How the Universal Declaration of Human Rights can guide governments through the turmoil of 2024
In a landscape of seemingly increasing global crises, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) celebrated its 75th anniversary in December 2023.
- In a landscape of seemingly increasing global crises, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) celebrated its 75th anniversary in December 2023.
- However, 75 years on, the world is facing major human rights challenges again.
- Human rights violations are being regularly reported in conflicts, most recently in Ukraine and Gaza.
What is the UDHR?
- While not legally binding, the document aims to provide a “common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations”.
- It has proved significant in the intervening decades, laying down provisions that have informed the binding international human rights treaties, subsequently enacted by the UN.
- This was also the case for global security as well as environmental and financial crises in the 1990s and 2000s.
- Over the years, the UDHR has been consistently referred to as a steadfast cornerstone of human rights internationally.
The UDHR today
- As in earlier decades in times of emergency, conflict and global change, states do not always fully implement the rights contained in the UDHR.
- The fundamental protections outlined in this document, adopted in 1948, still have an enduring and guiding role, although significant challenges to these protections remain.
Kathryn McNeilly has received funding from the Leverhulme Trust.