The International League for Human Rights (ILHR) is a human rights organization with headquarters in New York City.
Claiming to be the oldest human rights organization in the United States, the ILHR defines its mission as "defending human rights advocates who risk their lives to promote the ideals of a just and civil society in their homelands."
The ILHR had its origins in the Ligue des droits de l'homme et du citoyen, founded in France in the late nineteenth century. The group was reconstituted in New York in 1942 by European refugees and Roger Nash Baldwin, founder of the American Civil Liberties Union, and was known until 1976 as the International League for the Rights of Man. In 1947, the league was granted consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), giving it the right to testify before that body about human rights abuses. The ILHR is also a member of UN's International Coalition to Stop Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea, a committee composed over 40 Human rights organizations around the world.
The President is Robert Arsenault, and the Executive Director is Louise Kantrow.
Famous quotes containing the words human rights, league, human and/or rights:
“The common goal of 22 million Afro-Americans is respect as human beings, the God-given right to be a human being. Our common goal is to obtain the human rights that America has been denying us. We can never get civil rights in America until our human rights are first restored. We will never be recognized as citizens there until we are first recognized as humans.”
—Malcolm X (1925–1965)
“He will deliver you from six troubles; in seven no harm shall touch you. In famine he will redeem you from death, and in war from the power of the sword. You shall be hidden from the scourge of the tongue, and shall not fear destruction when it comes. At destruction and famine you shall laugh, and shall not fear the wild animals of the earth. For you shall be in league with the stones of the field, and the wild animals shall be at peace with you.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Job 5:19-23.
“As we begin to comprehend that the earth itself is a kind of manned spaceship hurtling through the infinity of space—it will seem increasingly absurd that we have not better organized the life of the human family.”
—Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978)
“If the veil were withdrawn from the sanctuary of domestic life, and man could look upon the fear, the loathing, the detestations which his tyranny and reckless gratification of self has caused to take the place of confiding love, which placed a woman in his power, he would shudder at the hideous wrong of the present regulations of the domestic abode.”
—Lydia Jane Pierson, U.S. women’s rights activist and corresponding editor of The Woman’s Advocate. The Woman’s Advocate, represented in The Lily, pp. 117-8 (1855-1858 or 1860)