Human Rights Documents

Human Rights Documents

The collection represents the concerns of all groups in all regions of the world:
• Africa
• Asia and the Pacific
• Middle East
• Latin America
• North America
• Western Europe
• Eastern Europe

For the past decades Human Rights Internet (HRI) in Ottawa has been serving as an unofficial depository for the documentation produced by non-governmental human rights organizations (NGO’s) throughout the world. During these years the organization has gained Consultative Status with the United Nations and Observer Status with the African Commission on Human and People's Rights. IDC Publishers makes their ever growing, authoritative collection of Human Rights Documents as of 1980 available on microfiche. Easy access is ensured is ensured by maintaining detailed guides. The effective worldwide network in which Human Rights Internet operates, ensures availability of a vast amount of material that otherwise would not be retrievable from the country of origin. It brings together a wide variety of reports on human rights issues, that would otherwise be very difficult to locate, obtain and consult. Many of the publications originate directly from countries where human rights are challenged. The collection HRI has amassed over the last years includes publications by more than 200 non-governmental organizations.
Human Rights Internet has agreed to edit this collection for microfiche publication by IDC Publishers to aid in the preservation and the dissemination of this important record of the human rights struggle. HRI and IDC are also indexing documents, which makes the project so much more useful to the user.

"Fugitive" material
The material produced by NGO’s concerned with human rights and social justice – both published and unpublished documents – is vital to the analysis of the status of human rights and to the promotion and protection of those rights. Yet much of this source material is difficult to obtain. In a certain sense, it is "fugitive" material: copies of publications are produced in limited numbers and very narrowly disseminated; material is often produced on poor quality paper, in odd shapes and sizes, at irregular intervals; organizations which emerge to confront a particular crisis often dissolve after the crisis ends, and the documentation of those organizations disappears.

Broad subject range
The organizations whose material is here represented are concerned with a broad range of human rights issues: with the rights of the indigenous peoples, refugees, women, labor, children; with freedom of expression, freedom of association, freedom of assembly, and freedom of conscience; with the abolition of torture, political killings, disappearances, slavery and genocide; with the fate of political prisoners, with the rule of law and due process; with political participation and self-determination; and with the fulfillment of basic human needs. The focus of some NGO’s is universal in scope; others are concerned with the attainment of human rights in specific areas of the world. The collection represents the concerns of all groups in all regions of the world: Africa, Asia and the Pacific, the Middle East, Latin America, North America, Western Europe and Eastern Europe.
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