Creating a Universal Standard for Human Rights
Feature Story by Antoine Morris - 12/10/2008
Sixty years ago on December 10, 1948, in the aftermath of World War II, the U.N. General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) to create a "common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations."
Though not a legally binding treaty, the UDHR articulates the fundamental rights to which every person is entitled and which all national governments should strive to protect even if they are not U.N. member states.
The document was drafted by the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, which was chaired at the time by civil rights pioneer Eleanor Roosevelt. She led the effort to incorporate in the UDHR certain basic liberties found in the U.S. Bill of Rights , such as freedom of thought and religion, freedom from arbitrary arrest, and the freedom to assemble.
The UDHR also acknowledges the right not to be discriminated against on the basis of sex, creed, race, birth status or political belief, as well as the right to an education and a fair trial.
But it also goes further than the U.S. Constitution in affirming the rights to emigrate, to marry, to have economic security, to receive equal pay for equal work, to have an adequate standard of living, and to not be tortured.
News accounts from that time credit Roosevelt for deftly negotiating the document's final wording between countries within the Soviet bloc and Western countries. The Soviet bloc countries considered the language in the UDHR too vague, criticized it for not specifying the individual's role to the state, and argued that the rights to employment, education and health care are no less important than political rights, which were absent from earlier drafts.
Initially, the U.S. resisted all of the Soviet Union's suggestions, but Roosevelt persuaded the representatives of the U.S. to make concessions on social and economic rights.
But even bitter Cold War rivals, such as China and the U.S., managed to join forces to reject the idea of creating a Special Court for Human Rights to hear complaints of human rights violations from victims. They instead recommended that complaints should be heard by the International Court of Justice, the principal judicial body of the United Nations, and specified that only states, not individuals, are eligible to bring human rights violations before the court.
Since then, the U.N. court system has expanded, and now human rights cases are typically heard in the U.N.'s International Criminal Court, which was created in 2002. Cases must be referred by a U.N. member state or the U.N. Security Council, which can make it difficult for individuals to make complaints about human rights violations in their own countries.
Yet even with that limitation, the document was widely praised as a success and was adopted on December 10, 1948. Nearly the entire U.N. membership at the time supported the UDHR: 48 votes in favor, none against, and eight abstentions coming from the Soviet bloc along with Saudi Arabia and South Africa.
Six decades later, Navanethem Pillay, the current U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, continues to press for greater vigilance in ensuring that nations around the world will protect human rights for all people.
"We cannot stop here. We are still, 60 years on, a very long way from achieving the goals laid down in the Universal Declaration. No country in the world can sit back complacently and say 'We're there,'" said Pillay.
