The adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations on 10 December 1948 meant that for the first time in human history a general catalogue of the rights of individuals was made the explicit subject of international standards. 

It was then, and remains, a controversial document. One of the most persistent controversies which has dogged it over six decades is whether it can claim universal application in a world marked by religious, cultural and civilisational differences.

The conduct of the ‘war on terror’ has led Western Governments to resist the universal application of the Declaration. Australian laws raise serious human rights questions: both preventative detention and control orders are mechanisms that are inconsistent with the rule of law and with human rights. Whenever exceptions to human rights based on culture differences are proposed, we should investigate the political agenda of the culture claim.

Professor Hilary Charlesworth is Professor of International Law and Human Rights at ANU. She is an Australian Research Council Federation Fellow and Director of the Centre for International Governance and Justice at the ANU. She also holds an appointment as Professor of International Law and Human Rights at the ANU College of Law. Her research interests are in international law and human rights law. Additionally Prof. Charlesworth is in the Regulatory Institutions Network, RSPAS, College of Asia and the Pacific, ANU.

She was the inaugural president of the Australian and New Zealand Society of International Law (1997-01); co-editor of the Australian Yearbook of International Law (1996-06) and a member of the Board of Editors of the American Journal of International Law since 1999. She has worked with various non-governmental human rights organisations.