The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) is a United Nations agency that works to promote and protect the human rights that are guaranteed under international law and stipulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. The office was established by the UN General Assembly on 20 December 1993 in the wake of the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights.
The office is headed by the High Commissioner for Human Rights, who co-ordinates human rights activities throughout the UN System and supervises the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland. The current High Commissioner is South African lawyer Navanethem Pillay, whose four-year term began on 1 September 2008.
As of 2008, the agency had a budget of US$120m and 1,000 employees based in Geneva. It is an Ex-Officio member of the Committee of the United Nations Development Group.
Read more about Office Of The United Nations High Commissioner For Human Rights: High Commissioners For Human Rights
Famous quotes containing the words office of the, office of, office, united, nations, high, human and/or rights:
“The office of the prince and that of the writer are defined and assigned as follows: the nobleman gives rank to the written work, the writer provides food for the prince.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“Teaching is the perpetual end and office of all things. Teaching, instruction is the main design that shines through the sky and earth.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“It is easier to appear worthy of a position one does not hold, than of the office which one fills.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“I hate to do what everybody else is doing. Why, only last week, on Fifth Avenue and some cross streets, I noticed that every feminine citizen of these United States wore an artificial posy on her coat or gown. I came home and ripped off every one of the really lovely refrigerator blossoms that were sewn on my own bodices.”
—Carolyn Wells (1862–1942)
“Nations have lost their old omnipotence; the patriotic tie does not hold. Nations are getting obsolete, we go and live where we will.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A bibliophile of little means is likely to suffer often. Books don’t slip from his hands but fly past him through the air, high as birds, high as prices.”
—Pablo Neruda (1904–1973)
“No one is without Christianity, if we agree on what we mean by that word. It is every individual’s individual code of behavior by means of which he makes himself a better human being than his nature wants to be, if he followed his nature only. Whatever its symbol—cross or crescent or whatever—that symbol is man’s reminder of his duty inside the human race.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)
“Amid attempts to protect elephants from ivory poachers and dolphins from tuna nets, the rights of children go remarkably unremarked.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)