Today is Human Rights Day, marking the 74th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. On December 10, 1948, Eleanor Roosevelt—chair of the United Nations Human Rights Commission and former first lady—announced the achievement as the new “Magna Carta” for the world.
In the following decades, this Declaration’s high purpose has been underscored more for how we’ve fallen short than for lasting achievements. But it’s a mistake to dismiss the Declaration as a failure.
I think Roosevelt would agree. She never imagined that the high ideals of the Declaration would be upheld instantaneously and by all. That’s part of the reason why she supported making the document a “declaration”—a statement of ideals, a vision, if you will—than a binding treaty. The provisions—freedom from torture, the guarantee of fair trial, rights to education, housing, marriage, food, and religion, among others—were goals she knew people would have to work toward.
I’ve always found Roosevelt’s words on the Declaration’s Tenth anniversary to be deeply meaningful and inspiring. For her, the achievement of rights goals was not in the hands exclusively of governments or international institutions. It was in the grassroots, in communities, where she saw the real work of human rights.
Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world ... Such are the places where every man, woman and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere.
So where do we stand today on human rights goals? With much work to be done, to be sure. But I’m going to take a moment to point out where there Declaration has been a part of real progress on rights protection.
The death penalty is slowly disappearing in the United States thanks to the determined work of grassroots activists, lawyers, and people sentenced to death. My state, North Carolina, has the fifth largest death row in the nation. Yet there hasn’t been a killing since the August 18, 2006, execution of Samuel Flippen. Today, human rights advocates are marching on the governor’s mansion in Raleigh to ask Gov. Roy Cooper to commute the sentences of people on death row. For more, check out these Facebook & Twitter pages). As I pointed out in a previous newsletter, the appetite for death has sharply declined across the states that still have capital punishment. It’s time to get rid of it entirely.
Torture is increasingly a crime that will get perpetrators prosecuted wherever they travel. For example, in 2022, a German court convicted a former member of Syria’s General Intelligence Directorate, of overseeing torture in his capacity as head of the investigations section at the General Intelligence Directorate’s al-Khatib detention facility in Damascus, also known as “Branch 251.”
The 2022 Nobel Peace Prize went to human rights defenders from Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine, who continue to fight at great personal risk and cost for human rights. Ales Bialiatski from Belarus, the Russian human rights organization Memorial and the Ukrainian human rights organization Center for Civil Liberties were lauded for “their consistent efforts in favor of humanist values, anti-militarism and principles of law.”
Protestors in Iran and China, among other places, show how powerful the human rights message can be in galvanizing effective action. It’s often at huge cost, it should be noted. The government hanged the first protestor, Mohsen Shekari, this week. In response, protestors again took to the streets in an act of bravery and resolve. The power if the Declaration’s vision, what Roosevelt believed was at the core of her work, is undeniable.
I could add a hundred more bullet points of good news and a thousand for how and where we need to work harder and better. But the fact is that human rights, in less than a century, has become a core rallying cry and inspiration for rights action around the world. We need to do more—and we will.
A small plug here. My book, Righting Wrongs: 20 human rights heroes around the world, includes the life stories of precisely the people who envisioned human rights (even before the Declaration and the phrase “human rights” became commonly used). Some, like American and disability rights advocate Judith Heumann and anti-torture crusader and Argentine Juan E. Méndez, are still alive and still pushing for rights protection.
I’ve been taking notes for Book II. If you have suggestions for who to include, please let me know in the comments!
Some things I’m grateful for in 2022
nice reviews for the four books I released in 2022
my newsletter readers
my writing comrades
my new dog, Amos
Thank you for reading!