Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) Themes
Freedom
The No. 1 human right on the UDHR's long laundry list is freedom. "All human beings are born free" (1.1), the declaration says. It's the natural state of persons. The Blues Brothers knew it. The Ra...
Morality and Ethics
The UDHR is all about how people should be treated. The operative word there is "should." Morals and ethics tell us how we ought to behave, setting a standard for us to aspire to. The declaration h...
Equality
"Universal," in the way it's framed in the UDHR, means "the same for everyone." If something is universal, it applies as equally to you as to someone on the other side of the world. The Universal D...
Visions of the World
The idea of a global community that would protect human rights goes back to the League of Nations, started after World War I. The United Nations is essentially a strengthened version of the origina...