Prologue

Kury, Helmut; Redo, SÅ‚awomir

This introductory part of the book addresses the post-Second World War developments in democracy whose instrumental background emerged in 1945 with the United Nations Charter in 2020—the year of the 75th anniversary of the establishment of the United Nations—two United Nations declarations are particularly symbolic: the 1948 The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 2030 United Nations Sustainable Development Agenda. Within this frame, in the Prologue we first look into dynamics of democratic developments across the world and find that available data and the accounts of these developments are at best mixed, if not ambiguous or disconcerting. Against this background, we then introduce the contributions to this book. Its essence may rectify the ambiguities and help to chart the way to make in the United Nations academic terms the human rights, crime prevention and criminal justice a springboard for meeting the challenges prompted by a powerful populistic counter-democratic trend. However strong it may be, of universal significance is not it, but the global aging of humankind, climate change, environmental degradation and migration. It is this broader framework, confounded by the coronavirus pandemic, in which the texts in this book should be read, contemplated and inspire the readership for joint action to attain the goals of the 2030 Agenda.