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Many philosophers have commented on the nature of individual rights and their foundation. Here are two examples from very different philosophical traditions.

Immanuel Kant first published his Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals in 1785. While the term 'right' does not appear in the following quotation, the Kantian approach easily lends itself to a strong defense of individual rights:

Supposing, however, that there were something whose existence has in itself an absolute worth, something which, being an end in itself, could be a source of definite laws, then in this and this alone would be the source of a possible categorical imperative, that is, a practical law.

Now I say: man and generally any rational being exists as an end in himself, not merely as a means to be arbitrarily used by this or that will, but in all his actions, whether they concern himself or other rational beings, must be always regarded at the same time as an end. . . .

The conception of every rational being as one which must consider itself as giving in all the maxims of its will universal laws, so as to judge itself and its actions from this point of view --this conception leads to another which depends on it and is very fruitful, namely, that of a kingdom of ends.

The philosopher J. S. Mill wrote in a very different tradition in which utility and consequences were of the greatest importance. Nevertheless, he too had an approach that could lead to a strong defense of individual rights. In his 1861 essay "Utilitarianism" Mill wrote:

When we call anything a person's right, we mean that he has a valid claim on society to protect him in the possession or it, either by the force of law or by that of education and opinion. . . .

If we desire to prove that anything does not belong to him by right, we think this done as soon as it is admitted that society ought not to take measures for securing it to him, but should leave him to chance or to his own exertions. . . . To have a right, then, is, I conceive, to have something which society ought to defend me in the possession of. If the objector goes on to ask why it ought, I can give him no other reason than general utility.

In one of his other works, On Liberty, Mill argued for a sphere of individual freedom and experimentation. Again, the justification was based on social utility.

Reference: Immanuel Kant Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals and J. S. Mill "Utilitarianism."