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Nelson Mandela International Day

Nelson Mandela International Day is annually observed on July 18, which was launched by UN General Assembly in Nov 2009, in recognition of his global contribution to the culture of peace and freedom.

Mandela, who was born on July 18, 1918, and died on Dec 5, 2013, was the first democratically elected president of South Africa and the country's first black head of state.

In Dec 2015, the General Assembly decided to extend the scope of Nelson Mandela International Day to also promote humane conditions of imprisonment and to encourage societies everywhere to treat prisoners as a continuous part of society by adopting the revised UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, known as the "Nelson Mandela Rules".