Human Rights Are Universal Hillary Clinton

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https://medium.com/@HillaryClinton/human-rights-are-universal-c628f3d797d5

Human Rights Are Universal
Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton

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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.
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