Universal Declaration On Human Rights: Structure, Development And Adoption
Today, human rights seem like a natural aspect of humanity's existence. Possibly one of the most bipartisan issues in the world, the human rights concept is almost universally perceived as a power for justice and improvement of life for all. However, the contemporary level of embeddedness of human rights ideology into the global political and cultural discourse was created not so long ago. The United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDH) was adopted in 1948 and has served a framework for any further legislative process and public discussion in almost every country of the world. Although the idea of human rights may seem ordinary and universally supported today, that was not the case during the work on the text of the Declaration.
The entire idea of subjecting multiple ethical and religious worldviews and political contexts to a single secular doctrine seemed extremely challenging at the time and, as the research showed, required multiple negotiations and non-governmental actors from around the political spectrum. Moreover, while the negotiations around the final text of the Declaration went through multiple disagreements, with some of the states eventually refusing to support the UDH, it was through the flexibility of the language used in the Declaration and extraordinary diplomatic effort that the UDH was eventually adopted, serving as one of the greatest international documents of the modern human history. The context and structure of UDHThere are numerous myths about a single trigger that started the internationally supported idea of human rights bill and reinforced its further negotiation process: the Nazi crimes during the Second World War, the Four Freedoms speech of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the desire of the hegemonic West to dictate its ideological framework to the rest of the world, etc (Waltz 2002). However, the most precise answer to the question of forces behind the UDH might be that multiple factors have led to such a concept and its application in 1948. It is true that the horrors of the Nazi regime and the speech by Roosevelt were among the factors, yet the concept of human rights was not new for the human civilization (Waltz 2002). For example, it was since Napoleon Wars that Europe started to justify international interventions 'in the name of humanitarian ideals and civilization' (Mazower 2004, p. 381).
Therefore, it was probably that the post-War political context was perfect for the emergence of UDH, without a leading factor. With the establishment of UN, with relatively calm state of the Cold War, and with multiple states and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) supporting the mission - that world had to come up with a sort of agreement that the Declaration eventually became (Waltz 2001). As a result, in 1946, a year after the establishment of the UN, the UN Committee on Human Rights began its work on one of the most influential international documents of the modern era. The Declaration consists of a Preamble and 30 Articles, divided thematically into several blocks. The draft of such structure was developed by a French member of the Commission Rene Cassin. The enormous ambition of the Declaration could be seen in the Preamble that frames the document as: A common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society… shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms (UN General Assembly 1948). The Preamble of the Declaration explains the fourth basic principles of human rights (dignity, equality, liberty, and brotherhood), which are reestablished in the first three articles (Peters 2015). Articles three to eleven are concerned with the ideas of life, liberty, and personal society, followed by Articles twelve to seventeen that outline the individual rights in civil society. Furthermore, Articles eighteen to twenty-one refer to 'rights in the polity,' while Articles twenty-two to twenty-seven reassure 'economic, social, and cultural rights' (Peters 2015, p. 112).
Finally, the last three Articles set the duties, limits, and the desired order that the Declaration envisions. Although this structure may seem logical and obvious for us, the following generations, the formation and negotiation process that followed the creation of each word in the Declaration was extremely complex, as it had to include cultural and philosophical perspectives of non-Western part of the world and satisfy each of the multiple participants.
The Process of the UDH Development
The development of such a powerful international document was a lengthy way that had various issues and points of breaking through. Johannes Morsink (2009) highlighted seven separate stages of the UDH drafting process. First, it was the First Session of the UN Commission on Human Rights that took place in January-February 1947 (Morsink 2009, p. 4). The second stage involved the Session of the freshly created Drafting Committee. Following that event were two more Sessions of the Committee and one more Session of the Drafting Committee. Finally, the Third Session of the UN General Assembly and the following Plenary Session of the Assembly where the Declaration was adopted (Morsink 2009, p. 4).
The path toward eventual consensus was full of disagreements. At the first Drafting Committee meeting, which included Australia's Humphrey, USA's Roosevelt, Lebanon's Malik, and China's Chang, the controversies began instantly. As Humphrey recalled in his memoirs, Chang argued that Malik had to spend some time studying Confucian ethics to be able to at least include non-Western perspective into the document (Humphrey 1983). After the protests from the USSR, the Drafting Committee was enlarged to eight members, including representatives from Australia, USSR, UK, France, and Chile (Morsink 2009). This group created the first draft that was used more as a guideline than as a complete document. The UK proposed their own version of the document that had the structure of a law, while Humphrey's version looked more like a set of principles and proclamations. As Roosevelt recalled, the US and Malik supported the idea of a Declaration, while the British allies insisted the document needed to have a Convention form.
