Information on Equality, Democracy and Human Rights

EU and European citizenship are established on the values of democracy, equality, and human rights, among others.

Human rights are rights we have simply because we exist as human beings. These universal rights are inherent to us all, regardless of nationality, sex, national or ethnic origin, color, religion, language, or any other status. They range from the most fundamental - the right to life - to the rights to food, education, work, health, and liberty.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948, was the first legal document to set out the fundamental human rights to be universally protected. This is also the most translated document in the world. Read here.

We could say that quite a long time passed since, but the full implementation of the Declaration’s principles is still challenge in many corners in the world and we face recurrent tendencies to regress. In Europe, we have long since learned that when the rights of one person come under attack, the rights of others are vulnerable and when one community is demonized or discriminated against, it diminishes us all.

People who do not know their rights are more vulnerable to having them abused and often lack the language and conceptual framework to effectively advocate for them. That’s why human rights education is increasingly recognized as an effective strategy to prevent human rights abuses. Integral to learning about one’s human rights is learning about the responsibilities that accompany all rights. Just as human rights belong to both individuals and society as a whole, the responsibility to respect, defend, and promote human rights is both individual and collective.

Equality, democracy and human rights are closely related, each is in some way dependent on the other, and incomplete without the other. They include long-standing values such as gender equality, freedom of expression online and offline, eradication of torture, the abolition of the death penalty, the prevention of sexual and gender-based violence, new ones like right to healthy environment, cultural rights and many more.

With the challenges of our time, like economic crisis, COVID-19 pandemic, massive migrations and global climate change, several conflicts have deepened, discrimination raised and new risks have emerged. Human rights, equality and democracy have never been more challenged. In respond, European Commission and the High Representative adopted and new Action Plan on Human Rights and Democracy for 2020-2024.

To flourish, both democracy and human rights require people’s active participation, placing special attention to young who will continue to work on unresolved problems.