THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS AT 75: LAME OR LUMINOUS?

This episode considers the relevance of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights today, in spite of the political compromises which surrounded its drafting, resulting in ambiguous norms which rely on domestic legal systems for meaning as well as effective implementation. As the previous episodes have shown, impulses towards individual rights and freedoms have always been conflicting and conflicte...

This episode describes the drafting process of the Universal Declaration within the United Nations. It was fundamentally different from its eighteenth-century antecedents in that the process involved every UN member, myriad Non-Governmental Organisations and dozens of highly committed individuals. However, there was opposition to it (from the UN Secretary-General down) and debates became fractious...

While the 19th century had seen some advances in rights for people (the abolition of the slave trade; protection of people in times of war), they were advances for specific groups of people rather than for all human beings. At the start of the 20th century there were several organisations from many parts of the world which were concerned about rights. These were the initiatives of concerned indivi...

After the reaction against natural rights at the end of the 18th century, was a gentler touch, rather than a kick start, needed to massage human rights into life? This episode looks at the 19th century, which began as the Age of Romanticism, and which saw the abolition of the slave trade, but which was also an age of industrialisation, imperialism and racism. Movements towards a human rights sensi...

This episode considers the similarities and differences between the US and French revolutions and the resulting Declarations, and the reactions outside the United States and France to these. While some applauded the new focus on rights, others were appalled at the bloodshed, particularly that occurring in France during the Terror. Thus, while some, like Thomas Paine, built on Locke’s ideas of natu...

This podcast considers revolutions in religion, society and politics, and some of the people involved in them, and their effects on the notions of rights. The Reformation helped to detach notions of rights and the authority of the (Catholic) church from earlier notions of natural law.  The Renaissance saw an increased focus on the individual.  But the effects of these were neither consistent nor u...

This is the first podcast in a series to mark the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It considers whether human rights have an ancient pedigree in law, ethics, politics and religion. Do the Code of Hammurabi and the Cyrus Cylinder offer any clues to the origins? What was the nature of rights in ancient Greece? How important was the growth of the political influence of C...