Global History and Geography II - Human Rights and Enduring Issues Synthesis
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (
Following the conclusion of World War II, the United Nations General Assembly officially proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on .
This declaration established a common international standard for all peoples and nations.
The document is centered on the core principles of human dignity, equality, and the protection of rights without discrimination of any kind.
The Apartheid System in South Africa
Beginning in , South Africa implemented and expanded the apartheid system.
Apartheid was a legal framework of racial segregation and political exclusion.
The system utilized laws to control specific aspects of the lives of Black South Africans, including:
Where individuals could live.
Where individuals could work.
Where individuals could travel.
How individuals could participate in the political process.
Pass laws served as a primary mechanism to regulate and restrict the movement of the population.
Student Resistance and the Soweto Uprising
On , students in Soweto initiated a protest against education policies enforced within the apartheid system.
A central grievance was the compulsory use of Afrikaans alongside English as a medium of instruction in schools.
The Soweto uprising became a significant global symbol of youth resistance.
This event intensified both domestic and international opposition to the apartheid regime.
Pressure, Negotiations, and the Repeal of Apartheid
During the and the early , the apartheid system faced increasing challenges from multiple fronts:
Persistent internal resistance within South Africa.
Sustained international pressure.
Formal negotiations between various political entities.
Specific milestones in the dismantling of the system include:
The repeal of the Pass laws in .
The unbanning of major liberation movements by the government in .
The acceleration of negotiations intended to establish a new political system.
The Transition to Democracy (
South Africa conducted its first democratic national election in .
The election was characterized by the use of a common voters' roll, allowing all citizens to participate regardless of race.
This event signaled the formal end of apartheid-era political exclusion.
The country successfully transitioned to a constitutional democratic system.
Fundamental Historical Concepts and Definitions
Historical context: The broader time, place, conditions, and events that help explain a document or development.
Point of view: A source creator's position or perspective shaped by experience, role, values, or circumstances.
Purpose: What the creator intended the source to accomplish.
Audience: The people or group a source was meant to reach.
Cause: A factor that contributes to an event or development.
Effect: A result or consequence of an event or development.
Turning point: An event or development that produces significant change.
Enduring issue: A challenge or problem that has existed across time and has been addressed with varying degrees of success.
Human rights: Rights and freedoms understood as belonging to people by virtue of being human.
Inequality: Unequal access to rights, power, status, resources, or opportunities.
Power: The ability of individuals, groups, or institutions to influence decisions or control resources.
Resistance: Actions taken to challenge authority, policy, or conditions.
Document relationship: A connection between sources, such as cause/effect, similarity/difference, or change over time.
Evidence: Specific information from a source used to support a historical claim.
Corroboration: Comparing sources to see where they support, complicate, or contradict one another.
Reliability: How useful and trustworthy a source is for a particular historical question.
CRQ: A constructed-response question using a document or related document set.
Enduring Issues Essay: A Global History and Geography II task requiring the identification and explanation of an enduring issue using evidence across documents and outside knowledge.
Outside information: Relevant historical knowledge not directly stated in the provided documents.
Continuity and change: Analysis of what persisted and what changed across time.
Analytical Frameworks and Common Errors in Historical Writing
The Learning Bridge Model:
Bridge: Entails annotating the date, actor, condition, action, and effect. It uses sentence stems to establish context and document relationships.
Core: Requires independently answering context and relationship CRQs using paired documents.
Regents: Involves a mix of stimulus-based multiple-choice questions, CRQs, and Enduring Issues planning using all available documents.
Stretch: Involves adding outside information and evaluating how an issue changed while leaving a continuing legacy.
Common Errors to Avoid (Error Clinic):
Document summary instead of context: Avoid simply summarizing the text; instead, add outside circumstances that help explain the document's existence.
Two summaries instead of relationship: Avoid summarizing two documents separately. Name the relationship explicitly and connect both documents.
Enduring issue too narrow: Broaden the issue to one that can recur across time (e.g., broadening "segregation" to "inequality" or "rights denial").
Evidence without significance: Always explain why the evidence shows persistence, change, impact, or response.
Verification and Documentary Sources
United Nations Sources:
Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
History of the Declaration.
South African Government Sources:
History of the South African Government.
Freedom Day and the records of the first democratic election.
South African History Online:
Records of the Soweto Uprising.