Sixty years ago, when the United Nations was debating the creation of an international statement on human rights, Eleanor Roosevelt, then serving as head of the Human Rights Commission, delivered a caustic speech at the Sorbonne. “We must not be deluded by the efforts of the forces of reaction to prostitute the great words of our free tradition and thereby to confuse the struggle,” she said. “Democracy, freedom, human rights have come to have a definite meaning to the people of the world, which we must not allow to so change that they are made synonymous with suppression and dictatorship.”
This week marks the 60th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document affirming the “inherent dignity” and “equal and inalienable rights” of all people. While U.N. diplomats laud their human-rights achievements, the world’s dictators and terrorists are no doubt celebrating the prostitution of human rights–often at the encouragement of U.N. policies and protocols.
