NGO’s and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: A Curious Grapevine

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When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in the 1950s, Eleanor Roosevelt, its principal architect, predicted that a curious grapevine would carry its message behind barbed wire and stone walls. This book tells the extraordinary story of how non-governmental organizations (NGOs) became the grapevine she anticipated, sharpening our awareness about the violations of human rights, shaming its most notorious abusers and creating the international mechanisms to bring about implementation of the Declaration. Korey traces how NGOs laid groundwork for the destruction of the Soviet empire, as well as of the apartheid system in South Africa, and established the principle of accountability for crimes against humanity. The notion of human rights has progressed from being a marginal part of international relations a half century ago to stand today as a critical element in diplomatic discourse and this book shows that it is the NGOs that have placed human rights at the centre of humankind’s present and future agenda.