As USSR's representative Bogomolov later wrote to his boss Molotov that the Soviets, on the other hand, 'preferred neither' (Glendon 2001, p. 86). The USSR was protesting any possibility of the international community to interfere with its internal affairs, in other words. The further process of development included multiple actors. Although the most famous creators of the document include Roosevelt, Humphrey, Malik, and other key figures, each member of the committee had a right to consult with any organization or individual during the work on the document (Waltz 2001). The preparation included proposals by 'the governments of Chile, Cuba, Panama, India and the United States' and 'provisions in the national constitutions of some fifty-five countries' (Johnson 1998, p. 35). Furthermore, many NGOs also participated in the process, making sure that governmental representatives did not ignore their areas of work. Although most of these NGOs were American, they had completely different areas of focus. American Federation of Labor, Catholic International Union for Social Service, Coordinating Board of Jewish Organization, International Committee of the Red Cross, International Union of Catholic Women's League, International Federation of Business and Professional Women, etc (Morsnik 2009, p. 9). All these organizations, although they did not participate in the Commission meetings or Assembly voting, contributed to the gender, religious, economic, and other spheres of individual rights that might have been ignored otherwise.
Finally, smaller states were also quite active during the work on the Declaration. Although the UN's declaration is widely thought of as the result of Great Powers' consensus, smaller states were 'active witnesses' of the process as they proposed corrections and constituted the voting majority of the UM Assembly (Waltz 2002, p. 31). Taking into account the number of states and organizations involved, the adoption of the UDH in 1948 can be considered a miracle. The victory of idealistic principles over the international web of bureaucracy was indeed quick and almost definitive. However, many obstacles and disagreements needed to be addressed within the negotiation process before submitting the document for the Assembly's vote.
Problematic points of the UDH negotiation process
The troubles in finding the consensus began even before the delegates started to formulate specific principles and rights. The entire worldview perspectives of some states seemed too distant to stimulate any dialogue. China criticized the attempts of the US, the UK, France, and Australia to create the document because they ignored the non-Western ideologies and based their assumptions on Western philosophical heritage (Humphrey 1983).
Moreover, another ideological conflict included the contrasting priorities of two opposing frameworks: Liberalism and Marxism. The USSR, the main contemporary protégé of Marxist ideas on the global political arena, debated the appropriateness of the entire idea of 'individual' rights, claiming that such formulation was only a part of Western capitalist individualism. Instead, the USSR proposed to create a doctrine that would have been based on 'societal needs and rights' (Johnson 1998, p. 43). Furthermore, there was a growing disagreement on the secular and religious fundament of the Declaration. The drafts referred to human rights using the positivist framework and claiming that each person is born an equal being deserving the same set of rights. Such positioning of the issue did not satisfy both Christian and non-Christian states. Countries like the Netherlands argued that the document should contain the reference to a deity, otherwise the Commission would risk 'building a house and forgetting a foundation' (Johnson 1998, p. 43).
At the same time, non-Western states blamed the West for using Christian framework and neglecting the secular or even religion-specific details in the document. However, the disputes became even more dramatic when specific controversial rights were discussed. Although the issues began from Article 1, many of them were resolved by using the language of tolerance and adjusting the terminology of the document in order to make the Declaration as culturally inclusive as possible. However, some articles turned out incredibly controversial and had a complex negotiation process behind their approval, while still attracting debates in the UN, 70 years after the adoption of the Declaration. Marriage was one of those controversial rights.
According to Article 16, men and women 'without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family' (UN General Assembly 1948). Such a notion contradicted many cultural norms and even laws, including the US anti-mixed-race legislation. Moreover, the notion that men and women are 'entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution' provoked further protests, reinforced by the third section that marriage 'is entitled to protection by society and the state' (UN General Assembly 1948). Saudi Arabia was one of eight countries that abstained from voting during the UDH adoption partly because of the sixteenth Article, as Arabian norms included a different system that 'successfully survived some fourteen centuries' (Johnson 1998, p. 52).
