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A BRIEF HISTORY OF HUMAN RIGHTS

The Cyrus Cylinder (539 B.C.)

The decrees Cyrus made on human rights were inscribed in the Akkadian language on a baked-clay
cylinder.
In 539 B.C., the armies of Cyrus the Great, the first king of ancient Persia, conquered the
city of Babylon. But it was his next actions that marked a major advance for Man. He
freed the slaves, declared that all people had the right to choose their own religion, and
established racial equality. These and other decrees were recorded on a baked-clay
cylinder in the Akkadian language with cuneiform script.

Known today as the Cyrus Cylinder, this ancient record has now been recognized as the
world’s first charter of human rights. It is translated into all six official languages of the
United Nations and its provisions parallel the first four Articles of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights.

Cyrus the Great, the first king of Persia, freed the slaves of Babylon, 539 B.C.
The Spread of Human Rights
From Babylon, the idea of human rights spread quickly to India, Greece and eventually
Rome. There the concept of “natural law” arose, in observation of the fact that people
tended to follow certain unwritten laws in the course of life, and Roman law was based
on rational ideas derived from the nature of things.

Documents asserting individual rights, such as the Magna Carta (1215), the Petition of
Right (1628), the US Constitution (1787), the French Declaration of the Rights of Man
and of the Citizen (1789), and the US Bill of Rights (1791) are the written precursors to
many of today’s human rights documents.

The Magna Carta (1215)

Magna Carta, or “Great Charter,” signed by the King of England in 1215, was a turning point in human
rights.
The Magna Carta, or “Great Charter,” was arguably the most significant early influence
on the extensive historical process that led to the rule of constitutional law today in the
English-speaking world.
In 1215, after King John of England violated a number of ancient laws and customs by
which England had been governed, his subjects forced him to sign the Magna Carta,
which enumerates what later came to be thought of as human rights. Among them was
the right of the church to be free from governmental interference, the rights of all free
citizens to own and inherit property and to be protected from excessive taxes. It
established the right of widows who owned property to choose not to remarry, and
established principles of due process and equality before the law. It also contained
provisions forbidding bribery and official misconduct.

Widely viewed as one of the most important legal documents in the development of
modern democracy, the Magna Carta was a crucial turning point in the struggle to
establish freedom.
Petition of Right (1628)

In 1628 the English Parliament sent this statement of civil liberties to King Charles I.
The next recorded milestone in the development of human rights was the Petition of
Right, produced in 1628 by the English Parliament and sent to Charles I as a statement of
civil liberties. Refusal by Parliament to finance the king’s unpopular foreign policy had
caused his government to exact forced loans and to quarter troops in subjects’ houses as
an economy measure. Arbitrary arrest and imprisonment for opposing these policies had
produced in Parliament a violent hostility to Charles and to George Villiers, the Duke of
Buckingham. The Petition of Right, initiated by Sir Edward Coke, was based upon earlier
statutes and charters and asserted four principles: (1) No taxes may be levied without
consent of Parliament, (2) No subject may be imprisoned without cause shown
(reaffirmation of the right of habeas corpus), (3) No soldiers may be quartered upon the
citizenry, and (4) Martial law may not be used in time of peace.

United States Declaration of Independence (1776)

In 1776, Thomas Jefferson penned the American Declaration of Independence.

On July 4, 1776, the United States Congress approved the Declaration of Independence.
Its primary author, Thomas Jefferson, wrote the Declaration as a formal explanation of
why Congress had voted on July 2 to declare independence from Great Britain, more than
a year after the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, and as a statement
announcing that the thirteen American Colonies were no longer a part of the British
Empire. Congress issued the Declaration of Independence in several forms. It was
initially published as a printed broadsheet that was widely distributed and read to the
public.

Philosophically, the Declaration stressed two themes: individual rights and the right of
revolution. These ideas became widely held by Americans and spread internationally as
well, influencing in particular the French Revolution.

The Constitution of the United States of America (1787) and Bill of Rights (1791)

The Bill of Rights of the US Constitution protects basic freedoms of United States citizens.
Written during the summer of 1787 in Philadelphia, the Constitution of the United States
of America is the fundamental law of the US federal system of government and the
landmark document of the Western world. It is the oldest written national constitution in
use and defines the principal organs of government and their jurisdictions and the basic
rights of citizens.

