A sacred and universal character for human rights

“The heathens could always deny the immortality of the soul, and yet the believers will not stop to see it as a certitude. Even if the pagans were right today, the power of faith the believers have would one day make the soul immortal,” wrote Austrian-American composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) in the text he sent to UNESCO from Los Angeles on 21 July 1947, under the title “The Rights of Man”. “The same will apply to human rights, if we do not cease to believe in their existence, even though they should remain unknown and ill-defined for a long time to come," he added. Excerpts follow.