rights and freedoms set out in the Declaration and to taking measures, both nationally and internationally, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance. The nine international human rights treaties constitute a comprehensive legal framework within which States can, with the support of the treaty bodies, meet that commitment. I. DEVELOPING HUMAN RIGHTS STANDARDS: THE TREATIES AND THEIR OPTIONAL PROTOCOLS In the early twentieth century, the protection of human rights became an issue of concern to the international community. Under the League of Nations, established at the end of the First World War, attempts were made to develop an international legal framework, along with international monitoring mechanisms, to protect minorities. The horrors perpetrated during the Second World War motivated the international community to ensure that such atrocities would never be repeated and provided the impetus for the modern movement to establish an international system of binding human rights protection. A. Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) The Charter of the United Nations of 1945 proclaims that one of the purposes of the United Nations is to promote and encourage respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms for all. With the energetic support of Eleanor Roosevelt, alongside figures such as René Cassin, Charles Malik, Peng Chun Chang and John Humphrey, States sought to set out in a single document, for the first time, the range of fundamental rights and freedoms that belonged to all by virtue of their status as human beings. These efforts resulted in the Universal Declaration of Human The Declaration as customary Rights, adopted by the General international law? Assembly on 10 December 1948, It is widely accepted that some of the henceforth Human Rights Day. This Declaration’s provisions are now rules document, expressed as “a comof customary international law. Exammon standard of achievement for ples include the bans on torture and on all peoples and all nations”, sets racial discrimination. These are norms out a wide span of rights coverwhich, through the practice of States, have come to be seen as legally binding all aspects of life. Its article ing rules, well before their incorpora1 famously describes the idea of tion in specific treaties. Indeed, some fundamental human rights: “All commentators argue that the entire human beings are born free and Declaration possesses this status. equal in dignity and rights.” 3