Human rights Day: 70 years on, activists, movements face an uphill battle

Seventy years ago, the then 58 members of the United Nations adopted its first two fundamental frameworks at the General Assembly in Paris

According to Amnesty International, human rights continue to deteriorate. CIVICUS – an umbrella body for a global alliance of civil society organisations – observes that the civil society space is shrinking. Human rights activists and social justice movements face an uphill battle.

Seventy years ago, the then 58 members of the United Nations (UN) adopted its first two fundamental frameworks at the General Assembly in Paris:

• the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide on 9 December 1948; and
• the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on