'Culture must be one of the foundations for world understanding.'

UNESCO Courier, June, 1996 by Albert Einstein

So - as a modest beginning of international order - the United Nations was founded. This organization, however, is but a meeting ground for delegates of national governments and not for the peoples' representatives acting independently on the basis of their own personal convictions. Furthermore, U.N. decisions do not have binding force on any national government; nor do any concrete means exist by which the decisions can be enforced.

The effectiveness of the United Nations is still further reduced by the fact that membership has been refused to certain nations, whose exclusion seriously affects the supra-national character of the organization. Yet, in itself, the fact that international problems are brought up and discussed in the broad light of day favours the peaceful solution of conflicts. The existence of a supra-national platform of discussion is apt to accustom the peoples gradually to the idea that national interests must he safeguarded by negotiation and not by brute force.

This psychological or educational effect I regard as the United Nations' most valuable feature. A world federation presupposes a new kind of loyalty on the part of man, a sense of responsibility that does not stop short at national boundaries. To be truly effective, such loyalty must embrace more than purely political issues. Understanding among different cultural groups, mutual economic and cultural aid are the necessary additions.

Only by such endeavour will the feeling of confidence he established that was lost owing to the psychological effect of the wars and sapped by the narrow philosophy of militarism and power politics. No effective institution for the collective security of nations is impossible without understanding and a measure of reciprocal confidence.

To the U.N. was added UNESCO, the agency whose function it is to pursue these cultural tasks. It has in a greater measure than the U.N. been able to avoid the paralyzing influence of power politics.

Realizing that healthy international relations can be created only among populations made up of individuals who themselves are healthy and enjoy a measure of independence, the United Nations elaborated a Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly on 10 December 1948.

The Declaration establishes a number of universally comprehensible standards that are designed to protect the individual, to prevent his being exploited economically, and to safeguard his development and the free pursuit of his activities within the social framework.

To spread these standards among all U.N. Member States is rightly regarded and aimed at as an important objective. UNESCO has accordingly instituted this third celebration for the purpose of drawing attention far and wide to these fundamental aspirations as a basis on which to restore the political health of the peoples.

It was scarcely to be avoided that the Declaration should take the form of a legalistic document, which in its rigidity may lead to endless discussion. It is impossible for such a text to take the great diversity of conditions of life in the different countries fully into account; in addition, it is unavoidable that such a text admits various interpretations of detail. The general tendency of the Declaration, however, is unmistakable and provides a suitable, generally acceptable basis for judgment and action.

To give formal recognition to standards and to adopt them as the guiding lines of action in the teeth of all the adversities of a changing situation are two very different things - as the impartial observer may see particularly in the history of religious institutions. The Declaration will only exert effective influence, when the United Nations itself shows by its decisions and actions that it does embody, de facto, the spirit of this, its own Declaration.