Human Rights – Article Thirteen

Credit Anthony Maw – CC-BY-SA

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a milestone document in the history of human rights. Drafted by representatives with different legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world, the Declaration was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 (General Assembly resolution 217 A) as a common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations. It sets out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected and it has been translated into over 500 languages.

Article 13.

(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

In spite of the fact that they used the masculine pronoun for a gender-neutral third person singular pronoun, I think we can forgive them because they were in the steely grip of the grammarians who insisted that using the epicene “they” was unacceptable. The important thing is that article thirteen says that no one shall be a prisoner of their country, or in their country. This article says that everyone has the right to move about within, depart from and return to their country.

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