The World Conference on Human Rights took place over two weeks in June of 1993. The Conference was held in Vienna, Austria. In attendance were 171 states committed to strengthening human rights throughout the world and to presenting an international plan to accomplish this goal. Also in attendance were thousands of delegates from more than eight hundred non-governmental organizations (UNHCHR, 1996). These people included representatives for the disabled and handicapped, children, women, those who have been tortured, prisoners, and indigenous people (Drinan, 2001: 55). After much debate and review of the status of human rights over the past decades, the cumulative product was the Vienna Declaration and Program of Action. .
The Vienna Declaration and Program of Action was constructed on the basis of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 and refocuses efforts to strengthen international human rights. In 1989 the General Assembly of the United Nations declared that the international community needed to meet with the purpose of reviewing and analyzing progress in human rights since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. It was decided that a conference was needed to identify obstacles in the coarse of human rights and possible solutions to these problems. In 1992, the Conference agenda was set by the General Assembly in the forty-seventh session of the United Nations. In his final presentation during the World Conference on Human Rights, the Secretary-General of the Conference, Mr. Ibrahima Fall, said .
"The Vienna Declaration provides the international community with a new "framework of planning, dialogue, and cooperation" that will enable a holistic approach to promoting human rights and involve actors at all levels - international, national, and local" (UNHCHR, 1996).
The agenda also included the "examination of the link between development, democracy and economic, social, cultural, civil, and political rights" (UNHCHR, 1996).
