Monday, December 10, 1948, the United Nations passed Resolution 217, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris, France. Seventy years later, in Atlanta, Georgia -- a global destination of the 21st century -- the World Human Rights Network will issue an impact statement, communicating a new commitment to world human rights on World Human Rights Day, this Monday, December, 10th, 2018.
The impact statement will be issued by World Human Rights Network Chairman Al Bartell in an on-air interactive news conference from Atlanta's award-winning radio station WIGO-AM 1570 from 12noon to 1:00PM EST.
"The American President withdrew our human rights commitment to the United Nations," notes Bartell. "That does not mean the American people have withdrawn their commitment to world human rights."
The intention of the World Human Rights Network is to build a communications framework inside a new commitment to world human rights. The communications framework will give world human rights stakeholders the ability to communicate their commitment effectively in the 21st century. Bartell asserts this ability is critical, given the global impact happening at local levels.
"How do we build the capacity of community leaders," Bartell points out, "to interact with global conversations that are impacting their neighborhoods?
"Atlanta has been picked as a global destination. Other urban centers are experiencing the same kind of impact. It will take a new commitment to world human rights to do that work, to build that kind of capacity.
"Currently, around the world, we have not developed our capacity as human beings to govern with any marked effectiveness -- from the context of human rights. The World Human Rights Network is offering to support the American people, and world human stakeholders around the globe in doing just that."
Seventy years ago, when Eleanor Roosevelt was elected Chair of the United Nations' "nuclear commission" for developing the official Human Rights Commission (now Human Rights Council), she led with a gravity that the world's future depended on her efforts.
Two years of collaborative work went into the crafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) -- perhaps the single most critical piece of United Nations' language. Eleanor faced the seemingly insurmountable challenge of having a majority of her fellow UN delegates pass UDCR Resolution 217. given the increasing divisiveness unfolding out of the Cold War between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.
Being pressured by President Truman and Secretary of State George C. Marshall to issue a "moral offensive" against the USSR, Eleanor delivered a keynote address at the Sorbonne in Paris, France in September 1948.
According to the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project, she instead provided a tipping point toward unity:
"Calling 'the preservation of human freedom' 'one of the greatest issues of our time,' ER [Eleanor Roosevelt] told the overflow audience the world still struggled to rebound from the violence and coercion of wartime totalitarian governments and that only the Declaration had the 'moral force' to shift the discussion away from the reaction, retreat, and retrogression of the past.'
"The world must take the time [ER advised] 'to think carefully and clearly on the subject of human rights, because in the acceptance and observance of these rights lies the root, I believe, of our chance for peace in the future, and for the strengthening of the United Nations organization to the point where it can maintain peace in the future.' "
Weeks later, on December 10, 1948, the seemingly impossible happened. 48 of 58 delegates passed Resolution 217 to adopt the Declaration, now one of the most widely read documents, available in over 500 languages worldwide.
Today, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is regarded as the foundation for international human rights law. It sets out, according to the United Nations, for the first time, "fundamental human rights to be universally protected".
Special Guests and Sponsors for the World Human Rights Day News Conference include: Veterans Village LLC, Castan & Lecca, PC, Abel 2, LLC, Sierra Leone Diaspora, Sailors for the Sea.
"You must do the thing you think you cannot do."
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
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