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.
Ludovic Trarieux International Human Rights Prize
The Prize was inaugurated in Bordeaux in 1984 by French lawyer Bertrand Favreau, to recognise lawyers of any Bar or nationality whose work furthered the defence of human rights, the supremacy of law, or resistant to intolerance and racism. The prize is awarded after consultation with international NGOs and humanitarian organizations.
It commemorates the memory of the French lawyer, Ludovic Trarieux (1840–1904), who in the midst of the Dreyfus Affair, in France, in 1898, founded the Ligue des droits de l'homme (LDH), "Human Rights League").
The first prize was awarded, on 29 March 1985, to South African leader Nelson Mandela, during his imprisonment. His daughter, Zenani Mandela Dlamini, received the award on Mandela's behalf on 27 April 1985. It was the first award given to Mandela in France, and the first internationally to have been awarded to him by lawyers.