The world faces many crises, globally and locally. Financial markets are in turmoil, hundreds of millions are mired in lives of poverty and despair, environmental rights are too often ignored. So despite the strides we’ve made in the sixty years since the visionaries led by Eleanor Roosevelt drafted the Universal Declaration, human security and human development are far from assured. The fundamental rights and freedoms enshrined in the Universal Declaration can still be realized – and this generation can ensure lives of dignity for all.
Eleanor Roosevelt famously said, "Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world."