Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948): Rights for All

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948. In a preamble and 30 articles it listed rights that belong to every person, regardless of race, sex, religion, nationality or political opinion. Drafted in the shadow of the Second World War and the Holocaust, it became the founding text of modern international human rights law and one of the most translated documents in the world.

Background: the war and the new United Nations

The idea that individuals hold rights against their own governments had deep roots, from the English Bill of Rights of 1689 to the American and French declarations of the late eighteenth century. Before 1945, however, international law largely treated how a state handled its own citizens as its own business. The League of Nations protected certain minorities after the First World War, but had no general bill of rights.

The Second World War changed that. Nazi Germany’s persecution of Jews and others, culminating in genocide, showed what could happen when a state stripped people of all protection. Allied war aims spoke of freedoms for all people: Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” speech of January 1941 named freedom of speech and worship and freedom from want and fear, and the Atlantic Charter of August 1941 promised a peace in which people everywhere could live free from fear and want.

The United Nations Charter, signed in San Francisco on 26 June 1945, mentioned human rights several times but did not define them. Many delegations, especially from smaller states and from Latin America, and private organisations wanted an international bill of rights. In 1946 the UN Economic and Social Council set up a Commission on Human Rights to prepare one.

The drafters

The Commission had 18 member states. At its first full session in early 1947 it elected Eleanor Roosevelt, widow of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and a US delegate to the UN, as chair. Peng Chun Chang (P. C. Chang), a Chinese philosopher and diplomat, became vice-chair, and Charles Malik, a Lebanese philosopher, became rapporteur.

The UN Secretariat’s new Human Rights Division was led by John Peters Humphrey, a Canadian law professor. Humphrey’s team studied existing constitutions and proposals and produced the first draft, a long outline of 48 articles. René Cassin, a French jurist who had served with Charles de Gaulle’s Free French government in London, then revised and reorganised it into a more structured text, which is why he was long described as the declaration’s “father”.

A drafting committee of eight countries — Australia, Chile, China, France, Lebanon, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States — worked through the text in 1947 and 1948. Other delegates left important marks. Hansa Mehta of India argued successfully for wording that included women, so that Article 1 speaks of “all human beings” rather than “all men”. Chang, drawing on Confucian thought, pressed for the inclusion of “conscience” alongside reason in Article 1, and helped steer the text away from any single religious or philosophical foundation.

Debate and adoption

The Commission approved a draft in June 1948, and it was sent to the General Assembly’s Third Committee, which handles social and humanitarian questions. In some 80 meetings that autumn, delegates debated almost every article and voted on many amendments.

Disagreements ran along several lines. Soviet bloc delegates stressed economic and social rights and state duties, and objected that the text ignored the role of the state and failed to condemn fascism strongly enough. Western delegates emphasised civil liberties such as free speech and property. Saudi Arabia objected to the article on freedom to change one’s religion and to provisions on marriage. South Africa, whose government was introducing apartheid, objected to economic and social rights and to the scope of equality provisions.

The General Assembly, holding its third session at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris, voted late on 10 December 1948. Of the 58 member states, 48 voted in favour and none against. Eight abstained: the Soviet Union, the Ukrainian and Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republics, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Saudi Arabia and South Africa. Honduras and Yemen did not vote. The text was adopted as Resolution 217 A (III).

Speaking the day before, Eleanor Roosevelt stressed that the declaration was not a treaty or a statement of law, but she suggested that it might become a kind of international Magna Carta for people everywhere.

What the declaration says

The preamble begins by recognising the “inherent dignity” and “equal and inalienable rights” of all members of the human family as the foundation of freedom, justice and peace. It recalls that disregard for human rights had resulted in “barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind”.

