On this day, 10 December 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal declaration of Human Rights. This Declaration, of which one of those most responsible for its drafting, Eleanor Roosevelt, said that it is ‘the international Magna Carta of all men everywhere’, for the first time reaffirmed at the international level the faith in fundamental human rights, as well as the dignity and value of human beings regardless of their race, the colour of their skin, gender, national or ethnic origin. Although the Universal Declaration is not usually seen as a legally-binding instrument, it represents a codification of international customary law and, as an appeal to respect the principle of humanity in international relations, it served as the basis upon which numerous binding huamn rights treaties were concluded – above all, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which, along with the Declaration, represent the core of the system of human rights protection established within the United Nations.
It has been almost seven decades since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In spite of significant developments in the system of human rights protection, the overall state of human rights in the world is not much better than it used to be when the Declaration was adopted. Contemporary times are characterized by many armed conflicts involving grave breaches of international humanitarian law, states which have traditionally been recognized as paragons of respect for human rights are increasingly curtailing them for the purposes of security, terrorism has reached a scale previously unrecorded in history and countries are becoming less and less ready to accept the growing number of refugees in a crisis which has become the greatest of its kind after the Second World War.
On this day, which is observed across the globe, the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights appeals on all human beings to remain relentless in their faith and dedication to those principles guiding the authors of the 1948 Declaration. Each violation of human rights must be condemned and every victim of such violations must be shown solidarity. The violation of the rights of a single individual represent an attack on manking as a whole, and each of us must, as individuals, do our part that such violations never occur again. It has been said that there is no way to peace, that peace is the way; the same is true of respect for human rights.
