UN – The Dream of Peace and Freedom
The dream that died, because freedom is to be given, not taken
A grandeur dream! Never again war, because all countries would meet, through ambassadors, who would be in the same room, permanently.
That would mean easy access to resolve conflicts diplomatically, even with the assistance of the ambassadors from other countries. We could all help each other to maintain peace. World peace.
It was needed after two world wars shortly after each other, that both killed a horrifying amount of people, displayed immense evil, and destroyed much of the world as it had been built by generations.
The circumstances meant that nobody was eager to engage in another war, ever. It had been scary, and even the strongest powers had basically lost the wars. Of course, some were declared victors, and others had lost their countries completely, now being administered by those who officially won. But all the dead soldiers and civilians didn’t win, no matter which side they had fought for, and their families, property, animals… everything and everybody in most of the world had suffered or had been killed or destroyed or left mourning.
It had been a war, or two of them, of a scale that the world had never seen before, and nobody had imagined. New and terrifying weapons had been developed and deployed, making it clear that the next war, if there would ever be another, could become not only worse, but a total destruction.
Things had simply gone too far in all respects to plan or hope for any new war to appear, ever.
It had not been that long ago since the napoleon wars, which at that time had destroyed the order of the world, as it had been known for a very long time before they happened. Napoleon attempted to conquer very large parts of Europe, or perhaps all of it, but lost, and the resulting reshuffling of rulership was the beginning of the end of the old empires.
Industrialization and the resulting urbanization also changed the landscapes, or, more precisely, the “human-scapes”. We saw people grouping around industries instead of farming, and the introduction of new fuels and mechanics allowed for the use of more hours of the day for producing things, in factories that became bigger and more productive all the time. Inventions in lighting technologies made administrative work possible during more hours of the day as well, and bureaucracies blossomed.
All that between the Napoleon wars and the first World War. Logically speaking, it wasn’t the first world war, as there had been worldwide war activities during the Napoleon wars as well, but the term “World War”, at that time not named “the first”, in fact, often just “the Great War” or similar, appeared in the USA. It was new to that country to be part of such a large conflict, stretching out of their own territory, even though there had been wars along the way, for independence and territory expansion. It was that war, the one later to be called WW I, that made the USA an international player and power factor.
WW II, which was where the term WW I appeared, enforced that, and when that war ended, there was no longer a powerful Austria, Germany, or France. Instead, the USA, the UK, and the Soviet Union, had been strengthened, power-wise.
All other countries had lost whatever power they had before the wars and were desperately seeking ways to survive, get food production up and running again, establish new industries and new farming methods that could work with fewer people and fewer animals, as most of those who used to be there to do the farming, both people and animals, had died.
The reconstruction of cities, farming, infrastructure, and literally everything else was a huge task in most countries, and it was logical to almost every person on Earth that they would never want to see such a terrible war again. Or any war, for that matter of sake.
In such an environment, the United Nations was proposed and established. It didn’t appear out of the blue, as there had been something similar, The League of Nations, established after WW I, with fewer nations involved, and, obviously, with limited success, as it couldn’t prevent WW II from breaking out.
So, in 1945, the UN came to be, this time with more members, including also the USA this time.
Since then, we have avoided a new world war. The idea of all nations being able to talk about things and thereby avoid conflicts, hasn’t worked out that well, though, and we have constantly an amount of wars going on around the globe, that the UN isn’t capable of preventing or stopping. The Cold War was such a conflict, and even though it exactly was a cold war with few military confrontations happening, it kept the world in a constant stress situation and led to loss of freedom for many, as part of the two blocks’ wish or need to limit their citizens’ rights to travel, especially between the blocks.
However, the UN has a number of additional tasks and institutions, all related to easing problems between countries and govern the world at an extra-national level. This includes such as an international court, organizations for the regulation of international travel, banking, etc., and emergency aid. Around 30 organizations and institutions exist under UN’s wings, and most of these are doing a necessary job, that the world couldn’t be without.
Even though the main mandate of the UN: to maintain peace on Earth, isn’t functioning very well, the organization does have a significant value for most countries.
It also has some principles, which were designed to assist in avoiding wars, but which causes one or another country to feel non-aligned with the UN in various situations, leading to disagreements and, at times, drastic measures, such as the USA leaving the UN Human Rights Council in 2018 and again now, in 2025.
Which leads to The Universal Declaration of Human Rights from 1948 and the many charters that have been made on top of that, committing many countries to follow the declaration and secure the rights in it for their citizens.
Many dictators have had problems agreeing with the declaration, and Donald Trump seems to be one of those. Logically speaking, it takes an effort to fulfill the commitment and deliver the freedom as stated, and most countries have problems doing it fully.
