Abstract

This article starts with a demonstration of the importance attached to universal human rights and justice following the adoption of the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and subsequent treaties. Instead of focusing on national concerns, it turns to address the even greater difficulties of securing human rights and justice at a global level. It does so by reference to particular challenges presented to two bodies on which the author serves: the Eminent Persons Group on the Future of the Commonwealth of Nations, and the UNDP Global Commission on HIV and the Law. Whilst securing advances are difficult and sometimes messy, the article concludes on a positive note in relation to the role of lawyers in advancing universal global human rights and justice.

Highlights

  • Justice is an elusive concept upon which it is possible for rational and informed observers to disagree, yet it is one of the core principles of every national legal system

  • The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was drafted by a committee chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt and was brought into operation by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 10 December 1948.4 At the time of its acceptance, the President of the General Assembly was an Australian, Dr Herbert V Evatt, a man who had been a Justice of the High Court of Australia in the 1930s

  • The mission took place just before the constitutional change in South Africa occurred, involving the abandonment of the apartheid state. It was still difficult for the South African Ministers—locked into their apartheid laws and perspectives—to offer concessions that would be essential for that nation to return to compliance with the basic principles of the International Labour Organisation (ILO)

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Summary

INTRODUCTION

Justice is an elusive concept upon which it is possible for rational and informed observers to disagree, yet it is one of the core principles of every national legal system. This was envisaged sixty years ago by the Charter of the United Nations and the UDHR They each laid the ground for the global perspective that was to follow in the pursuit of the trinity of stated global objectives: fundamental human rights; justice; and observance of the rule of law. Each of these objectives, and the domestic and international legal order alike, is interrelated and inter-dependent. The attainment of the principles expressed in the United Nations Charter and the UDHR (as well as in the treaties, declarations, guidelines and other instruments that have followed) is not an ethereal topic of intellectual discourse alone. Well-trained people can clash passionately over it and they can sometimes denounce each other, declare each other to be heretics, or suggest that no well-informed person of sensibility could possibly hold the opinions expressed.[21]

INTERNATIONAL AGENCIES OF HUMAN RIGHTS
COMMONWEALTH EMINENT PERSONS GROUP
UNDP COMMISSION ON HIV AND THE LAW
Findings
CONCLUSION
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