A Day Dedicated to Human Rights
By Hope O'Brien (Thursday, Dec 9, 2010)
Tomorrow, December 10, is International Human Rights Day. This year marks the 62nd anniversary of the adoption and proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) by the UN, a watershed moment in establishing an international consensus that we are each entitled to certain inalienable human rights.
Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
- Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
- It helped convert a discredited philosophical idea (“natural rights”) into a dominant political ideology
- It defined a vague colloquialism (“human rights”) in an authoritative code, a triple “decalogue” of thirty articles of fundamental rights.
- It universalized human rights, promoting a constitutional ideology accepted in a few countries into a standard of constitutionalism for all countries.
- It internationalized human rights, transforming matters that had been subject to exclusive domestic jurisdiction – “sovereignty” – into matters of international concern, putting them permanently on the international political agenda, and providing the foundation for a sturdy edifice of international norms and institutions.
