Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Context

The declaration was the product of nearly two years of intense and often conflicted discussion among members of the newly formed UN Commission on Human Rights. The United Nations had faced enormous pressure from individuals, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and international conferences calling for the United Nations to prioritize human rights in its charter. Instead of including a bill of human rights in its charter, the United Nations established the eighteen-member Commission on Human Rights.

The declaration was written soon after World War II. In 1941, U.S. president Franklin Roosevelt had met with Winston Churchill, the prime minister of England, to discuss the international postwar balance of power. Their major concern was international peace and security. Later, various meetings took place as the circle was enlarged to include the third Allied leader, Josef Stalin of the Soviet Union. Finally, in 1945, fifty nations met in San Francisco. Dominated by the Big Three, who had invited France and China to join them, the assembled nations drafted the United Nations Charter. The charter was intended to provide a mechanism to prevent future aggression, resolve disputes, and ensure that national borders would be kept intact. The principle of national sovereignty was built into the charter, and from the beginning this principle was in tension with the potential for the United Nations to intervene or “interfere” in a nation's internal affairs.

As the horrors of the Nazi genocide against Jews and other “undesirables” became known across the world, global voices demanding attention to human rights grew louder. A shared determination to prevent the rise again of Nazism or Fascism was critical to the drafting of the UDHR. Other effects of the war were also influential, including the plight of refugees and national security concerns. The horrors of the war provided the catalyst that enabled people from so many diverse cultural, political, social, and economic backgrounds to develop a shared moral code.

The declaration was also influenced by the League of Nations, formed after World War I, which had failed to prevent World War II. The league had not mentioned human rights, but the authors of the UDHR wanted to ensure that international security would include the protection of human rights. Many wanted the document to include the means for implementing its proposals, but the document became a statement of shared beliefs in human rights on which more action-based treaties or conventions could be built. (A treaty is a specific agreement between or among nations; a convention is a more general agreement on principles that does not necessarily require specific action.)

Few Asian and African countries were represented in the United Nations and on the commission because so many (other than Japan, which was excluded) were European colonies. A few had gained independence after the war, and these countries played an important role in the process. The delegate from France, René Cassin, sat face to face with the delegate from a former French colony, Charles Malik of Lebanon. (This was also the case with the United States and the Philippines and with Great Britain and its colonies, India and Pakistan.) The question of the human rights of colonized people would be a source of tension, and the word colony or its derivations would not appear in the document.

Another contentious issue was the treatment of minorities and the eradication of racism. Although the war had destroyed the moral basis of scientific racism, for example, a number of countries had not yet internalized this lesson. The Soviet Union, for example, was subjected to sharp criticism of its human rights record.

Women's human rights would also present a challenge. Many UN member nations had not granted women full political rights, let alone cultural, social, or economic equality. Two women served on the commission: Eleanor Roosevelt and Hansa Mehta of India. Roosevelt argued that the word “men” included “women,” but Mehta insisted on specifically including women in the declaration. The UN Commission on the Status of Women played an important role. No mandate was given for these two commissions to work together, but representatives of the Commission on the Status of Women regularly attended committee meetings and provided crucial input, helping to ensure the removal of sexist language and the full inclusion of women in the category of “men.” In several regards, then, the commission had to develop a moral agenda that challenged many of the delegates' own countries' human rights records at that very moment.

NGOs also played a critical role in pushing human rights onto the international agenda. Many people and organizations developed international bills of human rights; even the pope called for such a document. When the commission began its work, it invited and welcomed comments and suggestions, and NGOs maintained pressure throughout.

International events that help to contextualize the committee's work include the beginnings of decolonization in such countries as the Philippines, Lebanon, India, and Pakistan; the continuation of colonial rule in both Asia and Africa; apartheid laws passed in South Africa the same year as the declaration; Britain's relinquishment of its mandate over Palestine and the formation of Israel; Jewish and Palestinian refugees; and the transition to a Communist government in China. These were the early years of the cold war between the Soviet bloc and the West. It is remarkable that delegates from both sides of the Iron Curtain and across many religious, political, and ideological divides could work together so intensely to develop a shared commitment to a global moral blueprint for human rights. There were seven distinct stages in the drafting process. Small subcommittees worked on the document and then brought it to the entire eighteen-member commission for a vote. This continued for nearly two years. In the process of drafting this document, every word and sentence attracted scrutiny and revision, and the entire committee voted on every article until it was finally adopted in December of 1948.