In 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations voted to approve the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The proclamation posited certain “fundamental human rights” to be “a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations.” Among the rights listed were freedom of thought, expression, and assembly, freedom from slavery, torture, and arbitrary detention, and government based on “universal and equal suffrage.” That same year, South Africa—one of eight nations to abstain from voting approval of the declaration—instigated a policy of apartheid. Its minority white population who controlled the government passed laws separating the nation’s racial groups and restricting the voting and political rights of nonwhites. Government police powers were extended, opposition figures were imprisoned, press freedoms were suppressed, and political demonstrations were violently broken...