Punta del Este Declaration

Professor Robin Fretwell Wilson, a representative of the Fairness for All Initiative, served as a convener for a conference “Human Dignity for Everyone Everywhere,” which set forth the expansive human rights document known as the Punta del Este Declaration.  The Declaration commemorates the 70th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), celebrating its recognition of human dignity at the core of the panoply of human rights and recommitting to protecting it for everyone everywhere.

The conference was the culmination of a series of conferences held over the course of 2018 that explored the notion of human dignity, its relation to freedom of religion or belief, and the important role it has played in forming, guiding, and sustaining consensus on core human rights values despite tensions in a highly pluralized world. The hope is that the Punta del Este Declaration will serve as a spur to further discussion and debate, and that it can be supplemented and elaborated by individual comments, responses from other conferences or group efforts, and other initiatives that seek to build on the Declaration.

The Declaration’s focus on dignity derives from the language of the Preamble of the UDHR itself: “Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world . . .” and from Article 1 of the UDHR, which proclaims, “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” This simple idea—human dignity for everyone everywhere—is the central idea of human rights.