The Universal Declaration of Human Rights — a rare light in a dark century
National Post, 10 December 2023
75 years later, it's hard to imagine such a consensus emerging in the modern age
The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was the silver lining on the blackest cloud in history — a century not half complete that included two calamitous world wars, totalitarian slaughters and the Shoah. Its 75th anniversary on Dec. 10 is worthy of celebration, even as the foundations of human rights may be less secure than they were in 1948.
In June 1945, even before the Second World War concluded, the United Nations was birthed in San Francisco, with the ringing words on the preamble to its charter: “We the peoples of the United Nations … reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person.”
A new emphasis was thus made more prominent in international law — the “dignity of the person.” An early project of the UN was to have an international bill of rights, analogous to the constitutions of some states. International instruments were thought to be a possible constraint on nation-states that employed sovereignty to excuse their human rights abuses.
Already there was a pan-American process, which led to the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man — the “Bogota Declaration” — which was completed just months ahead of the UDHR.
Would it be possible to get universal agreement on a human rights declaration? The UDHR drafting committee was chaired by the formidable Eleanor Roosevelt, recently widowed by FDR’s death in 1945. The vice-chairman was from (pre-Maoist) China, Peng-chun Chang, the rapporteur was Charles Malik of Lebanon and the secretary was Canada’s John Humphrey, director of the UN Human Rights Division. René Cassin of France wrote the final draft.
“Chang was a pluralist and held forth in charming fashion on the proposition that there is more than one kind of ultimate reality,” recalled Roosevelt of their first meeting in 1947.
“The declaration, he said, should reflect more than simply western ideas and would have to be eclectic in his approach.… His remark, though addressed to Dr. Humphrey, was really directed at Dr. Malik, from whom it drew a prompt retort as he expounded at some length the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas.… Chang suggested that the secretariat might well spend a few months studying the fundamentals of Confucianism!”
That was the mammoth task at hand. Could such a diverse committee — let alone the General Assembly — come to a consensus?
A limited list of restraints on the state in the Anglo-American tradition would not suffice for a universal document. The way forward was found by putting the foundation of the UDHR not on freedom first, but on respecting human dignity, which in turn was the foundation of freedoms, rights and duties.
Thus the richly textured UDHR gives a rather more robust vision of the human person than a bill of negative freedoms. It does not begin with an isolated individual left alone with his rights, but rather a person who is embedded in a network of social relationships, beginning with the family.
The fundamental rights were there — freedom of religion, speech, association — but also a vision of the human person who, according to “reason and conscience … should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”
Thus the UDHR begins with an acknowledgement that we have responsibilities toward each other. It includes rights that, say, the Canadian Charter does not, such as the “right to own property,” the “right to form and join trade unions,” the “right to rest and leisure” and the right to an “adequate standard of living.” The vision is of a just society, not only a free one.
Roosevelt saw to it that FDR’s “four freedoms” found their way into the preamble, that “freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want have been proclaimed as the highest aspirations of the common people.”
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