Human Rights

On December 10, 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The preamble to the declaration provides a foundation for modern-day human rights, based on the recognition that all humans have the right to freedom, justice, and peace in the world. The preamble goes on to explain that when inalienable human rights are ignored, “barbarous acts” have occurred. As the international legal implications of the original 30 articles are becoming ever more foundational to all aspects of the social and political life of nations, so too the influence of religion and culture has proliferated, and in ways arguably unexpected in a mid-20th century world increasingly dominated by secular and often militantly atheistic ideologies.

In abbreviated form the 30 articles from the Universal Declaration are as follows:

[Page 208]Given how wide-ranging the statement of human rights is—from basic civil and democratic political freedoms to rights of education, employment, health—it is not surprising that in an effort to make social progress through subsequent human rights work, the nature and extent of the rights' framework has become extremely complex, not to say controversial.

...