The first ten amendments to the Constitution—the Bill of Rights—came into effect on
December 15, 1791, limiting the powers of the federal government of the United States
and protecting the rights of all citizens, residents and visitors in American territory.

The Bill of Rights protects freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to keep and
bear arms, the freedom of assembly and the freedom to petition. It also prohibits
unreasonable search and seizure, cruel and unusual punishment and compelled self-
incrimination. Among the legal protections it affords, the Bill of Rights prohibits
Congress from making any law respecting establishment of religion and prohibits the
federal government from depriving any person of life, liberty or property without due
process of law. In federal criminal cases it requires indictment by a grand jury for any
capital offense, or infamous crime, guarantees a speedy public trial with an impartial jury
in the district in which the crime occurred, and prohibits double jeopardy.
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789)

In 1789 the people of France brought about the abolishment of the absolute monarchy
and set the stage for the establishment of the first French Republic. Just six weeks after
the storming of the Bastille, and barely three weeks after the abolition of feudalism, the
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (French: La Déclaration des Droits
de l’Homme et du Citoyen) was adopted by the National Constituent Assembly as the
first step toward writing a constitution for the Republic of France.

The Declaration proclaims that all citizens are to be guaranteed the rights of “liberty,
property, security, and resistance to oppression.” It argues that the need for law derives
from the fact that “...the exercise of the natural rights of each man has only those borders
which assure other members of the society the enjoyment of these same rights.” Thus, the
Declaration sees law as an “expression of the general will,“ intended to promote this
equality of rights and to forbid “only actions harmful to the society.”

The First Geneva Convention (1864)

The original document from the first Geneva Convention in 1864 provided for care to wounded soldiers.
In 1864, sixteen European countries and several American states attended a conference in
Geneva, at the invitation of the Swiss Federal Council, on the initiative of the Geneva
Committee. The diplomatic conference was held for the purpose of adopting a convention
for the treatment of wounded soldiers in combat.
The main principles laid down in the Convention and maintained by the later Geneva
Conventions provided for the obligation to extend care without discrimination to
wounded and sick military personnel and respect for and marking of medical personnel
transports and equipment with the distinctive sign of the red cross on a white background.

The United Nations (1945)

Fifty nations met in San Francisco in 1945 and formed the United Nations to protect and promote peace.
World War II had raged from 1939 to 1945, and as the end drew near, cities throughout
Europe and Asia lay in smoldering ruins. Millions of people were dead, millions more
were homeless or starving. Russian forces were closing in on the remnants of German
resistance in Germany’s bombed-out capital of Berlin. In the Pacific, US Marines were
still battling entrenched Japanese forces on such islands as Okinawa.
In April 1945, delegates from fifty countries met in San Francisco full of optimism and
hope. The goal of the United Nations Conference on International Organization was to
fashion an international body to promote peace and prevent future wars. The ideals of the
organization were stated in the preamble to its proposed charter: “We the peoples of the
United Nations are determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,
which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind.”

The Charter of the new United Nations organization went into effect on October 24,
1945, a date that is celebrated each year as United Nations Day.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights has inspired a number of other human rights laws and
treaties throughout the world.
By 1948, the United Nations’ new Human Rights Commission had captured the world’s
attention. Under the dynamic chairmanship of Eleanor Roosevelt—President Franklin
Roosevelt’s widow, a human rights champion in her own right and the United States
delegate to the UN—the Commission set out to draft the document that became the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Roosevelt, credited with its inspiration, referred
to the Declaration as the international Magna Carta for all mankind. It was adopted by the
United Nations on December 10, 1948.
In its preamble and in Article 1, the Declaration unequivocally proclaims the inherent
rights of all human beings: “Disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in
barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world
in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear
and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people...All
human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”

The Member States of the United Nations pledged to work together to promote the thirty
Articles of human rights that, for the first time in history, had been assembled and
codified into a single document. In consequence, many of these rights, in various forms,
are today part of the constitutional laws of democratic nations.