Holiday:
Human Rights Day is celebrated annually across the
world on 10 December.
The date was chosen to honor the United Nations General
Assembly's adoption and proclamation, on 10 December 1948,
of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the
first global enunciation of human rights and one of the
first major achievements of the new United Nations. The
formal establishment of Human Rights Day occurred at the
317th Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly on 4 December
1950, when the General Assembly declared resolution 423(V),
inviting all member states and any other interested
organizations to celebrate the day as they saw fit.
The day is normally marked both by high-level political
conferences and meetings and by cultural events and
exhibitions dealing with human rights issues. In addition,
it is traditionally on 10 December that the five-yearly
United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights and Nobel
Peace Prize are awarded. Many governmental and
nongovernmental organizations active in the human rights
field also schedule special events to commemorate the day,
as do many civil and social-cause organizations.
Human rights is the idea that all people should have
rights. These rights are seen as universal, which means they
are meant for everyone, no matter what their race, religion,
ethnicity, nationality, age, sex (also women's rights),
political beliefs (or any other kind of beliefs),
intelligence, disability, sexual orientation, or gender
identity.
The idea of human rights originated from ideas found in
religion and philosophy in Western Europe. The modern
Western idea of human rights started in the European
Enlightenment. In the 16th century, some people started
suggesting that everyone had the religious and political
right to choose their religion and their leaders. This sort
of thinking was important in the English Civil War. After
the war, the philosopher John Locke argued that people
should have these rights; he was one of the first people to
call them "human rights." These ideas were also important in
the American revolution and the French revolution in the
18th century.
In the 19th century, John Stuart Mill was an important
philosopher who thought about human rights. He said that
people should be able to control their own bodies and minds.
He talked about three special ideas: |
