Today is the 54th anniversary of the United Declaration of Human Rights which sets out the rights to which every human being is entitled. The declaration contains a preamble and 30 articles, protecting everything from the right to freedom of speech to the right to work, to the right to live under the rule of law.

It's fair to say, in democratic societies like Bermuda anyway, that we don't miss human rights until they are taken away from us.

But if any one of those rights was taken away from us, we would know it immediately. Life would, in many ways, become intolerable.

We all should be aware that there are millions of people around the world, from China to Iraq and from Saudi Arabia to Cuba where basic human rights are denied and where people are jailed or worse, often for simply holding different views from those of the government. As people who enjoy much broader rights, Bermudians have a moral responsibility to oppose those breaches. In Bermuda, the challenges are different, but fall into two, inter-connected areas.

The first is the gradual erosion of rights, whether as a result of public pressure or intolerance, or as a result of Government action.

Some restrictions are understandable. We have freedom of movement within the state, but some areas can be restricted for reasons of national security. But what happens if a government restricts freedom of movement for the above reason when it cannot be justified.

Last week the community saw an example of freedom of speech being curtailed on a website at least in part because some of what was being said was hurting the Island's tourism industry and because some of what was being said was unacceptable to others.

The administrators of a website, or a newspaper for that matter, cannot be compelled to provide a forum for free speech. But airing different views and ideas is essential to a healthy democracy. The problem comes when one freedom overlaps with another. We enjoy the right to life under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and we enjoy freedom of religion as well.

What happens if a religion arose that promoted human sacrifice? Clearly, the right to life would have to override freedom of religion in that extreme case. Less obvious and more complex overlaps occur every day. Sorting them out is not simple and it is largely for that reason that the Human Rights Commission and the whole framework of courts and judges exist.

Human rights are established under the Universal Declaration and under Bermuda's own legislation. But human rights evolve and develop as circumstances change. Even in 1948, the idea that discrimination on the basis of race or gender should be outlawed was not universally accepted, and in some parts of the world it still is not. Similarly, many people, including many Bermudians, do not accept the idea that discrimination on the basis of sexual preference is wrong. In time, this idea will either be accepted or rejected, and those who are responsible for human rights have a duty to be a part of this debate.

Most human rights cases in Bermuda are dealt with privately, to protect both the victim and, in some cases, the accused. This may be justified, but it also means that the community is largely deprived of seeing how human rights justice is done and, possibly, deprived of the opportunity to become more aware of their rights. This again is an area that the dedicated and committed members of the Human Rights Commission need to consider carefully as they go about their vitally important duties.