An Excerpt from The Human Rights Guide:
A Comprehensive, Up-to-date survey of the
human rights records
of 104 major countries throughout the world, 3rd ed.,
by Charles Humana
Monitoring has … proved to be the most effective way of applying pressure to regimes perpetuating the most evil human rights crimes. Not the most powerful even of tyrants is indifferent to the details of his dark secrets becoming that day's feature of the world's press and television. It is to this form of pressure that the guide adds its modest contribution.
Human rights—what are they?
Human rights are the laws, customs, and practices that have evolved over the centuries to protect ordinary people, minorities, groups and races from oppressive rulers and governments. The greatest number of advances probably come as the result of wars, rebellions, and violence of one kind or another, but at historically significant moments improvements in the area of human rights have been introduced, or at least codified, by charters that now form the basis of modern rights, particularly as they are framed by UN instruments.
The most important of these foundation charters were the Magna Carta imposed an King John of England in 1215 by his barons, the French Declaration des Droits de l'Homme et du Citoyen of 1789, and the American Bill of Rights of 1791. Nearly 130 years later, after the First World War, human rights were given an international dimension when some were incorporated into the conventions of the League of Nations. Established mainly to prevent future wars, which it failed to do, the League of Nations nevertheless had a number of humanitarian successes in the areas of labor conditions, slavery, and health.
In 1945, after the Second World War, the League was superseded by the United Nations. From an initial membership of 51 countries, the international organization today has expanded to include 175 states, and one of its major concerns is respect for human rights. Beginning with the Charter of 1945, the instruments of the United Nations now cover all aspects of life, from civil and political rights to economic and cultural rights, and include specific conventions to further ensure the rights of children, of women, of married women, of exploited prostitutes, of the stateless, and of refugees.
There are three major UN human rights instruments. The first is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which was adopted in 1948 without a dissenting vote and, although not considered to be binding at the time, it has now become part of customary international law. To reinforce it, however, two major covenants setting out more specifically certain categories of human rights were adapted in 1966 and came into force after they had been ratified by 35 countries in 1976.
Together with the UDHR, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant an Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) form the basis of the questionnaire used in the guide.