Accountable Judges and Their Role in Prosecuting Serious Violations of Human Rights

Extract

Just over a year after the end of the war in Europe, on 29 April 1946, the UN Economic and Social Council held the first meeting of its Commission on Human Rights (CHR). In his opening remarks, Assistant Secretary-General for the Department of Social Affairs Henri Laugier reminded the meeting that

it is a new thing and it is a great thing in the history of humanity that the international community organised after a war which destroyed material wealth and spiritual wealth accumulated by human effort during centuries has constituted an international mechanism to defend the human rights in the world … We are only at the starting point of a very great enterprise, the volume of which and the action of which will have to grow, day after day. ¹

The objective of the CHR was to discover the basis for a fundamental declaration on human rights that would be acceptable to all who might seek admission into the ‘international community.’ Its specific task was to ‘define the violation of human rights within a nation, which would constitute a menace to the security and peace of the world,’ and, beyond this, to ‘suggest the establishment of machinery of observation which will find and denounce the violations of the rights of man all over the world.’ ² The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was opened for signature in 1948.