by the others. There should be added the substantive and procedural guarantees for both individual and collective human rights of each individual and the collective to be fully respected, if any administrative and court proceedings are conducted against them. Regardless the importance of legal documents in which the idea of the need to respect human rights has progressed, we cannot with certainty determine the extent to which they have contributed to their affirmation. In addition, the important dates in the general progress of human rights represent political and revolutionary events of which we can single out the French bourgeois revolution. However, a more serious interest in the phenomenon of human rights, in terms of determining the legal framework for their normative formulation, represent the international legal instruments being adopted after the Second World War. Hence, in legal theory, these instruments have awarded the title of the roof or the key legal instruments in the field of legislative protection of human rights. The new world order and globalization, as a global process, pay a special attention to human rights. They are given a precedence over the sovereignty of the state as a legal basis for undertaking humanitarian interventions by the part of the international community. The extent to which it is justified to legally derogate the sovereignty of internationally recognized states in the process of the protection of human rights is a question whose answer should be sought in the domain of recent legal and political theory. Starting from the above, the authors of the paper will point out the term, constituent elements and possible classifications of human rights. On that basis there will be determined their role in the international and European legal order and the importance they have in relation to the individual rights recognized in the domestic law of the European countries.