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.
Iqbal Haider
Haider's passion was human rights. He has done work for victims of honour killing (e.g. Samia Sarwar), karo-kari, bonded labour, and missing persons, amongst others. He founded the Human Rights Ministry during the second tenure of Shaheed Benazir Bhutto and became the first Human Rights minister of Pakistan. He sat in the Senate Committee on Human Rights, was one of the founding members of the HRCP, and continues to pursue human rights causes in Pakistan. The drafted and tabled the first ever bill on Honour Killing.