The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948, summarizing the position of the world organization on the rights humans have. On this day, we also celebrate Human Rights Day every year.
The declaration is not a purely symbolic document: the unimaginable horrors of World War II and the immeasurable human suffering have prompted the nations of the world to make a common declaration of fundamental human rights for all.
The birth of the text is already a testament to the possible cooperation of different nations: led by human rights activist John Peters Humphrey of Canada, among others, a Lebanese diplomat, a French philosopher, a Taiwanese and Indian professor and the then American First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt took part in phrasing the text.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (the document translated into the most languages in the world, 522 so far) sets out in 30 articles and an introduction the fundamental civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights that apply to all people regardless of race, color, gender, language, religion or political beliefs.
It is not statutory, but it is an ethical and moral compass, the pursuit of which means that we are working to make the world a better place and to prevent the horrors of the past from happening again.
Below, we present the declaration through the history of exceptional women and men, human rights activists.
