ABSTRACT
Vienna, in mid June 1993, greeted the arrival of 5,000 delegates from 160 nations and 1,000 non-governmental organizations. There was to be a World Conference on Human Rights to review progress after 50 years of work proclaiming and implementing human rights. Vienna reverberated with intense discussion and persistent questioning. Why, it was asked, was there so little progress being made in the attainment of fundamental freedoms? In what specific areas was the contemporary world still a disordered and grotesquely unjust place for many of its inhabitants? What were the circumstances that forced 20 million desperate people to leave their homes to find some crumbs of liberty? Was the North/South divide moral as well as economic? Were delegates satisfied merely to recite the 1948 Human Rights Declaration and to draw up a well-meaning agenda when all around new difficulties and reservations were crowding? Despite their scepticism and the objections from some quarters, delegates did undertake a comprehensive review of principles, legislation, implementation and future prospects. Twelve days of deliberation were given over to reviewing the efforts of half a century.
