Three Pillars of Freedom

The theme of this year’s festival is the Three Pillars of Freedom; freedom from want, freedom from fear and the freedom to live in dignity.

These ideals were raised in former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s United Nations Report In Larger Freedom, which describes the Three Pillars of Freedom as:

• Freedom from want: Through the achievement of the UN Millennium Development Goals

• Freedom from fear: Through efforts to bring about collective security and peace

• Freedom to live in dignity: Through the application of justice for all, as we mark the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

In Kofi Annan’s Millennium Report, We the Peoples, he drew on the opening words of the Charter of the United Nations to point out that it, though an organisation of sovereign States, exists for and must ultimately serve the needs and hopes of peoples everywhere.

In order to achieve this, Annan believes that we should aim, as he said when first elected eight years earlier, “to perfect the triangle of development, freedom and peace”.

The architects of the UN Charter saw this clearly. In setting out to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, they understood that this enterprise could not succeed if its scope was too narrow. They therefore decided to create an organisation to ensure respect for fundamental human rights, establish conditions under which justice and the rule of law could be maintained, and “promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom”.

The former Secretary-General named his outgoing 2005 report In Larger Freedom to stress the enduring relevance of the Charter of the United Nations and to emphasise that its purposes must be advanced in the lives of individual men and women.

The notion of larger freedom encapsulates the idea that development, security and human rights go hand in hand.

For further information visit www.un.org/largerfreedom.