• The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: insights from its first draft

    Until recent years it was hard to find good information on the origin of human rights. This was particularly true about the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration in 1998 began to change that picture as scholars began to turn their attention to the history of human rights. Among the books that have been written since, are Mary Ann Glendon’s book, A World Made New, and Johannes Morsink’s book The Universal Declaration of Human Rights Origins, Drafting & Intent. Both works tell the story of the how the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was created. Glendon’s book also happens to be one…

  • Looking for peace

    Try finding peace

    The world seems to be searching for peace at the moment; but seems to be having a hard time finding it.  At least, this is what you may come to believe if you follow the news.  Maybe we’re looking in the wrong places. Have you every tried to search for “peace” news?  Scan either the Google or Bing news feed for “peace” and for page after page mostly what you find is “war”.  So by “peace” we seem to mean “war”.   No wonder we’re having a hard time finding peace. Of course these search engines are just mirrors of ourselves.  The engines prioritise news about war against peace searches, because…