The International Society for Human Rights (ISHR, German: Internationale Gesellschaft für Menschenrechte, IGFM) is an international non-governmental, non-profit human rights organization with Participative Status with the Council of Europe and is a member of the Liaison Committee of the Non-Governmental Organisations at the Council of Europe. The ISHR has observer status with the African Commission of Human and Peoples' Rights. It has associate status with the Department of Public Information of the United Nations and Roster Consultative Status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).
The ISHR is seated in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and was founded in West Germany in 1972 as the Gesellschaft für Menschenrechte (GFM), with the aim of promoting international understanding and tolerance in all areas of culture and society and so was committed from its inception to only support individuals who share this principle and, consequently, strive non-violently for their rights. The initiator was Iwan I. Agrusow, a former Russian forced laborer, who had decided to stay in West Germany after WWII due to the treatment of former forced laborers in the Soviet Union (many of them were sent to Gulag upon returning).
The society became the International Society for Human Rights in 1982, with the founding of branches in Austria, Switzerland, the UK and France. Since then it has grown to include 35 National Sections, National Groups, Regional Committees and Affiliated Organisations worldwide.
Well known members of ISHR include West German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard, former Austro-Hungarian Crown Prince Otto von Habsburg, former Attorney General of Germany Ludwig Martin and Chinese human rights activist Harry Wu.
During the Cold War, the International Society for Human Rights focused mostly on human rights violations in the states of the Eastern bloc. The German Democratic Republic (East Germany) declared the International Society for Human Rights an "enemy of the state" in 1975, and the Stasi launched a campaign against the human rights organisation, attempting to discredit it. Recently, the ISHR has focused on freedom of religion and freedom of press issues in countries such as Vietnam and China.
The Society publishes its own periodicals "Human Rights Worldwide" (in English) and "Menschenrechte" (in German).
Famous quotes containing the words human rights, society, human and/or rights:
“Human life consists in mutual service. No grief, pain, misfortune, or “broken heart,” is excuse for cutting off one’s life while any power of service remains. But when all usefulness is over, when one is assured of an unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one.”
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935)
“In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“If you desire to drain to the dregs the fullest cup of scorn and hatred that a fellow human being can pour out for you, let a young mother hear you call dear baby “it.””
—Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927)
“Amid attempts to protect elephants from ivory poachers and dolphins from tuna nets, the rights of children go remarkably unremarked.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)