Ethical & Legal Instruments
Government of Indonesia (Presidential Secretariat)
DeclarationASEAN Human Rights Declaration (AHRD) — core principles summary
A political declaration adopted by the ten ASEAN member states at Phnom Penh in 2012, and the first region-wide human rights instrument for Southeast Asia. It affirms a broad set of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to a safe, clean and sustainable environment, modelled on the structure of the Universal Declaration. It is not a treaty: it creates no enforceable individual claim and no regional court or commission with binding authority. Its clause requiring rights to be considered in the regional and national context drew sustained criticism from UN human rights bodies and civil society as a possible basis for limiting rights, and that criticism belongs with the text.
2012 · 5 provisions
Forbes Johnston
Binding treatyAfrican Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights (Banjul Charter) — core principles summary
Adopted at Nairobi in 1981 by the Organisation of African Unity and in force since 1986, the Banjul Charter is unusual among major regional rights treaties in recognising collective rights of peoples alongside individual ones: self-determination, free disposal of their wealth and natural resources, development, peace, and a generally satisfactory environment. It is also the only one with an explicit chapter of individual duties, toward family, society, the state and the international community. Civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights are treated as one indivisible set rather than split across separate treaties, and enforcement runs through a Commission with a strong promotional mandate alongside a Court that can issue binding judgments.
1981 · 5 provisions
AMISOM Public Information
Binding treatyAfrican Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACRWC) — core principles summary
Adopted by the Organisation of African Unity in 1990 and in force since 1999, this is Africa's own binding children's rights treaty, adopted because member states judged that the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child missed socio-cultural and economic realities particular to Africa. It is a stated correction to that Convention rather than a regional restatement of it. It defines protection from economic exploitation broadly, covering work that is hazardous or that interferes with education, health, or a child's physical, social, mental, spiritual or moral development, and it names harmful social and cultural practices as a distinct category of harm alongside abuse, trafficking and exploitation.
1990 · 4 provisions
Emabcr
Binding treatyAmerican Convention on Human Rights ("Pact of San José") — core principles summary
Adopted by the Organization of American States at San José in 1969 and in force since 1978, the Pact of San José binds its parties to the classic civil and political rights, with economic, social and cultural rights added later through the separate 1988 Protocol of San Salvador. Enforcement runs in two tiers: the Inter-American Commission receives individual petitions and can refer unresolved cases to the Inter-American Court, whose judgments bind the states that have accepted its jurisdiction. Certain guarantees may be suspended in war or public emergency, but the Convention names an explicit non-derogable core, including the right to life, humane treatment, freedom from slavery and the rights of the child, that stands even then.
1969 · 5 provisions
Kritzolina
Binding treatyArab Charter on Human Rights — core principles summary
The League of Arab States' binding regional rights treaty, adopted in its revised form in 2004 and in force from 2008 after the seventh ratification; an earlier 1994 draft was never ratified and never entered into force. It grounds itself in the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration and the international covenants while also affirming the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, placing itself deliberately between the two lineages rather than choosing one. Its rights list follows the familiar civil and political core, and enforcement runs through an independent Arab Human Rights Committee reviewing state reports every three years rather than through a court. Ten states have ratified it, and Arab civil society groups have criticised it as falling short of international standards in documented ways.
2004 · 5 provisions
Vyacheslav Argenberg
DeclarationCairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam (CDHRI)
Adopted at Cairo in 1990 by the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation as general guidance in the field of human rights, this is a declaration rather than a treaty and creates no court or enforcement mechanism of its own. Its Article 24 states that all the rights and freedoms it stipulates are subject to the Islamic Sharia, which makes its source of authority different in kind from the Universal Declaration's grounding of rights in human dignity independent of any single tradition. It has been criticised by human rights bodies and scholars over freedom of religion, corporal punishment and discrimination, criticism tied directly to that article. It is held here with that criticism attached, because it is the clearest case in this bank of two frameworks disagreeing about where rights come from rather than about which rights to list.
1990 · 4 provisions
Uhooep
Binding treatyCharter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union — core principles summary
Proclaimed in 2000 and legally binding since the Treaty of Lisbon took effect in 2009, the Charter carries the same legal value as the European Union's founding treaties and can be invoked before the Court of Justice. Its 54 articles are grouped under six value headings, Dignity, Freedoms, Equality, Solidarity, Citizens' Rights and Justice, and it opens by stating that human dignity is inviolable and must be respected and protected. It is unusually broad, placing social and economic rights such as fair working conditions, social security, healthcare and environmental protection alongside classic civil liberties, and it addresses bioethics directly, prohibiting eugenic practices, reproductive cloning and making the human body a source of financial gain. It binds the EU institutions, and member states when they apply EU law.
2000 · 6 provisions
Diliff
Binding treatyEuropean Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) — core principles summary
Adopted by the Council of Europe at Rome in 1950 and in force since 1953, the European Convention was the first human rights instrument to give ordinary people standing to bring a case against their own government internationally, before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, whose judgments bind. Its core rights are the classic civil and political set drawn from the Universal Declaration, extended over time by protocols rather than by reopening the original text. Rights may be limited only where a restriction is prescribed by law, pursues an aim the Convention itself lists, and is necessary in a democratic society, and derogation in emergency can never reach the prohibition of torture or slavery, the right to life, or the rule against punishment without law. It binds all 46 Council of Europe member states and has produced the most developed body of international human rights case law anywhere.
1950 · 5 provisions
AMISOM Public Information
Binding treatyProtocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa ("Maputo Protocol") — core principles summary
A protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, adopted at Maputo in 2003 and, by the African Union's own account, the first regional women's rights instrument of its kind anywhere. It builds on CEDAW, the two international covenants and the Universal Declaration, while going further to name harms those instruments do not address directly: it commits states to eliminate specific harmful traditional practices, female genital mutilation among them by name, and it states reproductive autonomy as a right rather than leaving it to be inferred. Forty-four of the African Union's 55 member states have ratified it, most recently South Sudan in 2023.
2003 · 4 provisions