The 30 articles can be grouped roughly as follows:

• Articles 1–2: equality in dignity and rights, and non-discrimination. Article 1 opens with the declaration’s best-known words: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”
• Articles 3–11: rights to life, liberty and security; bans on slavery and on torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment; equality before the law; protection against arbitrary arrest; the right to a fair trial and the presumption of innocence.
• Articles 12–17: privacy, freedom of movement, the right to seek asylum from persecution, the right to a nationality, the right to marry and found a family, and the right to own property.
• Articles 18–21: freedom of thought, conscience and religion, including the freedom to change one’s religion; freedom of opinion and expression; freedom of peaceful assembly; and the right to take part in government through genuine periodic elections.
• Articles 22–27: economic, social and cultural rights: social security, work and fair pay, the right to join trade unions, rest and paid holidays, an adequate standard of living including food, housing and medical care, education, and participation in cultural life.
• Articles 28–30: the right to a social and international order in which these rights can be realised, duties to the community, and a ban on using the declaration to destroy the rights it lists.

The combination of civil and political rights with economic and social rights in one document was a deliberate compromise between different traditions. It later became a principle of UN human rights work that the two kinds of rights are indivisible.

Key people

• Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962), chair of the Commission on Human Rights, who used her prestige and diplomatic skill to keep the drafting on schedule.
• René Cassin (1887–1976), French jurist who restructured the draft; he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1968.
• John Peters Humphrey (1905–1995), Canadian lawyer and director of the UN Human Rights Division, who prepared the first draft.
• Peng Chun Chang (1892–1957), Chinese philosopher and diplomat, vice-chair of the Commission.
• Charles Malik (1906–1987), Lebanese philosopher and diplomat, rapporteur of the Commission and later President of the General Assembly.

Others who shaped the text included Hansa Mehta of India, Hernán Santa Cruz of Chile, who championed social and economic rights, and Alexander Bogomolov and Alexei Pavlov of the Soviet Union.

From declaration to law

Because it was a resolution, the declaration did not on its own create binding legal obligations. The Commission on Human Rights therefore went on to draft treaties. Cold War divisions slowed the work and led to two separate texts: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Both were adopted in 1966 and entered into force in 1976. Together with the declaration they are known as the International Bill of Human Rights.

The declaration also inspired regional systems. The Council of Europe, founded in 1949, drew up the European Convention on Human Rights, signed in Rome on 4 November 1950, which created a court to which individuals could eventually bring cases against states. The American Convention on Human Rights (1969) and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (1981) followed.

Specialised UN treaties built on individual articles, including conventions against racial discrimination (1965), discrimination against women (1979) and torture (1984), and on the rights of the child (1989). The declaration’s language has been copied into dozens of national constitutions written after 1948, especially in newly independent states in Africa and Asia.

Influence and criticism

During the Cold War both sides cited the declaration selectively, each accusing the other of violations. Dissidents in the Soviet bloc invoked it, as did campaigners against colonial rule and against apartheid in South Africa. The Helsinki Accords of 1975, in which European states pledged to respect human rights, referred directly to it.

Critics have argued that the declaration reflects mainly Western ideas of individual rights. Defenders point out that its drafters came from many cultures and legal traditions, that delegations from Asia, Latin America and the Middle East shaped key articles, and that much of the world was still under colonial rule in 1948, so many later states could not take part. The 1993 Vienna Declaration, adopted by 171 states at the World Conference on Human Rights, reaffirmed that human rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent.

Lawyers continue to debate how far the declaration itself is now binding. Many hold that some of its core provisions, such as the bans on slavery and torture, have become part of customary international law, binding on all states.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1941, 6 January: Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” speech.
• 1945, 26 June: The UN Charter is signed in San Francisco.
• 1946: The UN Economic and Social Council establishes the Commission on Human Rights.
• 1947, January–February: At its first session the Commission elects Eleanor Roosevelt as chair.
• 1948, June: The Commission approves a draft declaration.
• 1948, 10 December: The General Assembly adopts the declaration in Paris.
• 1950, 4 November: The European Convention on Human Rights is signed in Rome.
• 1966, 16 December: The General Assembly adopts the two International Covenants.
• 1976: Both Covenants enter into force.

Why it matters

The Universal Declaration was the first time states from around the world agreed on a common list of rights belonging to every person. Although not a treaty, it changed the language of politics: governments could no longer easily claim that how they treated their own people was nobody else’s business. Almost every later human rights instrument traces its roots to the text adopted in Paris in 1948, and 10 December is marked every year as Human Rights Day.