Human Rights
Starting in 1948 with the all-important Universal Declaration of Human Rights, this understanding has given rise to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights, which together are also known as the International Bill of Rights, as well as some 75 other conventions which identify and promote the rights of women and children, the right to freedom of worship, and development, to name but a few.
Viewed as a whole, it is worth noting that the international movement to recognize and codify human rights has risen in parallel with the ever-increasing integration and interdependence of nations, cultures, and previously isolated peoples. The development of international human rights, in this sense, must be seen as yet another feature of the increasing maturation of humanity. And the continued development and emphasis on human rights is, likewise, a pre-condition for our continued advancement and progress.
For the worldwide Bahá'í community, activities in relation to international human rights have for the most part fallen into two areas: 1) the promotion of the concept of universal human rights in general; and, 2) efforts to protect specific Bahá'í communities that have been deprived of human rights, a process which has focused primarily on the persecution of the Bahá'í community of Iran.
 Some members of the Bahá'í delegation to the World Conference on Human Rights pose together in front of a display set up by the Bahá'í International Community at the NGO Forum.
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The basic human rights which flow from this principle, as noted, are now widely recognized. They include, of course, the understanding that human rights must be applied irrespective of differences of racial background, ethnic origin, religious belief or national identity. They encompass the equality of women and men. And they comprehend that all individuals worldwide possess the same rights to freedom of investigation, information and religious practice. They also include an understanding that basic social, economic and cultural rights, such as the right to basic necessities such as food, shelter, and health care, also stem from the understanding that the benefits of medicine, science and technology, the products of agriculture, and the knowledge that is imparted by education come from a collective process of evolution that has led to the creation of our present day civilization. The fruits of civilization are the birthright of all, and steps to promote and protect human rights should keep this understanding clearly in the foreground.
Bahá'í communities have promoted these and other similar concepts primarily at the international level, by participating at key United Nations conferences and meetings on human rights. At the local and national levels, Bahá'ís have promoted these ideas largely through the promotion of basic Bahá'í teachings, which are themselves supportive of these concepts. Indeed, Bahá'ís understand that at the most fundamental level, human rights are God-given rights .
In recent years, the systematic persecution of the Iranian Bahá'í community by the Government there has also been a major focus of Bahá'í activity in the realm of human rights as Bahá'ís around the world have sought to draw attention to the plight of their co-religionists.
Since 1979, Bahá'ís in Iran have suffered intimidation, discrimination, violence and even death simply because its religious beliefs differ from those held by the authorities. More than 200 Bahá'ís have been killed or executed and thousands more have been imprisoned, fired from their jobs, or deprived of access to education. All national Bahá'í administrative structures have been banned by the Government of Iran, and holy places, shrines and cemeteries have been confiscated or destroyed.
 Mona Mahmudnizhad, 17, was one of 10 Bahá'í women executed in Shiraz on 18 June 1983. The primary charge against her: teaching Bahá'í children's classes--the equivalent of Sunday school in the West.
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In response to international condemnation, the most violent aspects of this persecution had abated by the early 1990s -- although unequivocal evidence of a centrally orchestrated governmental campaign against the Bahá'í community came to light in 1993. Recent events, including the execution of a Bahá'í in Mashhad in July 1998, and the arrest in late September 1998 of 32 faculty members of the Bahá'í Institute of Higher Education--an effort to provide education for Bahá'í youth who are denied educational opportunities by the Iranian authorities--demonstrate that whatever the official assertion of the Iranian Government, the Bahá'í community of Iran remains unprotected, and officials in that country can persecute the Bahá'ís at will and with impunity.
International efforts to ensure the basic human rights of the Iranian Bahá'ís continue. The successes so far in ameliorating what would otherwise have surely been the wholesale genocide of the Bahá'í community in Iran offers an important model for protecting minorities populations in general.
The response of Bahá'ís to this persecution provides a glimpse into the community's spiritual reserves. In June 1983, when the persecution was reaching its peak, the Iranian authorities paraded the entire national leadership of the Tudeh (communist) Party on national television. The prisoners willingly confessed to every crime charged against them, and begged for their lives. During that same eventful month ten Bahá'í women and girls were subject to similar physical and mental abuse in an effort to coerce them to recant their Faith. Their persecutors did not dare to put them on television because these brutalities produced not a vestige of compliance.