The Universal Declaration of Human Rights just turned 75 and is more important than ever

By Michelle Bachelet, Allida Black, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

Eleanor Roosevelt holds a copy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1949

December 10th is the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and once again we are in the midst of a debate about whether it declares Western or universal values. Based on our experiences around the world, we believe strongly that the human rights enshrined in the Declaration are in fact truly universal. They belong to everyone, everywhere. And, an analysis of how the Declaration was created shows clearly that it arose from a global debate in the aftermath of the horrors of the Second World War as nations struggled to reconcile sovereignty with security and international law with human rights.

The world had never experienced trauma of that scale. Forty-five million civilians and fifteen million soldiers killed. Twenty-five million soldiers wounded, and forty-five million civilians injured. More than eleven million murdered and tortured in concentration camps. Fifty-plus million refugees jammed in camps across Europe. And atomic bombs devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

As the Secord World War drew to a close, the so-called “Great Powers” — the United States, the United Kingdom, China, and Russia — convened at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, DC, to design an international organization that would succeed where the League of Nations had failed. The delegates from those nations were focused solely on security not the values leaders had proclaimed they were defending and promoting throughout the war.

That omission was noted by others, and an effort led by Latin American nations, New Zealand, Greece, and India, as well as anti-colonial activists and women’s rights, civil rights, and religious organizations was organized to elevate attention to the values they thought should undergird postwar planning. They held regional conferences in Mexico City and Paris, convened global coalitions, drafted their own declarations of rights, and flooded the Great Powers with demands to revise their plans and build a United Nations as dedicated to securing human rights as it was to preventing war.

Yet by April 1945, as 850 delegates from fifty nations gathered in San Francisco to draft the UN Charter, human rights remained marginalized in all planning documents. Human rights advocates knew they would have to use every political and diplomatic tool at their disposal to refocus the conversation and to ensure that the UN and its Charter treated the security of individuals with the same respect afforded the security of nations.

Groups from Liberia and other West African nations, Ceylon, Burma, and Britain organized the All-Colonial People’s Conference to insist that the right to self-determination be recognized. Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, who had been excluded from the Indian delegation (and later would serve as India’s ambassador to the United States and president of the General Assembly) worked with other allies to force the creation of the Trusteeship Council. Denmark’s Bodil Begtrup worked with women from China, the Dominican Republic, Poland, Uruguay, and the United States to force the inclusion of women’s political and civil rights. A broad coalition of American NGOs insisted that the State Department lead the efforts to declare human rights a central “purpose” of the UN, require that all Member States accept their obligation to guarantee human rights, and include a specific reference to a human rights commission in the UN Charter.

While Americans lobbied their government, the large Latin American bloc circulated the proposals drafted after the Mexico City conference. Egypt, Paraguay, France, and South Africa proposed resolutions that specified human rights as one of the founding principles of the United Nations. Philippine General Carlos Romulo led a multi-nation coalition to urge that these rights apply “without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.”

Eventually, the advocates won the debate. Human rights would include political, civil, economic, social, and cultural rights. The UN Charter’s opening sentence reaffirmed “faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, to establish conditions under which justice and respect … can be maintained, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.”

But this was just the first step. How would human rights be defined and how would they be promoted and protected? The new UN Human Rights Commission was tasked with the job.

When the first General Assembly convened in January 1946, Security Council deliberations once again pushed human rights aside, but by February, debates over refugee resettlement seized center stage as Russia challenged the right of refugees to return home. The leaders of the American delegation had not focused on this crisis and turned to Eleanor Roosevelt, a member of the Commission, because of her familiarity with the issue. Her swift, polite dismantling of the Russian position not only increased her stature within the UN but also reminded the General Assembly of its mandate to draft a bill of human rights.

Deliberations began on a proposed bill of rights. Politics, however, rather than aspirations or expertise ruled the day. The Commission’s eighteen delegates, representing nations spread across the globe, did not agree on virtually anything

But human rights advocates pressed to create as comprehensive a document as possible. One-hundred-fifty of the world’s leading philosophers offered comments about what should be included.

Eleanor Roosevelt met with dozens of the advocates, read and circulated their proposals, and promoted many of their positions with the U.S. State Department and UN colleagues. As chair of the subcommittee charged with drafting the human rights protocols, she folded them into deliberations over language and intent.

Finding common ground quickly devolved into political and moral arguments requiring more than 3,000 hours of contentious debate. Did human rights come from God, natural law, or the authority of the state? Were human rights universal or dependent upon context and culture? Should the state give its people as much freedom as possible or intervene to assure certain rights? What rights constitute human rights? Were social and economic rights as important as political and civil rights?

Delegates from India, Uruguay, and the Philippines confronted Britain and France over self-determination. Panama and South Africa fiercely debated whether human rights were subject to international law. The US and the Soviet Union tangled over political freedom and economic security. Chilean Hernan Santacruz insisted that interdependence not only existed between persons but among countries. Hansha Mehta and Eleanor Roosevelt debated whether “men” included women or women should be specifically recognized in the Declaration. All debated how race-based discrimination should be addressed.

By December 1948, they agreed upon a Declaration that proclaimed thirty universal human rights and required all Member States and territories to promote, protect, and defend those rights. On December 10, the UN unanimously adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ‒ with eight Soviet bloc abstentions.

The world had agreed to freedom of speech, assembly, and religion and the right to education, food, shelter, national identity, work for pay, and travel. It declared torture, arbitrary detention, slavery, and involuntary servitude violations of human rights. All had the right to a fair trial, to seek asylum, and to marry. All shared the responsibility to build communities respectful of “free and full development” of one’s personality.

The world had stared fear in its face and presented a concrete vision grounded in hope and determination. The Declaration would influence more than ninety constitutions; be enshrined in multiple covenants; ratified by the Vienna World Conference on Human Rights; and inspire the Beijing Platform for Action and the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment.

Yet now, when the UDHR is perhaps more necessary than ever, many have succumbed to apathy or disdain. They have been persuaded to overlook the global effort it took to create this vision and to see instead it as Western-inspired propaganda unevenly applied or a tool to limit their aspirations.

It took monumental effort to create the Declaration. All knew it was aspirational but hoped that it could promote peace, improve lives, and combat discrimination. They put aside rivalries and compromised. Today, in the shadow of COVID, climate change, autocracy, and war, discrimination thrives, economies are uncertain, and trust in institutions erodes. Compromise is dismissed.

We must find our own courage to stand for the principles the Declaration enshrines and, like its drafters, commit to moving it forward rather than adhering to purity tests. We must realize that “human rights begin in small places close to home,” as Eleanor Roosevelt said, as well as the world outside our borders.

If we do, we combat the fear and doubt undermining peace, security, and progress and restore the hope and determination the world needs.

Michelle Bachelet is the former President of Chile. Allida Black is a historian at the University of Oxford. Hillary Rodham Clinton is the former U.S. Secretary of State. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is the former President of Liberia.