Introduction

One of the major ideas to emerge from the twentieth century is human rights. Flagrant human rights violations that occurred before and during World War II served as the catalyst for the human rights and fundamental freedoms stipulated in the 1945 United Nations Charter (Humphrey, 1990). ¹ From this charter grew an international law which superceded the traditional rights of states and acknowledged the rights of individual men and women. ² The international system of rights expanded to include the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the U.N. General Assembly on December 10, 1948. ³