The UN Human Rights System and UDHR

Every 10 December, schools and NGOs across Mumbai mark Human Rights Day. The date is not random: it is the day in 1948 when the United Nations General Assembly, meeting in Paris, adopted a short document that every later human-rights treaty still refers to. The document, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is not a treaty and no court can enforce it directly. So why does everybody treat it as the foundation, and what machinery has the United Nations built since to watch over what States do? This topic takes the Declaration and the system together.

In two minutes

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN General Assembly on 10 December 1948, is a non-binding but foundational statement of thirty articles covering civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights; around it the UN has built a system of political bodies, the High Commissioner, treaty bodies and review procedures.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Human Rights Law on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.