What follows is a reaffirmation, not a revision, of the mission of Eleanor Lives! The mission of Eleanor Lives! is crystal clear and has not changed since the creation of the nonprofit organization on International Women’s Day, March 8, 2020.
The mission of Eleanor Lives! is to revive Eleanor Roosevelt’s legacy and plan for humanity. 
After 50 million people were killed in WWII, many of them in gas chambers and other horrific ways, there was agreement that steps had to be taken to prevent athoritarian tyrants from violating the rights of citizens and waging war on their neighbors.
The creation of the United Nations was the first step in this direction, but it was understood that it was not enough to make rules to stop countries from waging war on one another, there needed to be a set of rights for people in all countries and courts to enforce them. To this end, at the War Memorial building in San Francisco, President Truman told the closing ceremony for the U.N. Charter in San Francisco “The first thing we will do is prepare an International Bill of Rights.”
President Truman then turned to Eleanor Roosevelt, and appointed her a delegate to the United Nations, where she became Chair of the newly created Human Rights Commission. The Commision’s goal was to implement this plan for an International Bill of Rights. and Eleanor, along with an international body, set out to draft an International Bill of Rights.
As they worked, the Cold War stifled the vision of an enforceable International Bill of Rights, a true rights based approach that could prevent athoritarian governments from coming to power in any county, and provide for rights such as education and health care in all countries to provide for well-being for all.
Wisely, after a beautiful International Bill of Rights was written, rather than let the lack of enforcement kill the effort, Eleanor and others moved to an unenforceable declaration, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Even though they understood that the UDHR was unenforceable, they specifically inserted Article 28 into that Declaration stating the intent that future documents would be created that would make the rights in the UDHR enforceable in the courts of all countries.
This plan has partially worked. Following the UDHR, the European Convention on Human Rights was created in 1953, and with it a European Court of Human Rights emerged with judges from 47 countries enforcing the same Bill of Rights in all countries. If countries do not follow the decisions of the European Court, and make those decisions part of their domestic law, they can be fined, and if that does not work, they can be forced out of the Council of Europe, thereby losing valuable European trade privileges with 47 countries.
For many decades, the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights were almost uniformly followed by all 47 countries. Recently, with the invasion of Ukraine, and the statement of the Russian Government that its courts are not bound by the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, the Court has been damaged. Nonetheless, it still remains as the best protection for human rights today, not the United Nations where almost all of the human rights machinery remains primarily reports and opinions that are not enforceable in courts of law.
Rene Cassin, who worked with Eleanor on the UDHR and was one of the first judges on the European Court, won the Nobel Peace prize. With respect to the European Court he told the Nobel Committee two simple words “It works.”
And Regional Courts do work. The Inter-American Court on Human Rights has been slowly advancing, as has the African Court on Human and People’s Rights, but these courts are not yet sufficiently developed to constitute an International Bill of Rights. Truman’s call for an International Bill of Rights has yet to be answered.
Why is this? It’s not because humans are just athoritarian by nature, like apes, which rely on hiearchy. Humans can read and write; that makes us unique among all species on Earth. Through reading and writing we can tell stories; the stories we tell create the lives that we lead.
The story of an International Bill of Rights has gone fallow. It not just because of the athoritarian elements within the United Nations, of which there are many and theirs numbers are growing, its also because the human rights community has become complacent and myopic, thinking that blaming and shaming is enough and not pushing for law. Almost all of the work at the UN on human rights consists of declaratons and reports. The Universal Periodic Review is a good example of discussion, but not law.
Einstein said “The problems of the world do not exist because of the evil people, but because of the good people who do nothing about them.” This profound insight is precisely where humanity finds itself today. There is a poem that fits with this insight “An Ambulance or a Fence” by Joseph Malins. 
In that poem there is a cliff from which many are falling to their injury and death below. There is a debate in the town about whether to build a fence up top, or ambulances to rush to people at the bottom. The ambulances prevail.
Such is the bulk of the international human rights system today, and, as in the poem, when a call is made to build a fence, an International Bill of Rights, the ambulance manufacturers and drivers, to the glee of the athoritarians and monetary interests who are casting people off the cliff, and destroying Earth’s biosphere while they are at it, call out in near unison, “we’ll build ambulances forever, how dare you distract us with a fence?”
Of course it’s a false dilemma. Ambulances and a fence are not mutually exclusive. Ambulances will always be needed, and those who build them and drive them are to be applauded. The problem is that the ambulance proponents, with the aid of athoritarian governments who do not want law to curtail their behaviors, do not actively support building a fence in addition to their work.
The celebration of the 75th anniversary of the United Nations is a good example. Hundreds of NGOs gathered to proclaim human rights as if saying rights repeatedly somehow makes them become law. (Jus cogens rarely works). Almost none of them even mentioned the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and none of them called for the expansion of Regional Courts and a renewed commitment toward an International Bill of Rights.
The 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is rapidly approaching, December 10, 2023. This oversight of the UDHR must not happen again. Eleanor Lives! has booked the War Memorial building, the birthplace of the UDHR, for a two day event. The goal of the event is the same as the mission of Eleanor Lives, to revive a plan for humanity, embodied in the UDHR, but still in need of implementation. It’s time to build a fence.
To this end, there are three specific things you can do to help Eleanor Lives! celebrate and reaffirm the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on its 75th anniversary:
One, join the “Lights for Rights” campaign by signing your name and country on the website to show support for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on its 75th anniversary. This will create a light on the spinning globe wherever you are.
Two, help raise funds for the event by contributing 10 dollars to the Eleanor Lives “$10 from 10 million campaign.” (The first 300 hundred people, organizations or businesses to do so receive a free ticket to the event, which includes heavy hors d’oeuvres and great entertainment in a beautiful 1,000 seat theater where the closing ceremony for the United Nations was held.
Three, make a comment on the website as to what rights you think should be included in the draft International Bill of Rights
The goal of Eleanor Lives! for the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 2023, is to have 100,000 lights of people, nonprofits and businesses on globes around the world that all show the lights being added in real time.
And if you are wondering whether we can succeed, recall Eleanor’s words “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” She believed in the beauty of her dreams and we can make them our future by building ambulances and a fence.
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