Dude, Where's My Rights ?
In 1948 the United Nations convened to write the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (or UDHR), a document that spells out what it considers to be the rights and freedoms of every single person in the world.
To get a copy of the entire Universal Declaration of Human Rights you can go to the official United Nations website. You will notice that the document consists of a preamble and thirty articles.
The Preamble
The preamble is like an introduction in which the shared beliefs and values of its members are spelt out. It is like a vision statement for an ideal world society. In short, it spells out these ideas
- that these rights are for every single person in the world
- that governments, or any state bodies, should never act in a way that infringes upon these rights for their citizens
- that if a government is oppressive, if it is acting against its citizens human rights, then individuals who fight against that government are within their full rights to do so.
The Articles
Each of the articles then spells out individual rights and freedoms that are necessary for the realisation of this ideal.
Broadly speaking, the rights can be sorted into four categories. They are:
- the right to life and liberty
- freedom from slavery and torture
- the right to equality of all people before the law
- the freedom to think, believe and say as we decide
Where to next?
Click here to get a complete version of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
To find out about CROC, the UN’s document written especially to protect the rights of kids, click here. |
