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Human Rights Questions and Answers
Which instruments constitute the International Bill of Human Rights?
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The Commission on Human Rights, established in 1945, was entrusted with the task of drawing up an International Bill of Human Rights, defining the human rights and freedoms referred to in the Charter. The Commission is a subsidiary body of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), one of the United Nations principal organs and the main body for the coordination of the economic and social activities within the United Nations system. A major step in drafting the International Bill of Human Rights was realized on 10 December 1948, when the General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ‘as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and nations’.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights constituted the first part of the International Bill of Human Rights. The other parts, designed to elaborate the content of the provisions of the Declaration, took many years to complete. On 16 December 1966, the United Nations General Assembly adopted two Covenants: the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), as well as an Optional Protocol to the ICCPR, allowing for complaints to be made by individuals on violations of their rights embodied in the Covenant. In adopting these instruments, the international community not only agreed on the content of the rights set forth within the Universal Declaration, but also on measures for their implementation. A further elaboration took place when, in December 1989, the Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR, aimed at abolishing the death penalty, was adopted by the General Assembly.

The adoption of these two Covenants endorsed the General Assembly resolution of 1950 that ‘the enjoyment of civil and political rights and economic, social and cultural rights are interconnected and interdependent’.
 



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