This Special Report will examine the original understanding underlying “non-discrimination” in article 2 and associated articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). It will examine how these have evolved through the expansive and contested interpretations of human rights bodies as a method of standard-setting, which has been criticized as advancing a subjective ideological agenda, and the problems this has caused when situated against the existing corpus of human rights norms.
The lesser-told stories of the women who are behind international Human Rights Day
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DecDecember 2020 at 8:17am
The UN s Declaration of Human Rights includes wording that is inclusive to women, thanks to several female activists.
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Hansa Mehta was one of the few women involved in crafting the Universal Declaration of Human rights, and in the end her biggest impact came from changing one word.
She pushed to replace the phrase: All men are born free and equal with All human beings are born free and equal in Article 1 of the declaration.
It was 72 years ago that the United Nations General Assembly in Paris adopted the Universal Declaration of Human rights (UDHR).
Human Rights Day: Educator and reformer Hansa Jivraj Mehta at the UN (File Photo)
Human Rights Day 2020: Two Indian women, Hansa Jivraj Mehta and Lakshmi Menon, played a pioneering role in the formulation of the Universal Human Rights Declaration (UDHR) in the mid-40s. On Human Rights Day we remember the two Indian women reformers who played a key role in making critical changes in the language of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Hansa Jivraj Mehta, the Indian delegate to the UN Commission on Human Rights, from 1947 to 1948, had insisted on rephrasing the line All men are born free and equal to All human beings are born free and equal in the Article 1 of the Declaration. Hansa Jivraj Mehta ensured a more gender sensitive language in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
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