France's Stand on Human Rights

France's Stand on Human Rights

France’s stand on Human Rights

Human rights have played a very important role in France’s history and continue to today. France was one of the first nations to draft a declaration proclaiming human rights and has participated in the drafting of most of the international doctrines dealing with human rights. Beginning in the Age of Enlightenment with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, going on to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted in 1948 at the Chaillot Palace in Paris with the United Nations.
France is a party to virtually all of the treaties drafted by the United Nations to promote and protect human rights and it calls for their universal ratification. It is an active participant in the framing of new protection rules. It advocates a new international instrument against ‘enforced disappearances’ and a Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. France and Germany also advocate a United Nations convention to ban the reproductive cloning of human beings. It has proposed a UNESCO declaration on bioethics that could provide a future framework for specific instruments drafted to deal with developments in medical techniques. France has been a member of the United Nations Human Rights Commission since it was set up in 1947 almost without interruption. It periodically proposes resolutions on arbitrary detention, ‘enforced disappearances’, extreme poverty, bioethics, child soldiers and, in conjunction with its European partners, on capital punishment, children’s rights and the situation in various countries.
France’s diplomats are committed to action based on these instruments in its multilateral and bilateral relations to fight violations of human rights wherever they occur. It feels that the Security Council should take up serious human rights violations that threaten international peace and security. It advocates greater assistance for countries that are committed to promoting human rights. International human rights...

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