As any actions by the UN meant to enforce the human rights need approval by the security council, and this has members who do not endorse them, it is in reality not possible to enforce their implementation at a global scale.
Hence, the human rights might have been a good idea, but they are mostly an idea.
All is not lost, though, as quite many countries have done significant efforts to implement the rights and the regular updates that have appeared, about women’s rights, for instance. There are also courts specializing in human rights, not the least The European Court of Human Rights, that has jurisdiction to make binding verdicts for all the 47 member states (those who are members of the European Council).
The original list of rights can be found here:
United Nations: Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Human rights, according to the charters, are this way mandatory for some of the world’s countries, but not all. This is, though, much better than if there had been no human rights at all, and the set has definitely helped these states to evolve in a direction that benefits the citizens – which, then, is not the case in all other states.
During recent years, various laws have been implemented across the world, for the sake of dealing with terrorism. These laws are in general not compliant with the human rights, as it has become illegal to have thoughts, even if these thoughts remain thoughts, that could be considered connected to a terrorist way of thinking.
There has been situations where people were arrested, and according to these new laws deprived of their normal rights to be told what they are charged for, and to see a judge within 24 hours, etc., and instead spent months in prison, often without anyone knowing where they were or what was happening, and they, themselves, might not have known it either.
Many other problems appear regularly, in most countries, that are breaking the promise from 1948 to protect the human rights.
There are organizations, such as Human Rights Watch, that help to register and tell about breaches, and they are very busy. There is a lot to register and tell about.
Apart from all the law-stuff, and various governments’ obvious disrespect for those fundamental rights that we should all be able to count on, those simple rules for how we need to treat each other, there is something else that may be even worse:
It is not only governments that break the rules. Employers do that too, that’s an old fact, which still happens. Much of what takes place in a workplace is breaking one or more of the human rights, but here’s the main problem: we are so used to it, that we don’t object against it.
We accept that salary is lower for women and that people with a different skin color or who are a member of a certain political party, or whatever, will not get hired – or will be fired at will, when the boss finds out.
We also on our own account restrict ourselves from speaking up about problems in the world, about what we see happen to others, or feel in our own bodies, in our own lives, happens to ourselves. Laws and government institutions that are breaking the human rights are being accepted by most people, and nobody seems to support the few protesters.
Social media, where people could potentially exercise freedom of speech, have so many rules and censoring mechanism, and people are being blocked or excluded at will, often arranged by automatics, no humans involved, and without any explanation. And we, the users, are blocking each other at will too. We are in general not doing anything at all to maintain an environment with free speech, and we accept all the breaches we see.
There are groups of people who, according to the human rights, are entitled to have their thoughts and also express these, but are prevented from this by various mechanisms in society, often seeing their surroundings mocking or punishing them in different ways. This happens on social media as well.
Whatever good intentions were behind the human rights are often being disregarded by politicians and other people with power over us, but we are also doing a lot of it ourselves.
In my opinion, it is very important to break that pattern and start opening up, speaking about things and allowing others to do so too. This means reading what they write on social media, for instance, as the freedom to say something also implies an expectation to be heard. As we are no longer standing on the corner, on a box, speaking to bypassers, there needs to be an active listening culture on social media, so people in general will support each other by listening to what is being said.
The practice of looking the other way, pretending that you don’t know anything didn’t hear it, and believing that then it is not your responsibility, is no good.
The practice to avoid articles about any topic that potentially could lead to someone thinking badly about you, or a government institution or employer mocking you, this way generally looking completely like the wallpaper in all situations, hoping to not be noticed at all, is no good either.
And you should think about this, even if you don’t want human rights for yourself. Because, if you don’t help it happening as it should, everybody else will also lose their human rights – because of you.
You must give other people that freedom, the human rights describe. That’s the only way they can get it.
But check the rights out, following the link above, and let me know in the comments if there are any of them you don’t like, which causes you to not want to support the whole set. Then at least you and I and other people can discuss something specific, maybe leading to adjustments of our culture, what we do, or to the human rights themselves and the laws around them.
My personal belief is that it would be good if we could all observe those rights. They are not 100% perfect in every respect, and there are some needs to specify more precicely what a right will imply in a specific country and context. But 100% of us would have better lives if these rights would be observed at all times, so I suggest that we’ll start doing that.
It's about the dream of a world where we are all free
Free to speak, study, get a job,
stay where we are, without being pushed or bombed away by anyone
and to dream, think, evolve and develop all that is needed for all of us to thrive
The dream ultimately is that there are no borders—that people learn to live with each other with honor and respect and allow the earth to heal itself; value plant and animal life equally.