All human rights for all

During World War II many of the countries fighting Hitler's Germany concluded that an international organization would be needed after the war to promote international peace and security. That organization, the United Nations, had in its earliest conceptions the idea that promoting human rights is a very important means of promoting international peace and security.

Not long after the founding of the United Nations, a committee was charged with writing an international bill of rights that was to apply to all people in all countries. On December 10, 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations. It defines the civil, political, economic and cultural rights of human beings.

We may group these specific rights into six groups:

• security rights that protect people against crimes such as murder, massacre, torture, and rape;

• liberty rights that protect freedoms in areas such as belief, expression, association, assembly, and movement;

• political rights that protect the liberty to participate in politics through actions such as communicating, assembling, protesting, voting;

• due process rights that protect against abuses of the legal system such as imprisonment without trial, secret trials, and excessive punishments;

• equality rights that guarantee equal citizenship, equality before the law, and nondiscrimination;

• welfare rights (or "economic and social rights") that require provision of education to all children and protections against severe poverty and starvation.

Human rights violations

A human rights violation (or abuse) is abuse of people in a way that violates any fundamental human rights. The most common and widespread examples of the violations are:

- Men and women are not treated as equal.

- Different racial or religious groups are not treated as equal.

- Life, liberty or security of person are threatened.

- A person is sold or used as a slave.

- Cruel or unusual punishment is used on a person (torture or execution).

- Punishments are dealt arbitrarily, without a proper and fair trial.

- Arbitrary interference into personal or private lives by agents of the state.

- Citizens are forbidden to leave their country.

- Freedom of speech or religion is denied.

- Education is denied, etc.

Many international non-governmental organizations monitor and condemn human rights abuses. According to the Amnesty International report in 2004, only a very few countries do not violate human rights: the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Iceland and Costa Rica.

Nowadays the mass media report on police brutality. This term is used to describe the excessive use of physical force, assault, verbal attacks and threats by police officers. Widespread, systematic police brutality persists in some countries with authoritarian governments, corruption, or ineffective judicial systems. Brutality is one of several forms of police misconduct, which include false arrest, intimidation, racial profiling, political repression, surveillance abuse, sexual abuse and police corruption.

ABUSE

Type	Forms
physical	striking, punching strangling drowning sleep deprivation exposure to cold, freezing exposure to heat or burning, to electric shock placing in “stress positions” (tied or otherwise forced) cutting or exposure somebody to something sharp exposure to a dangerous animal or a toxic substance infecting with a disease
psychological	humiliation intimidation racial oppression human experimentation
sexual	rape sexual assault sexual exploitation