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=Human Rights in the Twentieth Century=

Human Rights are the basic provisional rights that all humans are, or should, be entailed to at birth. These include the right to life, liberty, and property as well as right to live undiscriminated against based on race, gender, religion, or political views. Any infringement on or against these rights is a human rights violation, e.g. murder of a Jew because they are Jewish. The Nuremburg Trials of 1946 charged 22 Nazi leaders with war crimes. These crimes included waging a war of aggression, violating laws of war, and "crimes against humanity," the systematic murder of over 11 million people known as the holocaust. Twelve of the twenty-two were executed and their bodies burned at Dachau, in the same ovens that took their victims. These trials were the first international police action against human rights violations and started a movement to make the world a safer place. When the United Nations ratified the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, there was an official code for what human rights were and what a human rights violation was. The first article in the declaration stated that "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood." The declaration goes on to further establish rights to life, liberty, and security of person (Article Three), as well as prohibiting legal discrimination based on any distinction such as race or gender (Article Two). The declaration then continues to define acceptable applications of the law and justice, including prohibition of torture and slavery. The world had finally established a universal code of conduct in government.