Human rights in East Asia
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was implemented on 10 December 1948 by the United Nations. Therefore, we have officially witnessed 68 years of the United Nations approaching human rights issues on a global scale. The declaration was created after the end of World War II and was the first worldwide acknowledgement of the rights each individual human being is entitled to. When the UDHR was first created the United Nations was only made up of 51 member states, but after the surge of decolonisation’s, beginning in the late 1940s, the UN is now made up of 193 nations. Since 1948, many Eastern Asian countries who were formally colonised have since achieved independence and have joined the UN, therefore acknowledging the UDHR and other major human rights treaties. There is currently no human rights body governing the Eastern Asian region, however the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) issued the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration in 2012.
Human Rights Foundation (New Zealand)
At the launch of the Human Rights Foundation on 18 December 2001, Dame Silvia Cartwright stated that it was necessary for the human rights infrastructure to have "an active civil society, to ensure grassroots participation, to hold the watchdogs accountable and to contribute a broader understanding of human rights and their implementation". She also spoke of how she had been told that the Foundation would make it a priority to "make practical and theoretical links across human rights issues".