International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health Article Thirty Years of Human Rights Study in the Web of Science Database (1990–2020) Priscilla Paola Severo 1 , Leonardo B. Furstenau 2, * , Michele Kremer Sott 2 , Danielli Cossul 3 , Mariluza Sott Bender 4 and Nicola Luigi Bragazzi 5, *   Citation: Severo, P.P.; Furstenau, L.B.; Sott, M.K.; Cossul, D.; Bender, M.S.; Bragazzi, N.L. Thirty Years of Human Rights Study in the Web of Science Database (1990–2020). Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2021, 18, 2131. https://doi.org/10.3390/ ijerph18042131 Academic Editor: Paul B. Tchounwou Received: 21 January 2021 Accepted: 9 February 2021 Published: 22 February 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). 1 Graduate Program in Law, University of Santa Cruz do Sul, Santa Cruz do Sul 96816-501, Brazil; priscillasevero@hotmail.com 2 Graduate Program of Industrial Systems and Processes, University of Santa Cruz do Sul, Santa Cruz do Sul 96816-501, Brazil; sott.mk@gmail.com 3 Department of Psychology, University of Santa Cruz do Sul, Santa Cruz do Sul 96816-501, Brazil; daniellicossul@mx2.unisc.br 4 Multiprofessional Residency Program in Urgency and Emergency, Santa Cruz Hospital, Santa Cruz do Sul 96810-072, Brazil; maribendersott@hotmail.com 5 Laboratory for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (LIAM), Department of Mathematics and Statistics, York University, Toronto, ON M3J 1P3, Canada * Correspondence: leonardofurstenau@mx2.unisc.br (L.B.F.); robertobragazzi@gmail.com (N.L.B.) Abstract: The study of human rights (HR) is vital in order to enhance the development of human beings, but this field of study still needs to be better depicted and understood because violations of its core principles still frequently occur worldwide. In this study, our goal was to perform a bibliometric performance and network analysis (BPNA) to investigate the strategic themes, thematic evolution structure, and trends of HR found in the Web of Science (WoS) database from 1990 to June 2020. To do this, we included 25,542 articles in the SciMAT software for bibliometric analysis. The strategic diagram produced shows 23 themes, 12 of which are motor themes, the most important of which are discussed in this article. The thematic evolution structure presented the 21 most relevant themes of the 2011–2020 period. Our findings show that HR research is directly related to health issues, such as mental health, HIV, and reproductive health. We believe that the presented results and HR panorama presented have the potential to be used as a basis on which researchers in future works may enhance their decision making related to this field of study. Keywords: human rights; co-word analysis; strategic intelligence; bibliometric analysis; SciMAT 1. Introduction The human rights (HR) concept embraces the essential rights of people considering only their condition of being human [1]. However, violations of HR still occur even after 70 years of the implementation of the Universal Declaration of HR. For instance, France and Denmark have been condemned for their restrictions of the clothing worn by some Muslim women in public spaces [2,3]; in addition, the Government of Azerbaijan has arrested civilians who have criticized the government [2]; furthermore, families have been separated at the borders of the United States [2,4]. The universal framing of human rights increases the amount of research in different areas of knowledge, such as health [5–7], children’s rights [8], domestic violence [9–11], and refugees [12]. These contexts require research capable of understanding the full dimensions of HR. In order to do so, the field of HR must be developed much more by researchers. Seven reviews were made with a general view of HR that identified the connection of the concept with human development [13] and barriers to its realization, including authoritarianism and social dominance orientation [14] and protection of the privacy of the violated [15], as well as perspectives to focus on people directly affected [16], on ways to limit threats Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2021, 18, 2131. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18042131 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph