From the very beginnings of the United Nations at the end of the Second World War, the promotion and protection of human rights were seen as one of the necessary bulwarks preventing a return to barbarism and as an essential feature for ensuring peace. In 1946, the Commission on Human Rights was set up with the leadership of René Cassin. He would later be, together with Eleanor Roosevelt (United States), John Peters Humphrey (Canada), P.C. Chang (China) and Charles Habib Malik (Lebanon), behind the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted in 1948 by the 3rd UN General Assembly at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris.

The rights recognised in the Universal Declaration were developed over the decades and made legally binding in two international covenants(which constitute the International Bill of Human Rights together with the UDHR), as well as in international agreements and their optional protocols. The universal relevance of human rights and of these texts was forcefully reasserted at the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in 1993.

Update : July 2010