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The Path Towards the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
ER 11, Spring 2012
Note…
Philosophical part will start in Lecture 4
“rights do not exist outside of legal frameworks”
“rights do not exist outside of religious frameworks”
“there are no values that apply to everybody”
“human rights are culturally imperialistic”
“human rights do exist in nature”
“we are compelled by reason to accept human rights”
• Vedas and Upanishads• Genesis• Buddhism • Confucianism • Christianity• Islam • Greek/Roman natural
law• etc
Universal Morality
But
Little organized interaction among individuals across states
No institutions until 20th century to implement such morality
International law did not grant individuals standing
Predecessors
“Society for Abolition of the Slave Trade”
William Wilberforce – Thomas Clarkson
Slavery continues to exist One estimate: 27 million
Labor Movement
From the Manifesto“The working men have no country. We cannot take
from them what they do not have. (…) National differences and antagonisms between peoples are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto.”
“Working Men of all Countries, Unite!”
Solferino, 1859
• Henry Dunant
• Geneva Conventions, re. wounded, PoW’s, civilians, medical/ religious personnel
• rights language throughout
Eventually: Outlawing War
New goal for 20th century
Women’s Emancipation
Rights to vote and hold property
Not yet: general questioning of “gender”
Emmeline Pankhurst
Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House (1879)
• “first feminist play”
• Nora Helmer: “But our home has been nothing but a play-room. I’ve been your doll-wife, just as at home I was Papa’s doll-child…. It’s no good your forbidding me anything any longer… I believe that before anything else I’m a human being – just as much as you are.”
• Outrageous by standards of the time, led to “Nora Societies” across Europe, Asia
Paris Peace Conference
• Ended WWI – major effort at reorganizing the world
• League of Nations as first organization to address global problems /”self-determination”
First major conference where race was crucial
Equality?
• Japanese delegation introduced proposal of racial equality
• Woodrow Wilson thwarted effort (“Yellow Peril”)
Mixed Results
• Colonial system not questioned
• But: ILO founded, minority rights protected, peace became globally acknowledged priority, and connected to justice
• Moral language used in bizarre ways
Versailles
League of Nations
Fascism vs. Universalism
Late 1941
Atlantic Charter• Meeting btw Churchill and Roosevelt
off Newfoundland, August 1941
• Stated goals: self-determination, self-government, improved labor standards, economic advancement, social security, “freedom from want and fear”
• rallying point
• “Declaration by United Nations” – Jan 1, 1942 – signed by 26 nations against the Axis, including US, SU, GB, China, Canada, Cuba, New Zealand, South Africa
Also in January 1942 – the Wannsee Conference
Churchill and Equality • “Why be apologetic about
Anglo-Saxon superiority –we are superior”
• “I have not become the King’s First Minister to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire”
• Also consider: detention of Japanese-Americans
Dumbarton Oaks, Fall 1944• Meeting of representatives from
US, SU, Britain, China to prepare UN Charter
• strong role for security council
• Human rights not supposed to play major role -- worried about sovereignty
San Francisco, June 1945
• resistance of smaller powers – human rights had to be given prominent role in Charter after all
• NGOs played major role
Charter of the United Nations: Self-Determination and Human Rights
Article 1The Purposes of the United Nations are: (…)3. To achieve international cooperation in solving
international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion
Commission on Human Rights• Needed: “international Bill of Rights” acceptable to
members from different cultural backgrounds
• Started deliberating in Jan 1947
• Massive momentum: lots of debate, reactions, exchange
• For the first time ever, rights of individuals to be given a standing in international politics
Drafting…
• long-winded process, wrestling with formulations
• political struggling and serious philosophical inquiry, including poll of leading thinkers across the world
• more work of intellectuals than politicians
Chair: Eleanor Roosevelt
Unsung Hero and Drafter: John P. Humphrey, Canada
• Law professor at McGill
• UN functionary
• Major writer of the UDHR
Charles Malik, Lebanon
• Harvard philosophy PhD
• Professor, intellectual, diplomat, politician
René Cassin, France
• French judge, later on European Court of Human Rights
• Got Nobel Prize for work on UDHR in 68
Peng-Chun Chang, China
• Columbia PhD
• Chinese playwright, diplomat, “Renassiance man”
• “the East Asian voice on the commitee”
Read Declaration again!!
