It's not a definitional matter. You can't have a right if nobody is obligated to honor it. Someone can walk up to you and say you have the right to free speech, but if in fact you say something the government doesn't like, you get tossed in jail, and nobody defends you, including the government, then you don't have the right to free speech, no matter how much you are told you do.
Mistaking being told you have rights for actually having rights is extraordinarily dangerous. An amazing number of so-called "rights" enshrined in Constitutions around the world are of this nature, and it's both sad and funny when somebody waves around, say, the Chinese constitution [1] and claims that it actually means that the Chinese have free speech (article 35) or freedom of religious belief (article 36), both of which are transparently false. People have died or been imprisoned for life for making that mistake. You may have the "right", but nobody has the obligations... so you in fact do not have the right. Just words.
(One of the great innovations of the Anglo-Saxon legal system was not just saying the word "right", but taking it seriously. Many countries around the world have learned how to say the word "right", far fewer have actually discovered how to follow up on it.)
Mistaking being told you have rights for actually having rights is extraordinarily dangerous. An amazing number of so-called "rights" enshrined in Constitutions around the world are of this nature, and it's both sad and funny when somebody waves around, say, the Chinese constitution [1] and claims that it actually means that the Chinese have free speech (article 35) or freedom of religious belief (article 36), both of which are transparently false. People have died or been imprisoned for life for making that mistake. You may have the "right", but nobody has the obligations... so you in fact do not have the right. Just words.
(One of the great innovations of the Anglo-Saxon legal system was not just saying the word "right", but taking it seriously. Many countries around the world have learned how to say the word "right", far fewer have actually discovered how to follow up on it.)
[1] http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/constitution/constitution.... - in fact this entire document is a steaming pile of bullshit rights that don't actually exist.