Linked to reasonable working hours, leisure time and paid vacations is the right of each person to self-development and education. This provision is one of many places where the UDHR aims to ensure the full development of people’s personality.
These rights, mostly developed in the 20th century, include the right to work, an adequate standard of living, education, maternity and childhood, social security, and the right to take part in cultural life.
The adoption of the Universal Declaration has been credited with helping advance the spread of democracy throughout the world since 1950, when there were just 20-25 democratic countries. Since then, the percentage of countries where the government is formed on the basis of majority rule, determined by regular elections, has risen considerably, boosted first of all by the end of colonialism and then by the collapse of Communism in the Soviet Bloc in 1989.