NOT QUITE THERE
The term “human rights” has not yet earned for level which will permit us to call it “universal.”
We use the term, however, and that's a good thing on me that in that it suggests an ideal - a time of maturity for the concept. it is not a new term; not an aged in either. Eleanor Roosevelt, while First Lady of the Land, used the term “Universal Human Rights” when she was active in the work of the United Nations efforts to establish a world-wide protective system to preserve and propagate human rights for all Mankind.
The UN Charter had, from the first days, assigned a respectable place to the idea of human rights. Eleanor Roosevelt gave that start a good push forward. She worked at the job for three years as chair-person of the “UN Commission of Human Rights” and, then, presented a strong case to the General Assembly following those three years of intense study and evaluation. The vote in the UN was a divided, of course. Forty-eight states “favored” the declaration. Eight states “abstained.” That was the Soviet bloc of nations, South Africa and Saudi Arabia. Two were reported “absent.”
As a direct result of report,the United Nations issued a “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”. It did so, too, without, “a single dissenting vote.”- technically. There other such legalistic shadows throughout many UN procedures, but, on the whole, that document gave Human Rights a strong mark of approval putting it on a firm legal footing and and enabling the concept to prosper.
Eleanor Roosevelt was the key to so much human rights advancements of those years. I never got to see her on any of her numerous trips to Southwest Virginia where she attended folk music gatherings. I remember, even then, of having a feeling she was really here to check on our human rights status as dwellers in the Appalachians area. She was a person who saw elements of worth in all people if they were given a chance to grow. The process is still going; still growing, but far from being “universal”
A.L.M. December 22, 2004 [c374wds]
