The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, published in 1948 by the United Nations, is a text, a set of articles which try to promote respect and freedom between humans, defending individual rights to achieve a world in peace. It consists of 30 articles, each one related to a specific topic. Many fields of life are dealt with, like freedom, privacy, law protection, equality, marriage, thought, religion, work or education.

One of the questions that can come up after reading the Declaration is: Why have Human Rights being created?

It's a fact that there are differences between persons. The world is the home of a mixture of a great variety of beings. Since the Stone Age, human being has done and has suffered many actions against freedom and life. Millions of persons have died because of differences of thought or many conflicts. Murders, executions, wars, etc. show that something goes wrong. And these aren't all of the signs of the problem: repression, discomfort poverty or hate are also an evidence. Now, these actions have got a more precise name: racism, bullying, rape, gender violence, etc.

If nothing is done to change the situation, the problem persists. But another characteristic of mankind is that, year after year, century after century, some persons have always tried to find a better life for those who suffer. Recently, many laws have been enacted to help the disadvantaged people. And one of the most important facts, probably the most one, is the Declaration of Human Rights.

The rights which are promoted in this document aren't respected in most of the countries of the world, but several nations have added to the list of the protectors of the human rights, and the counter is still working. Campaigns in favour of this reason are more and more important, but there's still a long way to go if we want to live in a world ruled by equality and respect.

Maybe the Declaration doesn't contain all of the rights that could be mentioned, but after some discussions in class it seems to be true that all of the articles are necessary and needed. Maybe the next stage is to give rights to the animals, because some species are in danger and they suffer a lot because of humans.