International Charter Of Human

International Declaration of Human Rights and Freedoms

History

After the war crimes committed by the Germans in the holocaust that occurred during World War II, the United nations decided to create a document guaranteeing respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms for all people, regardless of race, sex, language, or religion. This document was called The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The declaration was voted in on December 10, 1948, which is now celebrated each year as Human Rights Day. The Declaration says that “all human beings are born free and equal” and establishes basic rights for all people and rules for the actions of governments in many areas pertaining to those rights. For example, it says that all people have the right to liberty, religious and political freedom, education, and economic well-being. It bans torture and states that all people have the right to participate in their governments.

The declaration is not a law, unfortunately, and in some cases has had little actual effect on the member countries of the UN. Governments with poor human rights records, such as China, do not agree with the UN’s attempts to promote human rights, saying that such actions interfere with their internal affairs.

The UN has a Commission on Human Rights. Its job is to monitor abuses of the declaration in member countries, hold international meetings on human rights issues and handle complaints about violations to the basic human rights.

It was in 1993 that the General Assembly created the position of High Commissioner for Human Rights. The commissioner job is to oversee all of the UN’s human rights programs, work to prevent human rights violations, and investigate human rights abuses. It is also in the commissioner’s power to publicize abuses to human rights taking place in any country. However most publicity about abuses to human rights does not come from the UN but from rival countries or non-governmental groups like Amnesty International

The UN has also written four international treaties on human rights. These treaties do have the force of law but are very hard to enforce. The treaties deal only with the problems of genocide, racial discrimination, civil and po...

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...rights issues in the world. Before it was drafted, many cases involving human rights were simply ignored or kept quiet. Take for example just before World War Two, Nazi Germany was known to want to eliminate a great percentage of people not fitting into their “Aryan” master race, yet they still hosted the Olympics of 1936. At those Olympics they refused to grant a gold medal to a Jewish person, Jesse Owens, and still America and many other countries chose to ignore Germany for political reasons. After the war, almost in response to the declarations, various human rights organizations, such as amnesty international have been created. They almost always use the Declaration as their basic outline for the rights of human beings. These groups bring much attention to the human rights problems of the world. A good example was the later war in Vietnam, protests in the United States over unfair treatment of enemy civilians is one of the main reasons they were forced to pull out.

So in conclusion I must say that nobody can argue that forcing people to stand up and take notice is the only way to eliminate a problem and that is what the Declaration has achieved.