Two world wars defined the first period of the 20^th century.  The sheer technological scale of the suffering and displacement these conflicts produced kindled a new level of international recognition regarding the place of humanity within the world: the conception of all humanity sharing a common origin, a common destiny and a common sense of suffering.  As such, it was only natural that political momentum grew within the international political sphere for the development of a conceptual moral framework that would express this new, shared identity between the whole of humanity.  This momentum culminated primarily in the framework of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights adopted by the fledgling United Nations, but it has since seen the upspringing of many other similar declarations in the wake of the emergence of entities such as the European Union and the Community of South American Nations.

 

The mechanised horror of endless human sacrifice that characterised the trench warfare of the Great War, coupled with the increase in scale that the systemised nature of modernity had given to the dislocation and genocide of populations prior to and during World War II gave the post war populace a profound understanding that the newly created United Nations required a framework that would act to prevent the reoccurrence of such tragedies in the new period that was shaping the world.

 

It was this deep moral sentiment that prompted individual citizens and groups, as well as countries (particularly those struggling under the systems of colonial dependence and dominance that still prevailed under the infant world order of the Cold War) to pressure the newly formed international body to adopt a bill of human rights that spelt out and bound all nations to a

---