Human Rights Center Viasna congratulates you on the Human Rights Day!

Dear colleagues, friends, like-minded persons and opponents, visitors of the website of the Human Rights Center Viasna! We congratulate you on the Human Rights Day!

The contemporary international human rights came into existence for the first time within the framework of the United Nations Organization in 1948, after the adoption of the International Declaration of Human Rights. Only after it human rights became universal for the first time.  

The adoption of the Universal Declaration was predefined by the results of World War II and the establishment of the UN. The war claimed more than 50 million s of lives, ruined and devastated whole countries. The Nazi regime fought not only with different countries, but also with certain social groups. Jews, Roma, homosexuals and invalids were considered as socially defective people by the Nazis. Their discrimination was legalized by the adoption of the appropriate laws.

The scope of the repressions that followed it proved the necessity about the international protection of human rights. Such protection was to be based on an international organization capable of reacting to the unlawful use of force actions and watching the abidance by the human rights norms in the national legislation of different countries. The UN Charter of 1945 declares that the UN must work for the strengthening of peace and cooperation between the states and protect the human rights. However, it didn’t define the notion of human rights. A special commission was established for working out such a definition.

The commission consisted of 18 state parties of the UN that came from all continents and had different religious and political views, including Belarus. After two years of negotiations the commission adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on 10 December 1948, which is considered to be the most important document that has been ever worked out by the UN. The delegations of 48 out of 56 countries voted for this document, the rest abstained (including Belarus). However, not a single state voted against this document.

The Universal Declaration consists of 30 articles that provide the definitions of human rights. After its adoption, human rights became a part of the international legislation and a global conception. It was the first time when the rules defining the way the states must treat their citizens were worked out.