New York  - The United Nations celebrates the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on Wednesday, knowing that its provisions have remained largely unfulfilled even by the governments that promote them to their own citizens.

Human rights, along with development and security, are the three main pillars upon which the world organization has built its activities since its birth in 1945. UN founders included human rights in the organization's charter in response to atrocities committed during World War II.

On Wednesday, the UN General Assembly plans to conduct a round of meetings to discuss lessons learned in the past decades, the current challenges and the design for the way forward.

"The challenges we face today are as daunting as those that confronted the declaration's drafters," UN Secretary General Ban Ki- moon said in a message on the 60th anniversary. "We face a food emergency and a global financial crisis."

"Humankind's assault on the natural environment continues," he said. "There is political repression in too many countries. And as ever, the most vulnerable continue to be on the frontline of hardship and abuse."

"On this Human Rights Day, it is my hope that we will act on our collective responsibility to uphold the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration," he said.

The 192-nation assembly on Wednesday will honour six people, two of them posthumously, with its UN Prize in the Field of Human Rights for 2008. One of the honorees is Louise Arbour, Canada's former Supreme Court justice and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Benazir Bhutto, who was murdered earlier in 2008 while running for the presidency of Pakistan, and Sister Dorothy Stang, a French nun, will be awarded posthumously.

The winners are recognized for their "invaluable contribution" to the implementation of the Universal Declaration.

Former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright and former US secretary of defence William Cohen will discuss a report on genocide, while the current human rights commission, Navathenam Pillay of South Africa, plans to give on overview of the state of human rights around the world.

The Universal Declaration, adopted on December 10, 1948, in Paris, proclaims human rights for all.

But the UN and its governments have failed to uphold the human rights in education, the rights to food, security and development, the rights of the child, indigenous people, migrant workers and disabled persons.

Arbour, the former UN human rights chief, had complained that while governments readily signed on to international human rights conventions, they failed to enact national legislation to implement them. She called on each region in the world to create a mechanism to ensure respect of human rights and articulate a common approach to a complex issue.

"This is important because no region, no state can claim fully to respect every person's high rights, in all their scope," Arbour said at a meeting in Beijing well before she stepped down from her post in July 2008.

"Abuse of the most basic human rights - and the attendant misery that brings - whether in the form of poverty, discrimination, violence of a whole host of other wrongs is a constant feature of the lives of many," she said.

To cite an example, of the total of 52 countries in the Asia- Pacific region, only 15 had set up national committee on human rights and a handful of them have ratified human rights treaties that they signed.

In one example, the UN said human trafficking had taken on a transnational scope and more people are trafficked than ever before. It has become an acute violation of human rights despite efforts by law enforcement agencies worldwide.

To ensure that human rights is respected by UN peacekeepers as well as the governments that requested their presence on their territories, the UN Security Council has included human rights in all its resolutions. But UN peacekeepers have been charged with sexual exploitation of those under their care.

The Universal Declaration anniversary is a reminder that the human rights pillar may not fare better than the development and security efforts. High food prices and the severe downturn in the world economy have hurt UN programmes to end poverty and help development in poor countries. (dpa)