The Council of Europe is an international organisation with the goal of upholding human rights, democracy and the rule of law in Europe. Founded in 1949, it brings together 46 member states with a population of approximately 675 million as of 2023; it operates with an annual budget of approximately 500 million euros.
The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, formerly the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, is an intergovernmental organization founded in 1969. It consists of 57 member states, 48 of which are Muslim-majority. The organisation claims to be "the collective voice of the Muslim world" and works to "safeguard and protect the interests of the Muslim world in the spirit of promoting international peace and harmony".
The United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) was a functional commission within the overall framework of the United Nations from 1946 until it was replaced by the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2006. It was a subsidiary body of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), and was also assisted in its work by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNOHCHR). It was the UN's principal mechanism and international forum concerned with the promotion and protection of human rights.
The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA) is a LGBTQ+ rights organization.
International human rights law (IHRL) is the body of international law designed to promote human rights on social, regional, and domestic levels. As a form of international law, international human rights law is primarily made up of treaties, agreements between sovereign states intended to have binding legal effect between the parties that have agreed to them; and customary international law. Other international human rights instruments, while not legally binding, contribute to the implementation, understanding and development of international human rights law and have been recognized as a source of political obligation.
A prisoner of conscience (POC) is anyone imprisoned because of their race, sexual orientation, religion, or political views. The term also refers to those who have been imprisoned or persecuted for the nonviolent expression of their conscientiously held beliefs.
The International Society for Human Rights (ISHR) 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).
Minority rights are the normal individual rights as applied to members of racial, ethnic, class, religious, linguistic or gender and sexual minorities, and also the collective rights accorded to any minority group.
The Society for Threatened Peoples International STPI is an international NGO and human rights organization with its headquarters in Göttingen, Germany. Its aim is to create awareness of and protect minority peoples around the world who are threatened by oppressive governments. The society states that it "campaigns against all forms of genocide and ethnocide." It has consultative status with the United Nations, participatory status with the Council of Europe, and has branches in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Iraqi Kurdistan.
CCJO René Cassin – more commonly known as René Cassin – is a charitable human rights NGO that works to promote and protect universal human rights, drawing on Jewish experiences and values. The organisation does this by campaigning for change in defined human rights areas through a combination of advocacy, policy analysis, public campaigning and education and building the capacity of activists and lawyers to promote and protect human rights. The organisation works in human rights areas that bear some relation to Jewish experience, such as discrimination, asylum, and genocide. The organisation holds special consultative status with the United Nations as a constituent organisation of the Consultative Council of Jewish Organisation (CCJO). The CCJO's first President was René Cassin, a principal drafter of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1968 in recognition of his work for human rights as a jurist, academic and statesman. The CCJO has been an active supporter of efforts to increase the effectiveness of the UN's human rights treaties and institutional mechanisms in the intervening decades. From the 1940s to the 1970s it was involved in the creation of the United Nations human rights instruments, which form the basis of the UN's human rights activities today.
The Coalition of African Lesbians (CAL) is a network that comprises 14 non-profit organizations that are spread across 10 different countries in the sub-Saharan region of Africa. Their collective network is centered around feminism, activism, and pan-Africanism. The mission of CAL is to progress the freedom, liberation, and autonomy for all women who reside in Africa or in any other part of the world. Additionally, CAL strives to advocate and build the capacities of lesbian women while promoting African agency.
Renate Weber is a Romanian lawyer and human rights activist who, in November 2007, was elected as Member of the European Parliament. She is the first Romanian appointed as Chief of an EU Election Observation Mission. Between 2004–2005 she was Advisor on constitutional and legislative matters to then President of Romania, Traian Băsescu. She previously served as the Romanian Ombudsman as well from June 2019 until mid June 2021.
William Anthony Schabas, OC is a Canadian academic specialising in international criminal and human rights law. He is professor of international law at Middlesex University in the United Kingdom, professor of international human law and human rights at Leiden University in the Netherlands, and an internationally respected expert on human rights law, genocide and the death penalty.
United Nations Security Council resolution 935, adopted unanimously on 1 July 1994, after recalling all resolutions on Rwanda, particularly 918 (1994) and 925 (1994), the Council requested the Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to establish a Commission of Experts to investigate violations of international humanitarian law during the Rwandan genocide.
The Xinjiang conflict, also known as the East Turkistan conflict, Uyghur–Chinese conflict or Sino-East Turkistan conflict, is an ongoing ethnic geopolitical conflict in what is now China's far-northwest autonomous region of Xinjiang, also known as East Turkistan. It is centred around the Uyghurs, a Turkic ethnic group who constitute a plurality of the region's population.
Intersex Human Rights Australia (IHRA) is a voluntary organisation for intersex people that promotes the human rights and bodily autonomy of intersex people in Australia, and provides education and information services. Established in 2009 and incorporated as a charitable company in 2010, it was formerly known as Organisation Intersex International Australia, or OII Australia. It is recognised as a Public Benevolent Institution.
Gina Wilson is an Australian intersex human rights activist. She was the founding president of Intersex Human Rights Australia.
Kaleidoscope Human Rights Foundation is a non-governmental organisation based in Australia that works to protect the rights of LGBTQIA+ people in the Asia Pacific region.
The Chinese government is committing a series of ongoing human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang that is often characterized as persecution or as genocide. Beginning in 2014, the Chinese government, under the administration of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping, incarcerated more than an estimated one million Turkic Muslims without any legal process in internment camps. Operations from 2016 to 2021 were led by Xinjiang CCP Secretary Chen Quanguo. It is the largest-scale detention of ethnic and religious minorities since World War II. The Chinese government began to wind down the camps in 2019. Amnesty International states that detainees have been increasingly transferred to the formal penal system.
