By Brendan Sweeney
Entitled 60 Years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Europe this publication is the fruit of an extensive collaboration between 41 universities in all 27 EU countries as well as contributions from the three main European regional organisations, i.e. the Council of Europe, the European Union and the Organisation of Security and Co-operation in Europe.
The new book comments and narrates from a national perspective how each country received and incorporated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights within their own legal and political systems.
Eva Maria Lassen, Head of the Research Department at the Danish Institute for Human Rights contributed the Danish chapter entitled: Denmark: A Document of Ideological Importance.
The publication relates the experience of the original West European countries that created the Council of Europe and later became the European Union; the experience of countries which have been under dictatorship and managed to rid themselves of the yoke of authoritarian rule and the experience of the Central and East European countries that were trapped behind the so-called Iron Curtain after the Second World War.
Each of these counties tells a different story about human rights and democratisation, but taken together, this is the story of how human rights and democracy collectively developed in Europe.
For further information, please contact Brendan Sweeney at