As efforts to control speech and information increase, the UN Human Rights Office has provided guidance on how to distinguish free speech from hate speech through the Rabat Plan of Action, which suggests setting a high threshold for interpreting the restrictions set by international human rights law in restricting freedom of expression.
Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) says we all have the right to our own beliefs, to have a religion, have no religion, or to change it. For its time, the UDHR was very progressive in asserting that believers of all religions and secular beliefs should be able to live peacefully with their rights guaranteed by the State, while not presuming any national or state-sponsored religion.
Article 17 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) guarantees the right to property. This is yet another right included in reaction to the atrocities of the Holocaust, when property was confiscated from Jews and others, often to enrich Nazi officials. European Jews were stripped of billions of dollars’ worth of cash, artwork, houses, businesses and personal belongings. “Hitler’s Final Solution was not only an act of genocide: it was also a campaign of organized theft,” says one writer.