Fifty years ago tomorrow the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. It was - indeed it remains - an immensely challenging and provocative document which sets a common standard for all peoples to which all individuals and organs of society can strive. The Declaration, the subject of a special four-page supplement in today's editions of this newspaper, was a bold response by the world community to two world wars in the first half of this century; it was designed to ensure that there would be no recurrence of the Holocaust, of the killing fields at the Somme, of man's inhumanity to man.
Weighed against these lofty ideals it is easy, 50 years on, to suggest that the Declaration is no more than empty rhetoric. Its articles have been flagrantly violated in Rwanda, in the former Yugoslavia, on Tiananmen Square and in countless other places. In some cases, some of the more repressive regimes in Eastern Europe appeared to invoke certain articles of the Declaration in order to justify oppression. In others, those like the United States, who place themselves in the vanguard of the battle for world human rights, have adopted what might be termed an a la carte approach to the Articles of the Declaration. But these transgressions hardly make a case against the Declaration. Rather, they underpin its importance as a document that sets a standard of decency, tolerance, solidarity and freedom for the mass of humanity. Fifty years on, the influence of the Declaration endures. In a very practical sense, the War Crimes Tribunal for Bosnia, for example, derives its power from the Declaration.
On a wider level, as Vaclav Havel has noted, the Declaration acts as a "universal set of principles to govern human co-existence" and as a fundamental "global code of conduct". It sets a standard by which we can all - as nation states, communities, or individuals - be measured.
Traditionally, the people of this State have taken pride in our human rights record. Irish aid agencies and missionaries have a fine record of service in advancing the cause of human rights in the Third World and in Central America. A former Irish Foreign Minister, Sean MacBride, was a co-founder of Amnesty International and a former President, Mrs Robinson, is today the UN Human Rights Commissioner. The one million signatures collected by Amnesty International in support of the Declaration are testimony to the continuing commitment of Irish people to human rights.
For all that, the people of this State - who have scarcely distinguished themselves in their attitude to the travelling community - face new challenges in the area of human rights as the transition from emigrant to immigrant society continues apace. The experience to date has not been encouraging, something best symbolised by the spectacle of refugees queuing for hours outside the "Aliens Office" of the Department of Justice. Some of the old harshness and rigidity in official attitudes towards refugees and asylum seekers has, mercifully, begun to melt away. But there remains the challenge to each of us to adopt a tolerant and generous approach to those seeking refuge here. There remains the challenge of giving living expression to the sentiments adopted 50 years ago in the Universal Declaration.