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human rights  Eleanor Roosevelt holding a copy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Mrs Roosevelt was chair of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights 1946–51, and was instrumental in the preparation of the declaration. Civil and political rights of the individual in relation to the state; see also civil rights. Under the terms of the United Nations Charter human rights violations by countries have become its proper concern, although the implementation of this obligation is hampered by Article 2 (7) of the charter prohibiting interference in domestic affairs. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, passed by the General Assembly on 10 December 1948, is based on a belief in the inherent (natural) rights, equality, and freedom of human beings, and sets out in 28 articles the fundamental freedoms – civil, political, economic – to be promoted. The declaration has considerable moral force but is not legally binding on states. UN covenants on human rights In 1966 two covenants on human rights were agreed: one on civil and political rights, and one on social and economic rights. The former includes: freedom of thought and opinion; right to liberty and a fair trial; right to privacy; right to self-determination; freedom from discrimination on grounds of gender, race, religion, nationality, or political orientation; and protection from inhuman punishment. The covenants are legally binding on states that ratify them, and have now received the 35 ratifications they needed to come into being. They include machinery for implementation and the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights provides for the establishment of a Committee on Human Rights to receive complaints. It may also set up conciliation machinery to help sort out the differences on human rights issues between states. This covenant also has an optional protocol permitting individuals to petition for the first time on violations of their human rights. By 1998 140 countries had ratified the covenant on civil and political rights (but these did not include China). |
UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) The commission was established in 1946 by the Economic and Social Council. It meets annually for a period of about six weeks. It was responsible for the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and of the two covenants. The commission functions as a public platform for the discussion of human rights; as a supervising agency for reports submitted by states on progress they have made on human rights, and the difficulties they meet in this respect; and as a body which prepares guidelines for the Economic and Social Council on the protection of human rights. It has no enforcement powers and has to rely on persuasion to achieve its aims. In 1952 it established a subcommission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities. A special session of the UNCHR was convened in 1994 to investigate human rights abuses in Rwanda. |
Women In 1946 the Economic and Social Council established the Commission on the Status of Women to study the conditions of women throughout the world and recommend improvements. It has drafted a number of Conventions, legally binding on states that ratify them, which have been adopted by UN bodies. |
Torture In 1975 the General Assembly adopted a Declaration against Torture and other cruel treatment. This has no legal status but has moral force. At the same time the General Assembly called for further study by the Commission on Human Rights on the subject of torture and for increased efforts to prevent it. |
UN commissioners In February 1994 José Aguala Lasso of Ecuador was appointed first UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. In 1997 Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland, became UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. |
Other human rights organizations These include Amnesty International, campaigners for the release of prisoners of conscience and for fair trials and humane treatment of all prisoners; the Human Rights Watch, a US non-partisan pressure group; and the Minority Rights Group, an international organization to increase awareness on minority issues. The European Court of Human Rights hears cases referred from the European Commission of Human Rights where an individual's rights have been violated by a member state. |
human rights - events| 507 BC | Greece | Would-be chief magistrate Cleisthenes' legal constitutional reforms in the Greek city-state of Athens and establishes firmly its particular form of democracy. The four ancient tribes are abolished and replaced by ten new ones, and all citizens are enfranchized with a personal vote in the popular assembly. | | 125 BC | Rome | Fulvius Flaccus, a follower of the Gracchi brothers and agrarian reformers in Rome, fails in an attempt to obtain Roman enfranchisement for the Italians; the town of Fregellae revolts and is destroyed. | | 4 April 1231 | Papal States, Holy Roman Empire | Pope Gregory IX sets up the Holy Office (Inquisition), a permanent tribunal for investigating the various heresies proliferating in France and Germany. | | 1782 | Switzerland | Ann Goddi, the last person officially executed for witchcraft, is hanged in Switzerland. | | June 1909 | USA | The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is formally established in New York City as the National Committee for the Advancement of the Negro. | | November 1915 | USA | The Ku Klux Klan, a racist society that originated in the 1860s, is revived by William Joseph Simmons near Atlanta, Georgia, dedicated to ‘white supremacy’ and ‘Americanism’. Within six years it attracts a membership of nearly 100,000. | | 7 November 1916 | USA | Montana voters make Jeanette Rankin the first woman to be elected to the US House of Representatives. | | 1940 | USA | The US anthropologist Ruth Benedict publishes Race: Science and Politics, an attack on racism. | | 14 August 1941 | UK, USA | The British prime minister Winston Churchill and the US president Franklin D Roosevelt meet at the Placentia Bay conference on board the US cruiser Augusta. They sign the Atlantic Charter, condemning territorial changes and affirming human rights, which subsequently becomes the basis of the United Nations (UN) Declaration of Human Rights. | | 1949 | South Africa | Social legislation in South Africa begins to implement apartheid, suspending the automatic granting of citizenship to Commonwealth immigrants after five years, outlawing marriage between Europeans and non-Europeans, and banning sexual intercourse between Europeans and coloureds. The Population Registration Act starts the process of defining people as white, coloured, or African. | | 22 April–17 June 1954 | USA | The McCarthy ‘witch-hunts’ reach their peak as Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy, chairman of the Senate Permanent Investigations Subcommittee, alleges that a communist spy ring is active at the US Army Signal Corps headquarters at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. During the hearings, which are televised across the country, McCarthy accuses the Army secretary of deliberately concealing evidence. McCarthy's conduct turns public opinion against him. | | 30 March 1960 | South Africa | Following demonstrations, strikes, and marches by blacks demanding civil rights, the South African government proclaims a state of emergency (–31 August) and passes the Unlawful Organizations Act. On 8 April the African National Congress (ANC) and Pan-African Congress are banned, and Nelson Mandela and others form Umkonto we Sizwe (‘Spear of the Nation’), as the guerrilla wing of the ANC. | | July 1964 | USA | President Lyndon B Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The act outlaws discrimination in federally-funded enterprises and in public facilities and accommodations, and therefore overturns Jim Crow. It also created an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. | | 15 May 1970 | South Africa | The International Olympic Committee expels South Africa because of its apartheid policies. | | 1973 | USA | The US Supreme Court rules that advertisements for employment cannot specify gender. | | 7 January 1977 | Czechoslovakia | Human-rights supporters in Czechoslovakia publish the manifesto ‘Charter 77’, pressing for implementation of the 1975 Helsinki human-rights guarantees given at the 1975 Helsinki conference in Finland. | | September 1983 | Ireland | Anti-abortion legislation in Ireland giving the fetus the same rights as the mother is incorporated into the constitution. | | 2 October 2000 | UK | In what is widely viewed as a radical legal shake-up, the Human Rights Act comes into force in England and Wales. The act incorporates the 1951 European Convention on Human Rights into UK law. | | 22 February 2001 | | At the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, sitting at The Hague in the Netherlands, mass rape is judged to be a war crime and a crime against humanity for the first time in legal history. | | 10 October 2003 | | Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian lawyer and human rights campaigner, wins the Nobel Prize for Peace. She is the first Muslim woman to receive the award. |
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