The original idea behind the UDHR was to create an international bill of rights that would have the force of international law. The drafting committee behind the document settled on a declaration, or nonbinding resolution, thinking it would be easier to get everyone to agree to it that way. It was a first step toward a more binding agreement.

Like a box of chocolates, there's a lot to unpack in the title of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We may as well go word by word…

Universal

You've probably figured out that this word implies the sense of "everything." Something that's universal is true in all times and places, to all people, in all situations—in other words, throughout the universe. By adopting the UDHR, the United Nations signaled that human rights were owed, by international agreement, to everyone in the world, regardless of…well, regardless of anything.

Of course, it's pretty hard to find something that everyone agrees is truly universal. The UDHR was not adopted by unanimous vote, and some parties objected that particular articles are biased toward Western culture or place too little or too much value on certain ideas, like the rights of the individual versus the rights of the community. But hey, they gave it a pretty good try for 1948.

Declaration

When you declare something, you're stating a claim. For example, the Declaration of Independence states that the United States is its own country. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states what human rights are.

A declaration is different from a law or other legal document. This declaration focuses on how things should be, taking a moral stance on everything from social security to freedom of religion. Unlike, say, the Constitution, the UDHR does not detail how all these rights should be enforced or come up with a mechanism to do it. As the body that adopted it, the United Nations has the responsibility to try to make good on the words of the declaration, and it does this (with mixed success) through its various branches and peacekeeping efforts.

Human

Homo sapiens. People. Folks. The rights listed in this document belong to anyone who fits the description of "human." You might find this obvious, but keep in mind that before World War II, the world was still obsessed with classifying people based on their race and ethnicity—to the extent that some people thought different races were different species. The Nazis called Jews and Slavs Untermenschen, which is to say, "inferior people" or "subhuman." That was still fresh in the minds of the drafters of the UDHR.

It was important in 1948 to emphasize the idea of human rights, as opposed to civil, political, or personal rights, because the world up to that point had been so torn apart by racial and ethnic violence and division.

Rights

The idea that you can distill human dignity into individual "rights" is useful. It provides an actionable list of dos and do nots. Do: give everyone the right to a fair trial. Do not: torture people. Like the Bill of Rights, the UDHR gives the governments of the world a code to live by.

The "rights" part was what hung up some countries, which thought that something like decent health care was a privilege or a need, not a right. That debate is still going on.