Research Guides: Universal Declaration of Human Rights for Children and Youth: Home

Who is this guide for?

This research guide is intended to provide the educators and/or parents with age-appropriate resources on human rights for children and youth:

Simplified texts of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (level of language difficulty - children and youth)
Adoption history of the Declaration (level of language difficulty - youth)
Educational activities (level of language difficulty - children and youth)
Videos (level of language difficulty - children and youth)
Glossary of human rights terminology (level of language difficulty - youth)

Human rights are universal, inherent, inalienable and undivisble

Every human being is entitled to the same human rights and fundamental freedoms.

These rights are inherent and universal because you were born with them regardless of your race, gender, religion, culture, or the country where you live. These human rights are inalienable because they cannot be taken away from you.

Human rights are indivisible, interrelated and interdependent because improvement of one rights leads to the advancement of others. The deprivation of one right negatively affects the other rights. No one can respect some rights and not others.

Human rights are guaranteed by human rights law through treaties, customary international law and other sources of law; for all of which the Universal Declaration of Human Rights serve as a foundation and an inspiration.

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On 10 December 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or UDHR. The Preamble and 30 Articles of the Declaration proclaimed - for the first time in history - the universal, inalienable and indivisible human rights.

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Subjects: Human Rights

Core Human Rights Treaties

This timeline includes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 9 core human rights treaties. Some of the treaties are supplemented by protocols dealing with specific concerns.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights has laid a foundation for the adoption of many other human rights treaties. In addition, the Declaration served as a model for bringing human rights norms into national constitutions and legislation of many countries around the world.