-
539
the first king of ancient
the armies of Cyrus the Great, the first king of ancient Persia, conquered the city of Babylon. -
1215
Magna Carta
-
1215
King John of England violated a number of ancient
after King John of England violated a number of ancient laws and customs by which England had been governed, his subjects forced him to sign the Magna Carta, which enumerates what later came to be thought of as human rights -
the Petition of Right
-
Petition of Right
The next recorded milestone in the development of human rights was the Petition of Right, produced by the English Parliament and sent to Charles I as a statement of civil liberties -
United States Declaration of Independence
the United States Congress approved the Declaration of Independence. Its primary author, Thomas Jefferson, wrote the Declaration as a formal explanation of -
the US Constitution
-
The Constitution of the United States of America
Written during the summer of 1787 in Philadelphia, the Constitution of the United States of America is the fundamental law of the US federal system of government and the landmark document of the Western world -
the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
-
and the US Bill of Rights
-
The first ten amendments to the Constitution—the Bill of Rights
-
The First Geneva Convention
sixteen European countries and several American states attended a conference in Geneva, at the invitation of the Swiss Federal Council, on the initiative of the Geneva Committee -
The United Nations
World War II had raged , and as the end drew near, cities throughout Europe and Asia lay in smoldering ruins. Millions of people were dead, millions more were homeless or starving. -
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
the United Nations’ new Human Rights Commission had captured the world’s attention. Under the dynamic chairmanship of Eleanor Roosevelt—President Franklin Roosevelt’s widow, a human rights champion in her own right and the United States delegate to the UN
