You guessed right, “droits humains” is the more gender-neutral and inclusive alternative to the more historical “droits de l’homme“.

Both terms are still used, but I think in this article the choice was somewhat “forced”(*) by the name of the activist group, “Human Rights Watch”. It would have been weird to mention “les droits de l’homme” after calling them human rights in English.

(*) Maybe Le Monde uses “droits humain” all the time, maybe they chose that term for other reasons, I don’t know.

I don’t know what you meant by “designed to spite the English” though.