Drafting a common standard after the war
After the Second World War, the United Nations made human dignity and fundamental rights part of its international work. Its Commission on Human Rights and drafting committee developed a text setting out a common standard. Eleanor Roosevelt chaired the work, with Peng-chun Chang, Charles Malik, René Cassin and other delegates contributing from different legal and cultural backgrounds. The wording, scope and foundations of rights underwent extensive discussion and revision.
Adoption on 10 December 1948
At its 183rd plenary meeting in Paris on 10 December 1948, the General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by forty-eight votes to none, with eight abstentions. It became resolution 217 A (III). The meeting record preserves speeches, voting and consideration of the text. The declaration set out thirty articles addressed to peoples and nations, giving public form to the agreed standard.
Rights in everyday life
Beginning with freedom, equality and dignity, the declaration rejects slavery and torture and sets out equality before the law and fair-trial requirements. It addresses thought, religion, expression, movement and political participation alongside work, rest, education, social security and cultural life. Courts, families, schools and workplaces appear within the same document, bringing public and everyday life into a shared account of rights.
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A text for education and public institutions
The preamble calls for teaching, education and national and international measures to promote the rights it sets out. The text also addresses duties to the community and a social order in which rights can be realized. Its public wording supplied a shared vocabulary for legal debate, education and international human-rights work. Adoption in 1948 placed a negotiated standard before the institutions that would continue developing and applying it.