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A small step… There are some 200,000 Guarani Indians living in Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. For many years, schools in these countries taught only in Spanish and did not allow the use of Indian languages. Guarani children were unable to cope with the new language and lagged behind. Many thought they were stupid and backward. Then in 1989, two United Nations agencies, UNICEF and UNESCO, started a new school programme for the Guarani children, allowing them to learn two languages, Spanish and Guarani. The initiative soon paid off. Guarani children began getting higher grades in all subjects. As a result, fewer children left schools before finishing. Thanks to the United Nations, the Guarani Indians will no longer be punished for speaking their own language. ...toward a giant leap
Now, more than a decade later, the world’s indigenous peoples, including the American Indians, have won another significant recognition. For the first time, the United Nations has established a permanent forum to discuss issues important to the indigenous peoples. This forum, which will be a sub-group of the UN’s Economic and Social Council, will deal with human rights, environmental, educational and development issues affecting indigenous people around the world. "It is an exhilarating, historic day," said a spokesman for the indigenous peoples. This was another important step for the United Nations in its quest for establishing universal recognition of all rights for all peoples, a principle enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The explanation and articulation of the rights defined by the Universal Declaration has now achieved virtually universal acceptance. Today the Universal Declaration, translated into over 300 national and local languages, is the best-known and most cited human rights document in the world. It has served as a model for numerous international treaties and declarations as well as the constitutions and laws of many countries. The Declaration has inspired more than 80 international human rights instruments, which together constitute a comprehensive system of legally binding treaties for the promotion and protection of human rights. There is now international recognition that respect for human rights includes:
During the past five and a half decades, the list of rights clarified and articulated by International Law has expanded dramatically to include new issues, such as the right to development, capital punishment, children in armed conflicts, compensation of victims, disability, discrimination based on HIV/AIDS, enforced or involuntary disappearances, environment, impunity, indigenous peoples, migrant workers, peacekeeping operations, sale of children, terrorism, human rights defenders, war crimes and many more. But assuring human rights for all people remains a daunting challenge, especially given the impunity with which they continue to be violated in all parts of the world. In a survey conducted in 1999, the world's largest ever public opinion poll survey conducted by Gallup International, respondents showed widespread dissatisfaction with the level of respect for human rights. In one region, fewer than one in 10 citizens believed that human rights were being fully respected, while one-third believed they were not observed at all. Discrimination by race and gender were commonly expressed concerns. The building blocks The major advances in human rights and human development came after the horrors of the Second World War. The 1945 Charter of the United Nations, followed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, ushered in a new era of international commitment to human freedoms. Among other things, they:
Work on international human rights legislation continued. But polarized by the cold war, the rhetoric of human rights was often reduced to a weapon in official propaganda for geopolitical interests. The West emphasized civil and political rights, pointing the finger at socialist countries for denying these rights. The socialist (and many developing) countries emphasized economic and social rights, criticizing the richest Western countries for their failure to secure these rights for all citizens. In the 1960s this led to two separate covenants -- one for civil and political rights; the other for economic, social and cultural rights. The 1980s brought a strong renewal of international interest and action, propelled by a surge of activity by civil society on issues of democracy, women’s and children’s rights, rights of indigenous peoples and other issues. The two most notable achievements in these areas were: the Convention on the elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989). Another milestone was the adoption in 1984 of the Convention against Torture and Other Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which declared torture as an international crime. In 1986 the Declaration on the Right to Development was adopted. And further strong commitments were made at the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in 1993. This was followed by the creation of the position of United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the growing advocacy for rights internationally and nationally. The late 1990s and the turn of the millennium brought other exciting developments:
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