70 lat Powszechnej Deklaracji Praw Człowieka

Authors

Monika Florczak-Wątor (ed)
Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4324-5652
Michał Kowalski (ed)
Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4539-3579

Keywords:

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Synopsis

70 YEARS OF THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights has symbolic significance. After the experience of World War II with its „barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind”, the international community needed a symbol that firstly was an expression of opposition to such a devastating trampling of human dignity, and secondly it was an expression of hope for the restoration of „faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women”. Adopted on December 10, 1948, the declaration has become such a symbol.
Today, 70 years after its adoption, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a symbol of the protection of human rights. It is, however, characteristic that the more attempts are made to depart from the symbolic nature of the Declaration, the clearer its ambiguous character becomes, both in the philosophical and axiological, as well as in the strictly legal dimension. This declaration still inspires asking a number of questions about the legal nature of contemporary human rights obligations, their genesis and axiological foundations, and finally, about the current shape of mechanisms for the protection of human rights which are on the one hand so sophisticated, and on the other – still so helpless against violations of fundamental human rights in modern world. The universality of these challenges makes the subsequent anniversaries of the adoption of the Declaration an opportunity for tackling these challenges again in academic debate.
This work consists of three parts. The first is of introductory character and contains texts devoted to the axiological and legal nature of the Declaration from today’s perspective. The second part contains studies dealing with six specific issues embedded in the catalogue of rights and freedoms contained in the Declaration. All of them have been undertaken in the context of contemporary challenges and allow to present today’s meaning and role of the Declaration in the jungle of international law mechanisms for the protection of human rights. Finally, the third part of this work contains four texts presenting the Declaration from the perspective of national law, in particular Polish law.

Chapters

Published

September 17, 2019

Details about the available publication format: PDF (Open Access)

PDF (Open Access)

ISBN-13 (15)

978-83-8138-195-6

Details about the available publication format: Hardback

Hardback

ISBN-13 (15)

978-83-8138-132-1