Historical symbol

Even though the declaration of human rights is not binding, it has a great historical importance and has been the basis of the binding conventions of human rights.

How was UN formed?

After World War Two their was a very strong wish for peace, and the cruelties of the war had made people realize that it was necessary to make arrangements to avoid that it could ever happen again. The fascist and racist rule of Germany and Italy also made people realize that it was necessary to make some kind of international rules about the ways that you can treat people.

One of the major arrangements to secure peace in the world was the formation of the United Nations. At the formation in 1945, UN consisted of about 50 nations.

United Nations today

Today 185 countries are members of the United Nations. This is almost all countries in the world. The countries that aren’t members of the United Nations include Switzerland, Taiwan, Samoa, Tongo, The Vatican State and very few others.

UN’s Security Council

The most powerful part of the UN is called the Security Council. The security council is based on the victors of World War Two, Great Britain, USA, France and Russia and also of China. This was decided because of the assumption that if the great powers couldn’t agree on a decision, it wouldn’t be possible carry it out anyway.

Beside these five nations, UN’s general assembly appoints 10 nations to be represented in the security council every year

Decisions in the council must have at least 9 of the 15 votes to be passed. The five great powers however, can veto all decisions made in the security council.

UN’s commision of human rights

The membership of UN’s commision of human rights works by turns and each member is a representative for a member country. The commision is seated in Geneva, in the UN Center of Human Rights, hvor UN has gathered most of their activities about human rights. It is also in this center that that the secretariat of the committees that make sure that the conventions of human rights are respected by the countries that have ratified them.

The work of the commission of human rights

Since the formation of the commission of human rights it has established several subdivisions of the commission:

Committees who:

Work out new conventions, treaties and other formal documents concerning human rights. They also examine violations of the rights of certain groups of people, such as minorities and aboriginal people.

Observers who:

Can be sent to one or more countries to inquire claims of violations of human rights, or to inquire special problems such as prostitution, torture, etc.

Unlike the conventions of human rights, which only apply to the nations that have ratified them, the commission of human rights must promote the understanding and respect for human rights in all of the countries that are members of the UN.
Right from the start the commission of human rights received thousands of letters from people who was subjected to several violations of their human rights. Already in 1947 the commission announced that was unable to deal with these cases. In the first 20 years the commission most important job was the formulation of various documents concerning human rights. The conventions concerning human rights are as well as the declaration of human rights, all formulated by the commission of human rights.