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Life and liberty are just the tip of the iceberg, folks. The 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights enumerate a long list of personal, political, and economic rights that belong to everyone. The governments of the world that voted to adopt the UDHR in 1948 are supposed to do all they can to protect all the rights on the list.
And just in case you forgot, "everyone" means everyone. According to the UDHR, it doesn't matter what your race, nationality, sex, religion, or preferred driving music is—everyone gets all of the rights. Even the people who thought The Emoji Movie was a good idea.
The declaration, adopted in 1948, was way ahead of its time in defining the need for racial and gender equality in all societies.
The declaration came way too late for most nations.
During World War II, the Allies proclaimed that they were fighting to protect humanity and establish universal freedom. They decided to call themselves the United Nations, a catchy name that stuck around when they created the League of Nations 2.0 after the war.
In 1948, the U.N. adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in order to establish exactly what human rights are. The document took about two years to write. The UDHR was a direct response to the atrocities of World War II and a list of the values of the United Nations—mostly stuff about freedom, dignity, and peace.
The preamble, or introduction, states the reasons for creating the declaration. The idea was for all the countries in the world to recognize the freedom of all humans, promote peace and progress, and prevent future crimes against humanity. At the time it was presented, the UDHR was not an actual international law, but rather an expression of shared values that everyone agreed to pursue.
The 30 articles, or sections, address a wide range of rights that fall into a few different categories. The first two articles provide a baseline: everyone is born free and equal regardless of their identity and nationality. These words are an expression of what it means (or should mean) to be human.
The rest of the articles establish:
In terms of authority, the UDHR falls somewhere between an honor code and an actual law. It's a resolution that (almost) every U.N. country has agreed to abide by, but enforcing its particulars down to the letter is largely up to individual countries.
Everyone in the world is free and entitled to basic human rights, regardless of—well, regardless of anything.
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