Drafting the Universal Declaration

Whether God should be mentioned

Brazil proposed that article 1 refer to human beings as created in the image of God. Peng Chun Chang and others opposed it, because a religious foundation would exclude those who did not share it. It was not adopted, and "endowed with reason and conscience" was the compromise.

Economic and social rights

Pressed by the Latin American States and by the socialist bloc; resisted by several Western States as being of a different kind.

They went in, as articles 22 to 27, in one instrument with the civil and political rights. [Why There Are Two Covenants] shows the resistance succeeding eighteen years later.

Whether it should bind

Some delegates wanted a treaty at once. The decision was to proceed in three stages: a declaration, then a convention, then measures of implementation. Only the first was achieved in 1948, and the second took until 1966.

The abstentions, which are the evidence

Eight abstained, and why each did is the fact that decides the universality argument.

The Soviet Union and five other socialist States, on the grounds that the Declaration did not go far enough on economic and social rights, said nothing about fascism, and intruded on sovereignty.

South Africa, because the equality and non-discrimination provisions were inconsistent with its racial policy.

Saudi Arabia, principally over article 18's freedom to change religion and article 16's provisions on marriage.

No State abstained on the ground that the rights were culturally alien in general. The objections were specific, and two of the three positions were that the Declaration did too little or that it reached a policy the objector could not defend openly. [Universality, and What Vienna Settled] uses this.

What was left out

A right of petition, proposed and dropped, so the Declaration created no remedy and no forum.

A minorities article, deliberately omitted for the reasons [The League of Nations and the Minorities Treaties] gave. The subject returned as article 27 of the Covenant.

And any reference to independence for colonial peoples, though article 2's second sentence extends the rights to persons in trust and non-self-governing territories, which was itself contested by the administering powers.

Worked example

A question asserts that the Declaration is a Western document imposed on the rest of the world.

Composition: officers American, Lebanese and Chinese; first outline Canadian; architecture French; the amendment changing article 1 Indian; the economic and social content largely Latin American, with twenty of the fifty-eight Members from that region and a regional declaration adopted at Bogotá months earlier.

Foundations: a religious grounding was proposed and rejected precisely so that the text would not rest on one tradition.

The vote: forty-eight for, none against; the eight abstentions were the socialist States for going too little, South Africa over racial equality, and Saudi Arabia over two specific articles.

Then concede what is true: most of Africa and much of Asia was under colonial rule and unrepresented, which is a real limitation about who was absent and not about whose values the text expresses.

The strongest version of the answer is the honest one, because the drafting record supports the framework better than a defensive account of it does.

What it does NOT mean

It does not mean the drafting was consensual. It was contested at every stage, over eighty meetings in the Third Committee alone.

It does not mean adoption settled the legal question. [What Kind of Instrument the Declaration Is] takes that next.

And it does not mean the absent were consulted later and satisfied. The instruments that answered the exclusion were fought for, not granted.

Quick revision

• Commission established 1946 under Charter article 68; drafting January 1947 to December 1948; adopted 10 December 1948, Paris, resolution 217 A (III).
• Vote: 48 for, 0 against, 8 abstentions, 2 absent.
• People: Roosevelt chair, Malik rapporteur, Chang vice-chair, Humphrey first outline, Cassin architecture, Hansa Mehta changed article 1 to all human beings, Santa Cruz and Latin America on economic and social rights.
• Twenty of fifty-eight Members were Latin American, and the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man was adopted at Bogotá in April 1948, with duties as well as rights.
• Four arguments: the foundation, deliberately left open; God, proposed by Brazil and rejected; economic and social rights, included; whether to bind, deferred to a three-stage plan.
• The abstentions: socialist States for too little, South Africa over racial equality, Saudi Arabia over articles 18 and 16. None on general cultural grounds.
• Left out: a right of petition, a minorities article, and any reference to colonial independence.

Test yourself

1. Who drafted the Declaration, and why does the composition matter? Eleanor Roosevelt of the United States chaired the Commission on Human Rights, Charles Malik of Lebanon was rapporteur, Peng Chun Chang of China was vice-chair, John Humphrey of Canada produced the first documented outline drawing on constitutions and proposals from around the world, and René Cassin of France gave that outline the architecture the Declaration now has. Hansa Mehta of India changed article 1 from all men are born free and equal to all human beings, and pressed throughout for the equality of women to be written into the text rather than assumed. Hernán Santa Cruz of Chile and the Latin American delegations generally secured much of the economic and social content. Composition matters because the charge that the Declaration is a Western imposition has to be tested against who actually wrote it, and on the record the officers, the decisive amendments and a large part of the substantive content came from outside western Europe and north America. Twenty of the fifty-eight Member States were Latin American, the largest bloc, and they arrived with the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, adopted at Bogotá in April 1948 with duties as well as rights.

2. How did the drafters handle the question of foundations? By refusing to answer it. A text asserting rights invites the question what grounds them, and the drafters came from natural law, Marxist, Confucian, Islamic and secular liberal traditions that answered it incompatibly. Brazil proposed that article 1 describe human beings as created in the image of God; Peng Chun Chang and others opposed the proposal on the ground that a religious foundation would exclude those who did not share it; and the phrase endowed with reason and conscience was adopted instead. The philosophers consulted during the drafting are recorded as agreeing about the rights provided nobody asked why. That should be presented as a strength rather than a fudge: a conclusion reached independently from several traditions is more robust than one derived from a single foundation that most of the world rejects, and it is the reason an instrument could be adopted without a dissenting vote by States that agreed about almost nothing else.

3. What do the abstentions show? That the objections in 1948 were specific rather than general, which is the single most useful fact in the universality argument. Eight States abstained. The Soviet Union and five other socialist States abstained because the Declaration did not go far enough on economic and social rights, said nothing about fascism, and intruded on sovereignty. South Africa abstained because the equality and non-discrimination provisions were inconsistent with its racial policy. Saudi Arabia abstained principally over article 18's freedom to change religion and article 16's provisions on marriage. No State abstained on the ground that the rights were culturally alien in general, and two of the three positions amounted to saying that the instrument did too little or that it reached a policy the objector could not defend in open terms. That record is stronger evidence in the universality debate than any assertion about shared values, and it is available because the vote and the explanations are documented.

4. What did the drafters leave out, and why? Three things. A right of petition was proposed and dropped, so the Declaration created no remedy and no forum, and that gap was closed only by the first Optional Protocol in 1966 and then only for its parties. A minorities article was deliberately omitted, because the interwar minorities treaties had been selective in application, imposed on defeated and newly created States, and had framed protection around group status in a way that hostile governments and neighbouring States exploited; the subject returned in universal and individual form as article 27 of the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. And there is no reference to independence for colonial peoples, though the second sentence of article 2 extends the rights to persons in trust and non-self-governing territories and under any other limitation of sovereignty, which the administering powers themselves contested. Each omission is traceable to a specific failure of the interwar system or a specific resistance at the drafting table, rather than to oversight.