Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Justice and Peace Europe, need for “concrete practise of respect for human dignity”

(Brussels) “Celebrating the 70^th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is first of all a renewal of our personal commitment to Human Rights”, that is, to “defending our own rights, but also the rights of the other”. It means recalling that adherence to the Declaration “is an obligation to public authorities at all levels”. Justice and Peace Europe reflects on the significance of the 10 December anniversary in a statement by its Executive Committee. Celebrating this anniversary, the statement reads, is “an opportunity to affirm the equal importance of social rights and personal rights and freedoms” and the “interdependence and indivisibility” of human rights, which are of particular importance today to “overcome new social divisions and rifts in our societies and the populist politics thriving in part on them”. Also, the need was stressed for “a legally binding text at the level of the United Nations” to regulate the activities of transnational corporations “in international Human Rights law” and to identify “new forms of violation of the dignity of the human person in our rapidly changing world”. Hence the call for the “full recognition of a universal right to water and sanitation” and of “other environmental human rights”. The 70^th anniversary is also a reminder that “human rights need strong moral foundations both nationally and globally” as well as “the concrete practise of respect for human dignity”.