The Idea and the Documents of Human Rights

The most significant achievement of the Twentieth Century is, probably, the importance ascribed to t h e i d e a of human rights. and perhaps the most significant endeavour of the world community in the second half of the Twentieth Century is its attempt to codify these ethical demands in declarations, covenants, charters and similar instruments expected to have universal validity. Yet besides the unscrupulous murder, torture and social injustice, which continue to prevail in our world, recently we also see gaining ground tendencies to promote demands unnoticeably undermining the efforts to protect human rights. What are our shortcomings?The present volume is an attempt to bring into focus one of these shortcomings: the lack of clear knowledge of what human rights are, which seems to be the origin of various discrepancies within and between international human rights instruments -discrepancies that in many countries often block the way of those who work for the protection of human rights.