07/12/2011

International Human Rights and IGOs

United Nations



 The Human Rights section of the United Nations website is an excellent starting point for international human rights information. It is a central source that provides a comprehensive list of hyperlinks to various UN Bodies and Offices related to human rights issues, international tribunals and resources, and breaks up human rights issues thematically to centralize information on those areas and aid in the development of knowledge in those areas. This is a great starter source to get an idea of the various bodies under the United Nations umbrella and the resources available through this inter-governmental organization.

United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for
Human Rights (OHCHR)


The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) works to promote human rights internationally and works with countries and organizatins to ensure that human rights standards are actually implemented. The OHCHR also works with charter and treaty based human rights bodies to improve the integration of human rights standards and ensure the implementation of international human rights treaties. This is an excellent resource to begin an understanding of human rights because the language is not specialized and the "Your human rights," "Human rights issues," and "International law" sections give a broad introduction to the topic. Users can also deepen their knowledge, however, through the "Publications and resources" and "Countries" sections, or through the Related Links provided. The site's "News and events" is extremely current and enables the user to stay up to date on the UN's involvement in human rights issues globally.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay
on the year 2011 and what it has meant for human rights.




International Criminal Court
The International Criminal Court (ICC) is the first permanent, treaty based international court of its kind.  This indendant organization was conceived on July 17,1998 and finally entered into force July 1, 2002 after being ratified by 60 nation states. The Court was intended as an international organizational body capable of investigating, arresting and trying war criminals for their crimes, and its creation was an extremely important step for the protection of Human Rights internationally. Its website provides a detailed history of the establishment of the Court, its legal jurisdiction, structure and processes, as well as its annual reports and weekly updates. Of particular interest are the "Situations and Cases" and "Legal Texts and Tools" sections. In the "Situtation and Cases" section the situations brought before the Court are described  and provided with a map of the territory in question, photographs of the individuals that stand accused, their alleged crimes and a timeline of the important dates of their trials. The "Legal Texts and Tools" section is also very useful as it provides links to legal documents pertaining to the Court and the ICC Legal Tools database to supply users with the legal information and documents necessary to understand the core international crimes cases. This website is essential for understanding how the International Criminal Court operates, the extent of its power and influence and how it continues to investigate and bring to justice violations of human rights and war crimes. Though it does use legal terminology freely, the language is still easy to understand and the website is clearly laid out and easy to use.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 10th, 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is considered by many to be the foundation upon which international human rights law has been built. It is therefore an extremely important document to understanding human rights in its global context, and is provided in full text by this UN source. Not only does this site provide all 30 articles of Universal Declaration of Human Rights in full text, but it also details a brief history of the UN General Assembly's adoption of this document, its relation to international human rights law, a summary of the universal values of this document and the photographs and names of the drafting committee that created it.

International Law (OHCHR)



The International Law page of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights website is an excellent resource for accessing primary soures. It contains a very comprehensive list of international human rights treaties and their corresponding monitoring bodies, universal instruments (declarations, principles, guidelines and recommendations in various stages of ratification by different states - information which is also available on the page) relating to human rights; and all of these documents are available as PDF documents for direct consulting. Though this is an excellent resource in terms of locating the primary documents relating to this field, the language is a little dense within these documents and beginners might have difficulty understanding it at first. If this is the case, we recommend visiting either the Universal Declaration of Human Rights page discussed above, or the ICRC "War & Law" page discussed in our NGOs section. The ICRC's information complements the treaties and conventions on this UN page by providing brief explanations on the various aspects of international human rights law (such as how a treaty is ratified, for example).

A Video on the International Bill of Human Rights and its Covenants