On the contrary, the world response to Nazi tyranny inaugurated a new era of human rights protection.

Nazi tyranny and atrocities pierced world consciousness as no horrors of inhumanity had before. Under Nazi direction, racial, religious, and national prejudices exploded into deadly persecution of many groups and a systematic attempt to exterminate the Jewish people. Six million Jews, including more than a million Jewish children who had not yet reached their teenage years, were killed. State power was absolute in Nazi-controlled territory: no human rights remained.

This catastrophe, however, sharpened the world's focus on the imperative of personal freedoms. President Roosevelt linked peace to respect for human rights "everywhere in the world" in his famous Four Freedoms speech to Congress in 1941. He identified freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear as mandatory. Commitments to secure these basic freedoms were reiterated during 1942 and 1943 by Allied leaders in London, Washington, and Moscow.

As World War II neared an end, Allied powers began to make plans for what would become the United Nations. Government representatives drafted a proposal in 1944 for a world organization. By the time the 1945 Conference on World Organization convened to finalize the proposal, delegates from throughout the world were facing a deluge of popular demands for stronger commitments to protect human rights. Delegates from Brazil, Cuba, Egypt, India, Mexico, and many other countries submitted new human rights proposals to the conference.

The U.S. Government invited representatives of 42 American organizations to serve as official consultants to the U.S. delegation. The organizations included religious, labor, farm, business, civic, and other groups. Arguing that people in the United States would support the new world organization only if it made unequivocal human rights pledges, the consultants successfully convinced the American delegation to champion human rights. The result was agreement among conference delegates to designate human rights protection as one of the four primary goals of the United Nations.

The Charter they adopted to define the mission of the United Nations also presents new dimensions to human rights: international responsibility for observing the fundamental rights shared equally by everyone, everywhere, and international responsibility for actively promoting these rights.