UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights

THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is an example of quasi-legislation by non-binding instrument, something the United Nations has created for a number of different purposes. The Declaration was created in 1948. The fact that the United Nations would make a declaration on the issue of human rights is in keeping with the structure and genesis of the entire organization. Three years before the passage of the Declaration, the Charter for the United Nations was written, and in Article 56 it is stated that

all Members pledge themselves to take joint and separate action in cooperation with the Organization for the achievement of the purposes set forth in Article 55 (Carey 12).

Article 55 in turn provides that the United Nations shall promote

universal respect for, and observation of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion (Carey 13).

The United Nations Charter is seen as the document that originally gave human rights their international r

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ot because they are assigned to us by our legal system, for we would have these rights even if there were no legal system to assign them to us at all: For our purposes, the interesting question such examples raise is not what is the content of our criminal law, but what it is about us that makes us have rights that we would not have even if the law did not assign them to us. That too is not a legal question, but a moral one (Thomson 2). Some rights are prior to law, and in a sense some rights are such that a legal system would be defective if it did not assign them to those governed by it. To have a right means consequences, the imposition of a mode of conduct, and obligation, on others as well as on ourselves. Such consequences and obligations are moral in nature: Having a right is having a valuable moral status precisely because it has these consequences, and asserting the right is demanding that people act as these consequences say they ought to act (Thomson 2). This is in keeping with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, or at any rate with the effect of it--it imposed obligations for conduct on member states for the protection of human rights. Some of the rights upheld by the Universal Declaration are also cite
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Approximate Pages = 15 (250 words per page)

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