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August 26

Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizenship Adopted by French Assembly (1789)


On August 26, 1789, the French Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (French: Déclaration des droits de l'Homme et du Citoyen) to provide natural rights to "all men without exception." While the Declaration did not address the status of women or slavery, it did state that natural rights such as life, liberty, and property were universal to all men without regard to religion and it was the government’s responsibility to ensure these rights.

The main author of the Declaration was Marquis de Lafayette. Lafeyette acted as a Major General during the American Revolutionary War and was instrumental in defeating the British. Lafeyette held many of the same beliefs as his American counterparts including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. In fact, Jefferson assisted Lafeyette in drafting the Declaration while Jefferson acted as an American envoy to France.

The Declaration acted as the fundamental document of the French Revolution and spelled out that all men have certain natural rights regardless of religion to such things as life, liberty, and property. It held that the government’s role is to secure these natural rights for the people through elected representatives. Further, while the Declaration failed to mention that status of women’s rights and slavery, it created a social contract between its citizens and government to uphold natural rights. And women were eventually given the same natural rights as males with the adoption of the 1946 Constitution of the French Fourth Republic.

French King Louis XVI signed the Declaration but he never intended to support it. Shortly after the Declaration was signed the French Revolution erupted and Napolean Bonaparte took control of France.

Today, the Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizenship along with the U.S. Declaration of Independence are considered to be the foundational documents for international human rights law. For example, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, Canada created its Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms 1982, and Europe drafted the European Convention on Human Rights in 1950 and Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union in 2000 – of which all were at least based in part on the French and U.S. Declarations from the late 1780s.