In 1946, having just staggered out from under a second world war, the nations of planet Earth took a good, long look in the mirror.

They didn't like what they saw.

No surprise there. All of the atrocities that had been committed in the previous few years in the name of national interest—illegal detentions, the slaughter of civilians, crackdowns on political dissent, and, of course, the horrors of the Holocaust—had become painfully clear.

It was not a pretty picture.

The brand-new United Nations, formed in 1945 to prevent this kind of thing from ever happening again, decided that something had to be done. So in 1946, they formed a committee—there's always a committee—to study the matter. This one was chaired by former U.S. first lady Eleanor Roosevelt. In 1948, the committee, after many drafts (of course), issued a document: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, laying out in great detail what the U.N. expected from its member states in the way of, well, human rights.

By making a laundry list of universal, inalienable rights—things that everyone, everywhere should be entitled to—this document proclaimed a global community with shared humanitarian values. According to the document, it doesn't matter what race or nationality you are, what gender you are, or what religion you practice—if you're a human being, you have certain rights. More importantly, it declares that the nations of the world—represented by the U.N.—recognize these rights. Even if you're living in a country where the government denies people their human rights, the international community still believes that you have them.

So what made it onto the list? The 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights span quite a bit of territory and include:

• Basic rights of the individual (protection against things like torture and slavery).
• Political rights, such as freedom of movement within your country.
• Economic rights, such as social security and fair working conditions.
• Rights related to freedom of thought, expression, and belief.

Given how hard it is to get countries to agree on anything, the UDHR was a borderline miracle of international politics. Still, with such a broad scope, there was bound to be a little dissension about the particulars. When it came time to adopt the UDHR in the United Nations General Assembly, several countries abstained from the vote, claiming that the declaration was biased toward Western values and didn't take into account important cultural or religious differences among nations.

Some people believed that the UDHR was a little too kumbaya: all idealistic notions of human rights and whirled peas with no possible way of enforcing them. Say what you want about prohibiting torture, but some countries are gonna do it anyway. Plus, 10 minutes of reading the news will show you that all those nice demands included in the declaration sure aren't making the world a perfect place.

Still, despite its detractors, the declaration has turned out to be one of the most influential and lasting achievements of the United Nations. It was designed to be a "common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations" (Preamble.8). The UDHR has influenced subsequent international agreements, and dozens of countries, from Portugal to Somalia, explicitly reference the UDHR in their national constitutions (source). It's unprecedented in human history for so many different nations to agree (in theory, at least) on how to treat their people—and it happened in 1948, when we still thought smoking was okay for you.

Kumbaya? Maybe, maybe not. But it was a start.

In many countries, people enjoy the rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights without even being aware of it. Seriously, when was the last time you were convicted of a crime without a trial, forced into an arranged marriage, or denied the ability to move to a new place? (Your parents refusing to buy you a condo in Malibu doesn't count.)

Sometimes it's easy to take your rights for granted. That doesn't mean everyone has the same luxury. Serious human rights violations and atrocities still happen all over the world, including in the United States. For your consideration:

• Genocide: since the early 2000s, a civil war in the African country of Sudan has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and the displacement of millions more. Disagreements in the U.N. on how to handle the situation have prevented the global community from doing much about it. And don't even get us started on Joseph Stalin. Or Rwanda.
• Religious and political oppression: for decades, China has controlled the region of Tibet, often using military force to suppress independence movements and attack their religious traditions. The spiritual leader of Tibet, the Dalai Lama, has been in exile since 1959 (source). Ditto in Myanmar, where the Muslim minority Rohingya are being forced to flee the country because of ethnic cleansing. Double ditto in Syria, where the leader of the country has been busy gassing and otherwise exterminating his own citizens.
• Pay gap: the declaration says that everyone should be paid equally for doing the same work. However, we know that there's a massive disparity in pay and work opportunities between men and women all over the world.
• Human trafficking: slavery isn't dead in the modern world. There are millions of people still held in slavery worldwide, most often for sexual exploitation. In the United States, there are thousands of incidents of human trafficking reported each year—and that's leaving out the incidents that don't get reported.
• Racial inequality: global organization Human Rights Watch points to racial inequality as the major human rights issue in the United States. The group found in 2016 that the U.S. criminal justice system treats racial minorities more harshly in sentencing and enforcement, which includes systematic problems with excessive use of force (like police shootings).
• Global poverty and hunger: where to even begin?

We know what you're thinking: what good is the UDHR if these things are still going on? But just because human rights violations still happen doesn't mean the declaration isn't effective. In monarchy-dominated Europe before World War I and under fascist regimes during World War II, violations of human rights didn't just happen—they were the norm.

The declaration created a common understanding that these things are not the norm; they're morally unacceptable. The point of the text is to declare (did you notice that word in the title?) common values, but it's up to governments and people—this means you—to figure out how to make it happen.