World Body.org

Concordance

“human rights” in the General Debate

24,493 uses across 80 years of statements. First recorded in 1946; used most in 1993, when it appeared 808 times across 149 statements by 149 speakers.

05001,0001946: 191947: 101948: 671949: 431950: 311951: 571952: 521953: 481954: 341955: 571956: 781957: 501958: 511959: 941960: 591961: 671962: 621963: 1181964: 1111965: 1221966: 1311967: 931968: 2661969: 1201970: 1431971: 1181972: 1241973: 2001974: 1271975: 2121976: 3511977: 6491978: 6501979: 4601980: 3771981: 2551982: 2021983: 3171984: 2941985: 3321986: 2601987: 2841988: 4581989: 3551990: 3621991: 6251992: 6291993: 8081994: 6021995: 5211996: 4451997: 6731998: 7741999: 5492000: 4122001: 2342002: 2742003: 2562004: 2532005: 6032006: 5342007: 3952008: 3942009: 2942010: 3592011: 3642012: 4592013: 4432014: 3452015: 5742016: 4462017: 4602018: 5862019: 3822020: 3822021: 5022022: 3562023: 3752024: 3382025: 47719462025
Uses per year, 1946–2025. The tallest bar is 1993. Counted by worldbody.org over the UN General Debate Corpus; the chart is our own measurement.

What this counts, and what it does not. This is the number of times the string human rights appears in the text of General Debate statements, matched on word boundaries and ignoring case. It is a fact about a word. It is not a measure of how much any state cared about the subject, what position it took, or whether it meant it — and nothing on this page should be read that way.

The final year of this series is machine-transcribed from the official simultaneous interpretation rather than taken from a UN transcript, so it counts what a transcriber heard. See session 80.

Used most by

SpeakerUsesStatementsFirstLast
Kingdom of the Netherlands 447 62 1948 2025
Costa Rica 445 61 1951 2025
Austria 428 60 1956 2025
Ireland 413 57 1960 2025
Kingdom of Denmark 332 60 1951 2025
Chile 330 73 1946 2025
Germany 325 47 1973 2025
Belgium 322 52 1949 2024
Guatemala 319 59 1950 2025
Sweden 303 58 1953 2025
Canada 301 55 1951 2025
Spain 297 50 1962 2025
Australia 283 53 1946 2025
Norway 282 53 1946 2025
Cyprus 278 60 1961 2025
Iceland 277 55 1953 2025
Luxembourg 275 53 1967 2025
Portugal 272 52 1960 2025
Nepal 263 50 1963 2025
Uruguay 250 57 1948 2025
Libya 242 55 1958 2025
Poland 230 49 1946 2025
Hungary 230 40 1964 2019
Finland 224 48 1968 2025
United States 220 63 1946 2023

A state that speaks every year has more chances to use a word than one admitted in 2011, and a state whose statements are longer has more again. These are counts, not rates.

Where this page comes from