II. The International Framework to Promote and Protect Human Rights: An Overview A. The United Nations and the Birth of the Universal Human Rights System 1. Human rights, as they are now commonly understood, emerged from the creation of the United Nations. In the aftermath of World War II, governments committed themselves to establishing the UN with the primary goal of promoting international peace and preventing conflict, thereby laying the modern foundation for jus ad bellum (international laws governing recourse to the use of force). 2. The Charter of the United Nations was signed on 26 June 1945. Its Preamble asserts that the main objectives of the organisation are, amongst other things, to:   save succeeding generations from the scourge of war….and reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small,1 3. In 1946, the UN established a Commission on Human Rights, which was charged with the task of submitting proposals on an International Bill of Rights. 2 4. The Draft declaration was adopted by the General Assembly in 1948 and came to be known as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). This instrument has had a profound impact on the development of regional and global standards for the protection of general or specific human rights. 5. A consequence of the UDHR is to establish a universal language of human rights. Human rights have become universal values if, for no other reason, than that they are derived from the international community. They therefore originate from the UN as an expression of global values. 3 1 Article 1(3) of the Charter states that, one of the aims of the UN is to achieve international co-operation in ‘promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion’. What the UN Charter does not do is to specify the contents of any ‘human rights,’ nor does it establish any mechanisms for the protection of human rights in the members of the United Nations. 2 The Commission was chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, widow of the former President. The steering committee members that drafted the UDHR included:  Dr Chang – Vice-Chair and Chinese Confucian philosopher  Charles Malik – Rapporteur and Lebanese philosopher  René Cassin – French lawyer and philosopher, Jewish with personal experience of the Holocaust. 3 These values were reaffirmed as recently as 1993 at the Vienna UN Conference on Human Rights, which pledged: ‘Universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all… the universal nature of these freedoms is beyond question…’. And also: ’While the significance 9