Human Rights Day

Radical Tea Towel

“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights…”

By Pete Morgan

‘It was the intent of the Allied peoples, encouraged especially by Franklin Roosevelt,  that a permanent organization of cooperation between states was needed to avoid yet another descent into world war.

In addition to questions of funding and logistics, the new UN needed a set of basic ideals – a statement of what it stood for.

This came most clearly in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN General Assembly on this day in 1948.

A year after the end of the war, the UN’s Commission on Human Rights set up a drafting committee for an ambitious, universal declaration.

The committee was chaired by no less than Eleanor Roosevelt herself. The former First Lady had long been a champion of human rights within the US and around the world, and here was her chance to help craft the soul of the United Nations.’

#HumanRightsDay ♥