The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa, also known as the Maputo Protocol, was adopted by the African Union on July 11, 2003 and entered into force on November 25, 2005.

The African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child was adopted by the Organization of African Unity on July 11, 1990 and entered into force November 29, 1999.

The African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights (Banjul Charter) was adopted on  June 27, 1981 and entered into force October 21, 1986.

The Organization of African Unity’s Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa was adopted on September 10, 1969 and entered into force on June 20, 1974.

The UN International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families was adopted by the UN General Assembly as resolution 45/158, dated December 18, 1990.

The Beijing Declaration of 1995 was produced at the fourth World Conference on Women in September 1995.

The Declaration on the Right to Development was adopted as UN General Assembly Resolution 41/128  on December 4, 1986.

John Locke published Two Treatises in 1689. The first of the treatises dealt with civil society; Locke argued against a ‘divinely-sanctioned’ monarchy, refuting Sir Robert Filmer’s work Patriarcha.

This UN Secretary-General's report on human rights in Iran was released in September 2011.

Michael H. Posner, Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor gave these remarks at the Silicon Valley Human Rights Conference in San Francisco, CA on October 25, 2011.

In this Markets and Democracy Brief, CFR's Mark Lagon argues for a more consistent approach to human rights promotion than the United States has often pursued in the past.

John Locke published the second of his two treatises in 1690. It dealt with his political philsophy on civil society and includes chapters on the state of nature, the state of war, slavery, property, and government and legislative and other powers.

The Peace of Westphalia is a collection of peace treaties that ended the Thirty Years’ War and Eighty Years’ War in 1648. Among the treaties’ provisions were countries’ sovereignty over their territories, territorial changes, and religious tolerance.

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was passed by the French National Assembly on August 26, 1789. The declaration expressed the ideas of the French Revolution and was incorporated into France's Constitution in 1791.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is a work published by Mary Wollstonecraft in 1792 in which she argued for various womens’ rights.

The Declaration of the Rights of Man was adopted by various nations fo the Americas in April 1948, at the Ninth International Conference of American States in Bogotá, Colombia. (The Organization of American States was founded at this same conference. ) The declaration predated the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights by a number of months.

The Cyrus Cylinder is a clay cylinder dating to the 6^th century BC reign of Cyrus the Great. The cylinder is held in the British Museum, which provided the translation of the cylinder below.  The museum states, “This clay cylinder is inscribed in Babylonian cuneiform with an account by Cyrus, king of Persia (559-530 BC) of his conquest of Babylon in 539 BC and capture of Nabonidus, the last Babylonian king.

…This cylinder has sometimes been described as the 'first charter of human rights', but it in fact reflects a long tradition in Mesopotamia where, from as early as the third millennium BC, kings began their reigns with declarations of reforms.”

The Code of Hammurabi is a Babylonian law code that dates to approximately 1700-1780 BC. The code was enacted by Hammurabi, a Babylonian king, and contains 282 laws and their punishments.

The Constitution of the International Labour Organization was drafted between January and April, 1919.

The Charter 77  declaration and petition appeared in western Europe in January 1977; it was a human rights document authored by a group of Czechoslovakians that spawned a movement later known as Charter 77. The document cits Czechoslovakian government’s violations of human rights based on the country’s Constitution and international treaties to which it had signed. Some founding members of Charter 77 were involved in the transition from Communist to democratic rule in 1989.