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.
Helsinki Watch
Helsinki Watch was a private American NGO established by Robert L. Bernstein in 1978, designed to monitor the former Soviet Union’s compliance with the 1975 Helsinki Accords. Expanding in size and scope, Helsinki Watch began using media coverage to document human rights violations committed by abusive governments Since its inception, it has produced several other watch committees dedicated to monitoring human rights in other parts of the world. In 1988, Helsinki Watch and all its companion watch committees were combined to form Human Rights Watch