The leadership of the United States' oldest and largest civil rights organization is in Geneva, pressing a meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council for help battling what the organization views as forces attempting to push back voting rights.

Four leaders from the NAACP and two citizens who say their voting rights have been threatened by laws requiring would-be voters to produce identification made statements before the meeting.

Thirty states have voter identification laws (a Wisconsin judge ruled this week that the state's law is unconstitutional), and seven of them, not including Wisconsin, were enacted last year.

The NAACP has been campaigning against what it sees as a wave of new Voter ID laws being pushed by states, and it released a report in December reviewing laws that have been passed in recent years. Proponents of such laws say they are necessary to prevent identity fraud at the polls and maintain that Americans should be used to the concept of having to produce identification to perform certain tasks, such as applying for a job or buying a home.

Roslyn Brock, NAACP board chairwoman, said, "As of December 2011, 14 U.S. states passed 25 measures designed to restrict or limit ballot access of voters of color, threatening to disenfranchise millions of eligible Americans. Furthermore, since January 2012, additional states have introduced measures that, if enacted, would result in the disenfranchisement of even more racial and ethnic minorities."

"We are here today because in the past 12 months, more U.S. states have passed more laws pushing more U.S. citizens out of the ballot box than in any year in the past century," NAACP President Ben Jealous said during the meeting. "Historically, when people have come after our right to vote, they have done so to make it easier to come after so many of our other rights that we hold dear."

During a conference call with reporters last week, Jealous said he hoped the NAACP presentations would prod the U.N. body into taking some sort of action.