This was, and is, a sweeping and signal document for us who work in the field of civil and human rights, for the Declaration remains the overarching secular framework, globally, whose decency and whose eloquence motivate us locally. I say decency because the Declaration asserts that human rights are not a designer commodity for Western democracies only, or other privileged enclaves around the world.
Human rights are properly the birthright of every human being.
The Declaration leaves us the gigantic challenge of implementing and protecting the rights that it affirms, fifty years later. But we should never lose sight of the fact that, all of us being human, the Declaration is a common tissue that unites the friends of justice and the lovers of liberty with all believers in human potential, and thereby creates a bond between people which would not otherwise have been so readily perceived. It's up to us to nurture that bond. Like the Declaration itself, that struggle is universal. The refusal of rights to anyone diminishes everyone.