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.
Jack Healey
In 1988, for the 40th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights, Healey organized the 6-week Human Rights Now! World tour to celebrate achievements of the human rights movement and to introduce the idea of basic human rights protection through the power of the media to millions of people worldwide. Over a million people filled the stadiums, and crowded into fields for concerts in South America, Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia. The concert was broadcast to over one billion people worldwide. The tour covered 18 countries in six weeks, and won the Pollster Reader's Award for number of viewers, beating out Michael Jackson's worldwide tour. HBO covered this show on a 3-hour special. This show tripled the membership of Amnesty International worldwide.