Furthermore, the topic of religion caused even more electrified discussion and disagreement. Eventually, Article 18 of the UDH guarantees individual 'freedom… of religion,' yet such inclusion caused abstention of Saudi Arabia. For many Middle Eastern countries, changing one's religion was not acceptable, and the eighteenth article put that dogmatic norm in danger. Moreover, many of the Christian religious organizations thought that a simple freedom to worship was not enough, proposing to include the freedom to manifest one's beliefs and include a social component to religious freedom concept (Johnson 1998, p. 54). Still, the provision was kept as simple and concise to avoid further controversies- a decision that cost the UN Saudi Arabia's vote in favor of the Declaration. Another poorly resolved issue was the individual right for property ownership, highlighted in Article 17. The USSR, along with other socialist states, protested this idea, proposing to make a state-specific provision and to 'prohibit 'illegal' rather than 'arbitrary' deprivation of property' (Johnson 1998, p. 54). Still, the majority of the Commission decided that further complication of rather concise and abbreviated formulation used for the Article might cause even deeper disagreements and eventually the provision was kept without any amendments. This move was also one of the reasons behind the Communist Bloc's decision to abstain from voting on December 10, 1948. Articles 22 to 26 guarantee the rights to 'social security, to work, to rest and leisure, to an adequate standard of living, health care, food, clothing, housing,' and concerning other social and economic issues (Johnson 1998, p. 54). These concepts were so differently embedded into the political ideology of each state that even the Third Committee at first failed to approve any of the 'social' articles. The notions of 22-26 Articles seemed so 'communist' to the US representatives that Dulles, the UN representative of the US, reassured several times whether any of these articles were 'legally binding,' fearing national outrage in case if he agreed to such non-American ideas (Mazower 2004, p. 391). In the end, the language of 'the right to work' was decided as the most compelling and non-controversial, satisfying most capitalist countries and the Communist Bloc. Despite the fact that the US 'cast the lone negative vote' while deciding the Articles' fate during the Third Committee, the Article was still adopted (Johnson 1998, p. 55). However, the language of the work-related and social Articles was still not strong enough for the USSR, causing multiple conflicts.
Moreover, the USSR proposed to go one step further in the condemnation of fascism and take the right for freedom for expression from fascist ideologies. Such exclusive attention to fascism was never supported by non-Communist states and contributed to the six abstained votes by the Soviet bloc.
Adopting the UDHR
Despite the hurry, the lack of complete consensus between all of the participants, the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights was adopted on December 10, 1948. Even on December 9, during the last preparations and negotiations of the Declaration, Eleanor Roosevelt gave a speech in front of the Assembly, claiming that the recent amendments proposed by the Soviets almost entirely resembled their previous propositions that had been rejected by the Committee (Roosevelt 1948). Therefore, Roosevelt continued, 'in the older democracies we have learned that sometimes we bow to the will of the majority,' concluding that the amendments would not be included into the final text of the Declaration (1948, p 1). As a result, the Soviet bloc and its allies stressed out that they would not vote for the Declaration in its current form. Saudi Arabia was another state that refused to support the UDH, despite the fact that all other Muslim countries of the Middle East agreed to the text of the Declaration.
Finally, South Africa was the last state to refuse to agree to the UDH, claiming that it had gone too far. Of course, for the country that still had white superiority as a part of its Constitution, the idea of equal rights to all people regardless of their racial background seemed a step too bold. Therefore, although there were some arguments within the pro-declaration majority, it seemed that postponing the vote for the Declaration would make it stuck in a swamp of international bureaucracy and give more options for the Soviet bloc to provoke further disagreements.
Although many representatives were skeptical about the great potential implications of the Declaration and the effect that it might have on their state's sovereignty, the members of the Committee were optimistic and convincing enough to instill the support of the Assembly's majority. As a result, 48 of 58 ten-members of the UN supported the Declaration, with 8 states mentioned above abstaining and two more states - Honduras and Yemen - not voting at all. That support was enough to adopt one of the most influential and famous international declaration of the last century.
Conclusion
Given how many factors led to the idea of international document that would guarantee global population with a fixed set of rights, it seems logical now that the UDH was eventually adopted in 1948.
However, after giving a closer look to the process of development of the text, its negotiation and further disagreements, it seems that the people involved did a tremendous amount of work in only two years in order to make it happen. Not only the famous figures like Roosevelt, Malik, Humphrey, Cassin, and Chang need to be praised for this accomplishment, but also participants from smaller states, individual contributors, and hundreds of NGOs that made sure that one of the most fundamental global declaration included each social issue. Although fields of human rights like marriage, religion, property ownership, work, and socioeconomic securities divided the Commission members and cost the Assembly eight abstained votes, the authors of the Declaration managed to create a document that united the variety of religious, philosophical, cultural, and ideological worldviews and made history on December 10, 1948. Needless to say, the impact of the UDH has already been impressive. Still, 70 years after the adoption of the Declaration, it might still be too early to speak about the larger scope of the influence that the UDH has on the course of the
