> Having a roof over ones head is a basic human right.
Prove it.
Prove it.
Perhaps OP meant to write "According to the UN, having a roof over ones head is a basic human right."
I could ask if you continuing to live is your human right.
I'm not sure there's any absolute decree that everyone can agree on that says you deserve to live. However, we evolved people tend to assume that every human deserves to continue living (at least until our differences become too great, at which time we sometimes just kill each other).
Therefore, your demand for proof that having shelter is a human right is bunk.
The stellman of 'housing is a human right' is 'everyone should have adequate shelter', and that's a far more productive starting point. The 'right' angle adds nothing.
With that being said, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that assertions about human rights by organizations such as the UN be internally consistent. The UN claims that human rights are universal. Human rights such as to food, shelter, medicine, etc. fail this universality. To provide them requires taking resources from others and reallocating them. Therefore, they are conditional upon the ability of a society to reallocate these resources. Therefore, they cannot be human rights, and assertions to the contrary should be identified as being politically motivated.
II. To not be killed is a basic human right.
=> Having shelter is a basic human right QED
For that matter I guess I would disagree with the UN. Someone who forfeits their basic human rights, for example, would not be entitled to them. So in that sense they're not universal.
There are many things that, as a society, we should do our best to make sure everyone has access to; housing, food, medical care, etc. The more people that have access to them, the better off we, as a society, are. Whether or not those things are a "basic human right" is debatable; but they fact that you need them to survive doesn't define them as such.
> but they fact that you need them to survive doesn't define them as such
Isn't that basically saying that surviving needn't be in a definition of 'human right'?
Yes, because "surviving" isn't a human right. It's something we, as a society, should do our best to make sure everyone is able to do, but that's not the same as saying it's a human right. If it was, then "not having a heart attack" would be a human right, which is clearly ridiculous.
I'll put it to you like this. If you believe there is a human right, then someone can't pursue it if they're dead. So if, in order to pursue that right, they need to pursue being alive, the pursuit of being alive falls within that right, no?