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26 May 2000

HR/00/38
26 May 2000





As of May 2000, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has made available on-line, through its website (www.unhchr.ch), 300 language versions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

This project - a contribution to the global dissemination of the Universal Declaration - has been developed in the framework of the United Nations Decade for Human Rights Education (1995-2004) and was made possible thanks to the cooperative efforts by many partners within and outside the United Nations system.

In November 1999, in connection with this initiative, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights was awarded the Guinness World Record for having collected, translated and disseminated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights into more than 298 languages and dialects: from Abkhaz to Zulu. The Universal Declaration is thus the document most translated - indeed, the most "universal" - in the world.

In the words of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson: "This project bears a special symbolism. It immediately brings to us a sense of the world's diversity; it is a rich tapestry with so many different languages and peoples. But, at the same time, it shows that all of us, in our different forms of expression, can speak the common language of humanity, the language of human rights, which is enshrined in the Universal Declaration."



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