10 December - International Human Rights Day

Some 6,000 women and children from the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica assembled in Tuzla in 1996, one year after their fathers, husbands and sons had disappeared. © UNHCR/H.J. Davies

International Human Rights Day commemorates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the people that have dedicated their lives to defending human rights around the world.  For more information and a schedule of events, refer to the UN website.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948 “as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance...”

International Instruments

• Basic instruments (African Commission on Human & Peoples' Rights)
• French version
• European treaties (Council of Europe) (in English and French)
• Inter-American treaties (Organization of American States)
• International human rights instruments (Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights) (in English, French and Spanish)

Annual Human Rights Surveys

For more, please refer to the Country Information Resources browse page.
• Amnesty International annual reports
• Annual assessment of conditions affecting refugees by country (U.S. Committee for Refugees)
• Human rights in the OSCE region: the Balkans, the Caucasus, Europe, Central Asia and North America (International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights)
• Human Rights Watch world reports

General publications

• Guide to Forced Migration Periodicals (FMO) (note: see various subsections for “human rights”)
• Publications (Inter-American Commission on Human Rights) (in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese)
• United Nations human rights documents (Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights) (in English, French and Spanish)

Refugee rights

• 50 years on: what future for refugee protection? (Human Rights Watch)
• Refugee rights project: publications (Lawyers for Human Rights)
• Refugees: human rights have no borders (Amnesty International)

Documents

• For more documents, please search in the FMO digital library.
• ACM, The functioning of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (1999)
• Frohardt, Mark et al., Protecting human rights: the challenge to humanitarian organizations (1999)
• O’Neill, William G., A humanitarian practitioner’s guide to international human rights law (1995)
• Piniou-Kalli, Maria, Human rights at the dawn of the 21st century (1997)
• Saxena, J.N, Human rights and refugees (1988)

Useful organizations

• For more organizations, please search in the FMO organizations directory.
• Amnesty International
• Derechos Human Rights
• Fédération Internationale des Ligues des Droits de l'Homme (FIDH)
• Human Rights Watch (HRW)
• International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF)
• Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (LCHR)
• Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)