The Dag Hammarskjöld Library of the United Nations continuously publishes the CONVENTIONS, DECLARATIONS AND OTHER ACTS OF LAW IN RESOLUTIONS OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY (from 1946) of the United Nations, which have also been available in German since 1975, the year in which a German translation service was established.
The United Nations agreed on international days, weeks, years and decades of remembrance, each of which is dedicated to specific events and topics or universal tasks and rights. A separate United Nations website has been set up for this purpose, and some examples listed on the UN website on International Days, Weeks, Years and Decades are given here. The respective commemorative days have their own websites.
>International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust
27 January
On 1 November 2005, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution (A/RES/60/7) rejecting the denial of the Holocaust as a historical event, whether in whole or in part, as well as all acts of religious intolerance and violence against persons and communities on ethnic or religious grounds.
>International Day for Women’s Rights and World Peace
8 March
The idea for International Women’s Day comes from the USA and the fight for civil rights, in particular the right to vote for women. In Germany, the socialist Clara Zetkin (1857-1933) first proposed the introduction of an international women’s day at the Second International Socialist Women’s Conference in Copenhagen on 27 August 1910. In honour of the women who triggered the February Revolution in Russia with their strike in St Petersburg on 8 March 1917 (Gregorian calendar), 8 March was introduced as a day of remembrance at the Second International Conference of Communist Women in Moscow in 1921 at the suggestion of the delegation from Bulgaria. The United Nations celebrated 8 March for the first time in 1975, the International Year of Women, with a Women’s Day ceremony; further events were held on this day every year.
>International Day of the Disappeared / International Day of the Disappeared
30 August
Enforced disappearance is a form of state violence that is often carried out by secret services and private organisations or individuals. Enforced disappearances under secret and/or unknown circumstances are a violation of human rights and, in the case of armed conflict, of international law. On 18 December 1992, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the ” Declaration on the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearance ” as part of Resolution 47/133. On 21 December 2010, at its 71st plenary session, it adopted Resolution 65/209 , an International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.
The Day of the Disappeared commemorates the fate of people who are held against their will in places and conditions unknown to their family members or lawyers. The initiative for this goes back to the Federación Latinoamericana de Asociaciones de Familiares de Detenidos-Desaparecidos (FEDEFAM ), an NGO founded in 1981 and active in Latin America. For humanitarian aid organisations that are committed to upholding human rights, such as Amnesty International, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), helping the disappeared is a focus of their work.
The ICRC estimates the number of “disappeared” to be in the hundreds of thousands:
Amnesty International is aware of more than 50,000 cases of people who have “disappeared” since 1980, and the number of unreported cases is estimated to be much higher. In 2012, Amnesty documented 31 countries in which people “disappeared” as a result of state terrorism.
In December 2006, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 61/117 on the protection of all persons from enforced disappearance and declared 30 August the International Day of the Disappeared and a day to remember the victims: “Both the Convention and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court classify enforced disappearance as a crime against humanity, exempting it from the statute of limitations and allowing perpetrators to be prosecuted even after more than 20 years.”
>Universal Children’s Day / International Children’s Rights Day / World Children’s Day
20 November
The “ Convention on the Rights of the Child ” (also known as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child) was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 20 November 1989 – thus celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2014. The Convention aims to ensure that children (young people between the ages of 0 and 18) are recognised as independent individuals who are endowed with dignity, their own needs, interests and rights. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child has been ratified by most countries in the world, which means that children’s rights are universally applicable (binding). All EU states have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The German Institute for Human Rights in Berlin has published a brochure from the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth as a PDF on its website, which contains the wording of the Convention and related materials. Further information on children’s rights can be found on the website.
The European Union wants to strengthen the protection of children and their rights in Europe and beyond. The European Commission therefore proposed an Agenda for the Rights of the Child on 17 February 2011, which proposes eleven concrete measures containing legal provisions and support for the authorities in the EU countries. The proposed agenda is available as a PDF on the European Commission’s website.
In this context, the European Commission has pointed out that, according to a survey (in 2009), 78% of children are not aware that they have any rights at all and 80% do not know who to turn to in an emergency. A survey in 2010 confirmed this finding; the survey covered priority groups such as Roma and Sinti, travellers and young people “with special needs”.
On 20 November 2014, the German Institute for Human Rights published a press release on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child entitled: “Anyone who takes the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child seriously must embed human rights education in education for children and young people”.
The press release makes it clear that there is still a need for children and young people to learn about their own rights and for human rights education to be integrated into school and extracurricular educational work. Further references to educational material can be found on the Institute’s website.
Based on a recent study by the Institute, the federal government, federal states and municipalities in Germany are recommended to “explicitly anchor human rights education with a focus on children’s rights in educational goals and plans, school quality standards, guidelines and programmes for early childhood education.” Beate Rudolf, the director of the institute and co-author of the study, explained in the press release that the “implementation of the commitment to human rights education in and out of school (…) in Germany does not yet meet international requirements”. The study makes it clear that there is a need for further action with regard to anchoring human rights education as an educational goal for all age groups, including educational materials, and that “the state’s commitment to the high value of human rights education for children and young people must be followed by action”. The Institute recommends that “human rights education should be firmly anchored in the training and further education programmes of educational and voluntary professionals”.
25 November
Violence against women and girls is a problem that is growing worldwide. Every third woman in the world is a victim of violence. In 1999, 25 November was declared an International Day by the UN General Assembly, but its origins date back to 1960, when the three “Mirabel sisters” from the Dominican Republic were murdered for their political activism.
>World AIDS Day / World AIDS Day
1 December
No new AIDS infections, no more discrimination against AIDS sufferers and no more deaths due to AIDS – that was the motto of World AIDS Day 2014, the day that is most widely recognised internationally as a day of health.
> International Day of Persons with Disabilities
3 December
The day was introduced in 1982 by UN Resolution 62/127 , after the “International Year of Disabled Persons” (1981), and is intended to help raise awareness of people with disabilities, their needs and their well-being.
>Human Rights Day / International Human Rights Day
10 December
Human Rights Day commemorates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948.
For human rights organisations, this is an opportunity to critically assess the situation worldwide and draw attention to current hotspots and human rights violations. The Nobel Peace Prize is also awarded in Oslo (Norway) on 10 December. It is the anniversary of the death of the Swedish chemist and founder of the Nobel Prize, Alfred Nobel (1833-1896).
>International Migrants Day / International Day of Refugees
18 December
The United Nations has proclaimed 20 June as the International Day of Remembrance for Refugees. The day is accompanied by activities and campaigns to draw attention to the situation and plight of 42.5 million refugees and is dedicated to refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced persons, stateless persons and returnees around the world. The motto for 2014 was: “Every refugee has a story”, so that the human fates are not forgotten due to the negative figures that are published annually on 18 December. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has set up its own website for these stories: UNHCR Refugee Stories .
Other International Days are available on the corresponding UN website.