On This Day in History: The United Nations Adopted the Declaration of Human Rights

by Taylor King | Dec 10, 2019

By: TAYLOR KING Who is responsible for atrocities like genocide? Who has jurisdiction to push back when human beings are stripped of their rights? Who wields the power to hold dictators accountable to a higher law? Until the formation of the United Nations, the answer evaded world leaders. When Adolf Hitler led the massacre millions of Jews and other people groups, many felt ill-equipped to legally stand against his actions. With the end of World War II, the international community began looking for a solution to their former idleness in the face of similar tragedies.¹ On this day in history – December 10, 1948 – they found it. The United Nations adopted the Declaration of Human Rights, guaranteeing all people certain indelible rights, for the first time, regardless of citizenship or nationality.² The birth of human rights is often traced to the sand dunes of Babylon in the year 539 B.C.³ When Cyrus the Great conquered the Neo-Babylonian empire, he showed unprecedented mercy by freeing the slaves of his newly conquered kingdom. He declared all people should have the right to choose their own religion and establish racial equality. More than 2,500 years later, his declaration remains baked on a clay cylinder – an etched reminder of a societal belief in human dignity. Using this decree as a foundation, civilizations in India, Greece, and Rome expounded upon Cyrus’ beliefs, developing the concept now known as “natural law.” Natural law, as opposed to civil law, was a universal system of justice derived from nature rather than the traditions of a particular society. In 1215, this theory of individual rights took the form of a document widely recognized today as the foundation for modern democracy, the Magna Carta. The Magna Carta established a radical freedom for the documents’ signers. For the first time in Western history, a King would be held accountable to his subjects.⁴ Over the next several centuries, the spirit of the Magna Carta underpinned additional governing documents including:

The Petition of Right, United Kingdom (1628)
The U.S. Constitution, United States (1787)
The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, France (1789)

The common thread in each is the inalienable rights of an individual; however, the rights outlined in the documents relied solely on the drafting state to determine those rights and hold their citizens accountable.

UN Photo/Lundquist. www.unmultimedia.org/photo/

In 1945, after the horrors of World War II destroyed families, leveled cities, and decimated populations, the international community decided to create an intergovernmental organization with a set of shared values, namely promoting world peace and international cooperation. On April 25, 1945, 50 governments met in San Francisco, California, to form the United Nations. The first two functional commissions formed by the UN were the Commission on the Status of Women and the Commission on Human Rights. The Commission on Human Rights selected 18 members from various political, cultural, and religious backgrounds to form a special committee with the goal of promoting human rights and helping sovereign states draft their own policies. In order to achieve this goal, the committee decided to draft a document outlining an exegetical list of the rights of an individual. It would be called “the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” In 1947, when the Commission began drafting the Declaration, the world remained divided into two blocks: Eastern and Western – both represented in the Commission. With both sides occupying, in many ways, radically different belief systems, the task of finding common ground may have seemed impossible. Eleanor Roosevelt, chair of the drafting committee, recounted one such example in her memoirs: “Dr. Chang [drafting committee member] …held forth in charming fashion…that there is more than one kind of ultimate reality. The Declaration, he said, should reflect more than simply Western ideas…at one point Dr. Chang suggested that the Secretariat might well spend a few months studying the fundamentals of Confucianism!”⁵ The committee spent two years drafting the Declaration, meeting together on two different occasions in Geneva, Switzerland. The first draft was proposed in September 1948. During the revision process, the committee made many edits and amendments. Hansa Mehta of India suggested to add “all human beings are created equal” instead of “all men are created equal.” British representatives argued the document would not serve its purpose if there was no legal mechanism. Allan Carlson of the United States requested the addition of pro-family phrases such as “the family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State”. In the end, the drafting committee submitted the final draft for vote in December 1948.

The United Nations General Assembly adopt the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Palais de Chaillot in Paris, 10 December 1948. Photograph: STF/AFP/Getty Images

On December 10, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Declaration. Among the then 58 members, the vote passed with an overwhelming majority. While the document is not an official treaty, it was adopted specifically for the purpose of defining two terms, which appear in the United Nations Charter: “fundamental freedoms” and “human rights.” The Charter is legally binding for all member states. Therefore, many international lawyers⁶⁷⁸⁹ agree the Declaration is now a portion of customary international law and therefore a powerful and practical tool for diplomacy. Today, the Declaration is also elaborated in international treaties such as the International Convention of the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.¹⁰¹¹ It its 72-year history, the Declaration has received much praise from international thought leaders.¹² In a statement on December 10, 2003, on behalf of the European Union, Marcello Spatafora said that the Declaration “placed human rights at the center of the framework of principles and obligations shaping relations within the international community.”¹³ However, the document has also received a host of shared criticisms, namely, its Western bias. Human rights activist Faisal Kutty writes: “A strong argument can be made that the current formulation of international human rights constitutes a cultural structure in which western society finds itself easily at home … It is important to acknowledge and appreciate that other societies may have equally valid alternative conceptions of human rights.”¹⁴ It remains to be seen how the Declaration and its implementation will change as society continues to globalize. The adoption itself, signed by nations around the world, provides hope for a continuing unified voice, striving to value human life and its dignity.