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.
Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights
In 1987-88, Dr. Kek Galabru (also known as Dr. Pung Chhiv Kek), a Cambodian living abroad, helped arrange negotiations between Prime Minister Hun Sen and then-deposed King Norodom Sihanouk. The negotiations eventually led to the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in 1991, which mandated a United Nations mission to Cambodia to supervise elections and resolve the long-standing conflict. Following the peace agreements, Dr. Galabru returned to Cambodia and founded LICADHO in 1992. LICADHO was one of the first human rights organizations established in Cambodia. The former socialist regime did not allow independent national NGOs. LICADHO’s first work involved conducting voter education campaigns for the 1993 elections and monitoring the pre-election environment. It later began to address serious human rights abuses occurring in the country, with initial activities focused on monitoring rights violations, providing human rights training, and providing medical care to prisoners and victims of human rights violations.