60 years after its adoption by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948, the Declaration is ready to take a journey into space: specifically the International Space Station.
On Friday 7 November 2009, Ms Rama Yade, French state secretary responsible for foreign affairs and human rights within the French government, officially handed over a copy of the Declaration to the European Space Agency’s Director General, Jean-Jacques Dordain.
The Declaration, properly protected in space-proof packaging, is tentatively scheduled, if all goes according to plan, to reach the International Space Station on board the Space Shuttle from the Kennedy Space Center later in November. It will be stored on a permanent basis inside ESA’s Columbus multidisciplinary space laboratory. [1]
Roy Brown, IHEU’s main representative at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, commented, “Maybe the space aliens will treat the “Universal” Declaration of Human Rights with more respect than the member states of the UN Human Rights Council.”
[1] http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMI1Z4KXMF_index_0.html