In 1958 Eleanor Roosevelt wrote: “Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home … the neighborhood the person 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.”[1]
Ten years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Roosevelt – who had played a major part in drafting the text – chose to remind the political establishment that the idea of “neighbor” materializes above all as a responsibility to the concrete needs of another.
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