|
History of the UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS
Based on the recommendations of a "nuclear commission" chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, the UN's Economic and Social Council established the official UN Commission on Human Rights in June 1946. The Council selected eighteen members to sit on the Commission. U.S. Delegate Eleanor Roosevelt was elected Chairperson, China's P.C. Chang and France's René Cassin were elected as Vice-Chairmen and Lebanon's Charles Malik as Rapporteur. The UN Secretariat supported the Commission's work under the direction of John P. Humphrey, Director of the UN's Human Rights Division, who prepared a 408-page documented outline to help the Commission with its work. The principal task of the Commission was to define which rights should be enumerated, and to determine the nature of the document they were to design.
The efforts of the Commission on Human Rights would prove unrivaled in world history. Although attempts to describe the rights of men and women had been previously undertaken, the outcome had only applied to members of a particular society. Never before had the community of nations successfully identified those rights and freedoms to be enjoyed by all people of the earth, for all time.
The first meeting of this smaller drafting committee took place on June 9, 1947 in Lake Success, N.Y. Their primary task was to contemplate a 408 page outline of human rights that had been prepared by the UN Secretariat. The outline included blueprints presented by the governments of Chile, Cuba, Panama, the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as elements drawn from the constitutions of fifty-five nations. Recommendations from various non-governmental human rights organizations and from private citizens were also considered.
Through their difficult work, the framers of the Universal Declaration concluded, "recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world." And they affirmed that "it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law."
In the General Assembly, a final, heroic debate lasted until late in the evening of December 10, 1948. Then the President of the General Assembly called for a vote of the member states of the United Nations for the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Forty-eight nations voted for the Declaration, eight countries abstained (the Soviet bloc countries, South Africa and Saudi Arabia) and two countries were absent -- the community of nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights without dissent. It was deemed "an historic act, destined to consolidate world peace through the contribution of the United Nations toward the liberation of individuals from the unjustified oppression and constraint to which they are too often subjected."
|
|
|
