Seventy-five years ago, in the ashes of World War Two, and the unprecedented human suffering it caused, nations laid out a way to build "the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world," by...

On 10 December 1948, a fledgling United Nations took a momentous step. In adopting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it laid down a promise of a world to be rebuilt—after the horrors of...

Upholding human rights can ensure that environmental policy is driven by facts and evidence, not denialism, greed and profit When I travelled to Iraq earlier this year, I witnessed what some might...

The right to peaceful protest is fundamental to human freedom, and its history in the United Kingdom is long, strong and honourable. People resisted tyranny. They denounced slavery. They demanded an...

The chances of newborns surviving to adulthood have never been greater: in the past 20 years, rates of childhood death have fallen by more than half. Nearly all 193 United Nations member states have...

21 August 2018 Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Executive Director UN Women, Kate Gilmore, Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights and Tawanda Mutasah, Amnesty International Senior Director call on the...

By Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein is the U.N. high commissioner for human rights. Four years as the U.N. high commissioner for human rights have brought me many luminous encounters and...

By Andrew Gilmour* In February, hundreds of Filipino participants in the peace process, environmental activists and human rights defenders were labeled “terrorists” by their own government. The...

Op-Ed by Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights One year ago, we awoke to the shocking news of the murder in Honduras of Berta Cáceres, recipient of the 2015 Goldman...

Op-Ed by Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights 5 January 2017 In a few days, when hundreds of leaders from politics, business and the media convene in Davos to...