The UN is essential to ensuring Accountability by member States for Essay

The UN is essential to ensuring Accountability by member States for their Human Rights Obligations and Commitments - Essay Example â€Å"On 10 December 1948, the UN General Assembly espoused the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).† Before the adoption of UDHR, human rights were guaranteed through protection of natural rights and the protection of human rights by the rule law by different nations around the globe. The declaration and implementation of UDHR in 1948 can be said to be a new beginning of the significant global march towards making sure that the human rights is safeguarded internationally by the rule of law. Thus, UDHR can be said to be legal foundation for modern international human rights law1. Though, UDHR is not legally binding instrument when it was introduced 64 ago, but UDHR is consistently employed to safeguard the international human rights, mainly through the rule of law. As compared to the earlier endeavour of including human rights provisions in the Covenant of the League of Nations immediately at the conclusion of the First World War in 1919, was futile. However, there wa s an effort by private sector and in 1929, the Institute of International Law, which was a private body of eminent officials of international law in USA, Asia and Europe perused the Declaration of the Rights of Man where it was stressed that it was the State’s responsibility to offer equal rights to every individual to their liberty, life and property. Though, the above Declaration was not a legally authenticated document, it facilitated wide publicity of the notion of the international human rights for the first time2. Massacres and atrocities unleashed during the Second World War had aggravated poignant humanitarian apprehensions and pushed the international community to introduce a global initiative to ensure the legal safeguard of human rights and accomplishment of world safety and peace3. Since its inception, UDHR played a major role in establishing a comprehensive body of human rights regulations and laws. Within six decades of its establishment, its function included t o address particular human rights infringements and complaints together with wider human rights issues. The UN has established a system of unique methods to supervise, analyse and report on human rights infringements. The UN system addressed not only nation-specific human right infringement, but also ‘thematic’ cutting across human right infringement like religious prejudice, racial discrimination and refusal of freedom of expression. In Prosecutor v. Anto Furundzija4, it was observed by the International Criminal Tribunal that the general rule of honour for human dignity was the fundamental highlight of both national human rights law and global humanitarian law. (Olasolo 2008:34). In Juan Carlos Abella v. Argentina5, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights observed that its authority to extend the international humanitarian law could be obtained from the overlie between the standards between the Geneva Conventions and the American Convention on Human Rights6. How ever, in the recent years, disagreement crept over the conduct of the commission members. Some nations which are criticised as systematic human rights infringers were voted as its members. Sudan, which is notorious for its human rights abuses, was elected as the member of the council in 2001. Sudan was widely censured for its ethnic