50th Anniversary UN Declaration of Human Rights

[Carlos Afonso]

Thanks, Kathy. I agree with you, NCUC also has very good reasons to
celebrate!

Just a typo: we celebrate the 60th anniversary of the UNDHR, not the 50th.

bs

--c.a.

Kathy Kleiman wrote:
> Hi All,
> Yesterday was the 50th Anniversary of the UN Declaration of Human
> Rights, and I wanted to congratulation us. Within ICANN, the NCUC, since
> its founding, has been the voice of the UN Declaration of Human Rights,
> especially Article 19, and it has been a difficult, but wonderful
> responsibility. As you know, Article 19 proclaims the right of freedom
> of expression:
>
>
>        /Article 19./
>
>      Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this
>      right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and
>      to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any
>      media and regardless of frontiers.
>
>
> Since our first NCUC resolutions in August 1999 in Santiago, Chile
> (1999), the NCUC has urged ICANN to protect freedom of expression and
> personal privacy. We have worked so hard to protect the rights of
> noncommercial speech, speakers and domain name holders. It has been our
> job, and responsibility, to remind the commercial community, and the
> rest of ICANN, of the importance of personal, political and religious
> speech.  They often forget (or never knew) that for its first few
> decades, the Internet (under DARPA and NSF) barred commercial speech.
> The only Internet speech allowed was noncommercial, educational and
> research -- a ban that continued into the early 1990s.
>
> Many proposed policies -- including the UDRP (as first drafted) -- would
> have been tremendously damaging to noncommercial speech. We fought them
> and committed the Constituency to protecting highe values, those of the
> Declaration of Human Rights.
> My great thanks to our officers and GNSO reps for the wonderful job of
> NCUC. Under difficult circumstances and almost always as a minority
> voice, we fought for international human rights and giving meaning to
> Article 19 in the Internet Age. We have made a unique and critically
> important contribution to ICANN. We have made the Internet a better
> place for our children.
>
> I think Eleanor Roosevelt, chairman of the UN Declaration of Human
> Rights Committee  (and my personal heroine) would have been proud. I
> wish our current officers, GNSO reps and members the best in the
> struggles ahead.  Preserving human rights is an awesome task.
>
> Best,
> Kathy Kleiman, Esq.
> Co-Founder of ICANN's Noncommercial Users Constituency (back in the old
> days of 1999)
>
> ---------------------------------------------
> From the UN website:
>
>
>        On December 10, 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations
>        adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
>        the full text of which appears in the following pages. Following
>        this historic act the Assembly called upon all Member countries
>        to publicize the text of the Declaration and "to cause it to be
>        disseminated, displayed, read and expounded principally in
>        schools and other educational institutions, without distinction
>        based on the political status of countries or territories."
>
>
>        http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html
>
>