Salas calls for a world human rights summit with a wide participation by governments, institutions, NGOs and academics that would incorporate new developments in human rights, revise certain absolute rights of religions and cultures that are incompatible with heterogeneity, and create an ethical code of rights and duties that goes beyond political and cultural borders. When girls and boys learn about human rights in school, practice them as adults, and as parents teach their children about them, without domestic violence, humanity will have taken a great step forward, Salas writes. Human rights, together with peace, democracy, and development, constitute the guiding principles of the 21st century. In their development and protection we must all recognise that we are not only spectators but protagonists. As such, we can and must work to improve them.
Human rights involve universal problems and so require universal solutions.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, ratified by the United Nations in 1948, proclaimed, in thirty articles, equality before the law, the right to life, liberty, health, a fair trial, freedom of religion, of movement, of opinion, assembly and association, and the economic and social rights to work, education, an adequate standard of living, and to private and collective property. South Africa rejected the prohibition against racial discrimination. And the Warsaw Pact countries found the declaration gave too much importance to individual liberties, too little to economic and social rights, and failed to note the obligations of individuals to the society and state. The latter three instruments are from 1966. In 55 years, more than 80 international treaties have been negotiated.