Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"How are world citizens and their governments to reconcile universal human rights with claims for state sovereignty? The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), a further international effort to advance and define human rights, complicated things further. It certainly tilted the balance, at least on paper, away from states and toward individuals. It also is rooted in an abhorrence of the dreadful acts of the Second World War--the second paragraph of its preamble refers to the “disregard and contempt for human rights [that] have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind.". . . It enjoyed enormous global attention, partly because of the conspicuous role of Eleanor Roosevelt as the chair of the Commission on Human Rights, which produced the report . . . Thus, despite all the setbacks and ghastly actions, there has been a bigger advance in the idea and practice of national and international human rights in the past sixty years than in any comparable period in all of history." [Kennedy: Parliament of Man, Kindle Edition, Location 2974-96, 3407]