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.
International League for Human Rights
The ILHR had its origins in the Ligue des droits de l'homme et du citoyen, founded in France in the late nineteenth century. The group was reconstituted in New York City in 1942 by European refugees and Roger Nash Baldwin, founder of the American Civil Liberties Union, and was known until 1976 as the International League for the Rights of Man. In 1947, the league was granted consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), giving it the right to testify before that body about human rights abuses. The ILHR is also a member of UN's International Coalition to Stop Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea, a committee composed over 40 Human rights organizations around the world.