Human rights

The United Nations (UN) was the first international organization to address the issue of human rights. The UN Charter, adopted in 1945, contains several references to human rights, and states that human rights are universal, without distinction of any kind such as race, sex, language or religion and national or social origin.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proclaimed by the General Assembly in 1948, is the only common standard covering the full range of human rights. It is not legally binding but provides guiding principles for all peoples and nations, stating that the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family are the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.

The United Nations is at work on many fronts in promoting and protecting human rights, and its role and scope of action continue to expand. This is elaborated by the former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in his report The Question of Intervention (1999): "As Secretary-General of the United Nations, I have made human rights a priority in every programme the United Nations launches and in every mission we embark upon. I have done so because the promotion and defence of human rights is at heart of every aspect of our work and every article of our Charter".

Except for the Human Rights Bodies, there are a large number of UN bodies involved in the protection and promotion of human rights, so when seeking information, it is essential to have narrowed down and specified the sort of questions you need answered.

The UN structure of Human Rights

The United Nations has developed a system to monitor the implementation of respect for human rights. The UN structure of Human Rights consists of the UN Human Rights Council, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN committees, which monitors the compliance of the core conventions.

Human Rights Council

The Human Rights Council (HRC) was created by the General Assembly and replaced the former Commission on Human Rights in June 2006. HRC is responsible for promoting and protecting human rights through different mechanisms. The Council evaluates the fulfilment of all states of all their human rights obligations. It inherited the so called "special procedures" from the Commission, which is the mechanisms to address either specific country mandates or thematic mandates in all parts of the world.

List of Human Rights issues.

The High Commissioner for Human Rights

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has the principal responsibility for UN human rights activities including the coordination of UN human rights activities, the promotion of international cooperation for human rights and the development of new human rights standards. The High Commissioner also responds to serious violations of human rights and undertakes human rights field activities and operations. The administrative centre is based in Genèva.

Expert committees and the core treaties

There are nine core international human rights treaties (conventions). Implementation of these treaties by the State parties is monitored by human rights treaty bodies. The conventions are the United Nations' main tools for the protection of human rights. Countries that have ratified the conventions have undertaken to act in accordance with its contents.

To the monitoring bodies there is a Special Rapporteur attached, who is appointed by the Human Rights Council. This is an independent expert who examines and reports back on a country situation or a specific human rights theme. The Special Rapporteurs are part of the "special procedures" of the Human Rights Council. More on Special Rapporteurs Fact Sheet N° 27: Seventeen Frequently Asked Questions about United Nations Special Rapporteurs.

Read more about conventions at DagDok : Human Rights Conventions and Declarations.

Core convention	Date	Treaty body
International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination	Adopted 1965, in force 1969	CERD
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights	Adopted 1966, in force 1976	CCPR
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights	Adopted 1966, in force 1976	CESCR
Convention on The Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women	Adopted 1979, in force 1981	CEDAW
Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment	Adopted 1984, in force 1987	CAT
Convention on the Rights of the Child	Adopted 1989, in force 1990	CRC
International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families	Adopted 1990, in force 2003	CMW
International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance	Adopted 2006, in force 2010	CED
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities	Adopted 2006, in force 2008	CRPD

• Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Swedish | in English
• Resolution 217 A (III) / (A/RES/217) adopted by the UN General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 during its 183rd plenary meeting.
• The Core International Human Rights Instruments and their monitoring bodies.
• Universal Human Rights Index - UHRI. Human rights recommendations from all parts of the UN system: the UN Treaty Monitoring Bodies, the Human Rights Council mechanisms Universal Periodic Review and Special Procedures. Each document links to other related information in the database.
• Charter-based Body Database. Documents and reports of the Human Rights Council, its predecessor and their subsidiaries and parent organs. Maintained by OHCHR (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights). 
• Treaty Body Database. Full text documents from the UN human rights treaty monitoring bodies.
• Yearbook on Human Rights 1946-1988
• OHCHR website for background information, documents and reports.
• Research guides by Dag Hammarskjöld Library:
  • Treaty research. 
  • Human rights documentation

• Drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides access to the full text of the historical documents of all meetings from 1946-1948 that led to the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
• Audiovisual Library of International Law. Additional information in the topic.
• World Conference on Human Rights, 14-25 June 1993, Vienna. The final document Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action (VDPA) comprises a plan of action for the continuation of UN human rights activities.
• Yearbook of the United Nations, Part Two: Human Rights provides an excellent overview of the work of the United Nations with a detailed subject index.

U.N. document symbols

The U.N. document symbols for documents from the major U.N. human rights bodies:

E/CN.4/	Commission on Human Rights (defunct)
A/HRC/	Human Rights Council (supercedes Commission on HR)
E/CN.6/	Commission on the Status of Women
CCPR/	Human Rights Committee (treaty body for ICCPR)
E/C.12/	Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (treaty body for International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights)
CERD/	Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (treaty body for Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination)
CEDAW/	Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (treaty body for Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women)
CAT/	Committee against Torture (treaty body for Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment)
CAT/OP/	Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (treaty body for Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture)
CRC/	Committee on the Rights of the Child (treaty body for Convention on the Rights of the Child)
CRPD/	Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (treaty body for Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Optional Protocol)
CMW/	Committee on Migrant Workers (treaty body for International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families)
CED/	Committee on Enforced Disappearances (treaty body for International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance)

Websites and research guides

• UN Documentation : Human Rights. A research guide by the Dag Hammarskjöld library, New York, with more databases and information.
• UDHR70: 30 articles - 30 documents. Dag Hammarskjöld library about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).
• United Nations website on Human Rights.
• UN and human rights at UNA Sweden website. (In Swedish)

Literature

• The question of intervention : statements by the Secretary-General report by the former Secretary-General Kofi Annan, published 1999 by United Nations Department of Publication information. Contains statements delivered by the Secretary-General over a period of 16 months (26 June 1998-19 Oct. 1999), which are intended as a contribution to the debate on the question of intervention.

• United Nations Digital Library offers UN documents and open access publications, UN voting data and speeches, UN maps, Content in 6+ languages. Replaces the traditional online catalogue UNBISnet.
• UN iLibrary UN publications online covering different topics.
• ODS full-text UN documents published from 1993 onward and scanned documents published between 1946 and 1993 in the official languages of the UN.
• Daily list of documents (ODS). Documents published for the day, with full text links, can be found in the United Nations full text database ODS.
• UNBIS Thesaurus a multilingual database of the controlled vocabulary used to describe UN documents.
• Index to proceedings is an annual bibliographic guide to the proceedings and documentation of the major UN organs. The index includes:
  • a list of all documents
  • a comprehensive subject index
  • an index to speeches
  • a voting chart of resolutions
• United Nations Documents Index (United Nations Digital Library) References to all documents by subject area are published. A collection of indexes is held by the Dag Hammarskjöld and Law Library, Uppsala, and the Libraries at UN Headquarters in New York and Geneva.