We give them to ourselves. We decide what we consider helps us get along with each other, and then we make it a right. This also keeps us all aiming for similar things and working in a more or less culturally linear fashion. Then, when someone upsets us, we can loudly proclaim that we have ‘given’ them something and that with ‘rights’ comes ‘responsibilities’.
But at root rights are just a series of wants. We want happiness, we want food and fresh water, we want peace. So many people never get these things because of the rest of us, we can no longer truly say they are rights. International commerce thrives on depriving others of what we consider ‘our rights’ in order to make them work for slave remuneration. You cannot accord yourself a ‘right’ whilst wearing clothes made by those denied them, and still call them human rights.
Equally if responsibilities come with rights, and rights are accorded, then you must give rights to those who cannot ask for them. You give them, you don’t wait for them to be given by others. And you don’t give arbitrarily. And you don’t deprive people and animals of rights because it suits you not to. If rights are not absolutes, they are only expedient, legal instruments.
Useless for ethicists.