Never Again? The United Nations and Human Rights

"Never again"

In 1945, the world had just seen two world wars in thirty years and the Holocaust. Leaders of the victorious Allies agreed that the world needed a stronger organization than the League of Nations, and rules that would protect people from their own governments. That was a revolutionary idea: until then, how a state treated its own citizens was mostly considered its own business.

The United Nations

Delegates from 50 countries met in San Francisco in 1945 to write the Charter of the United Nations, signed on June 26, 1945. The UN officially came into existence on October 24, 1945, now marked as UN Day. Its main goals: keep international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, promote human rights, and solve economic and social problems through cooperation.

The Security Council has five permanent members with a veto: the United States, the Soviet Union (Russia since 1991), Britain, France and China (represented by the Republic of China government on Taiwan until 1971, then by the People's Republic). During the Cold War, vetoes often paralyzed the Council. The UN grew as colonies became independent: from 51 founding members to 193 members today.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)

The UN Commission on Human Rights, chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, drafted a declaration of rights for all people. A team from many traditions shaped it:

• John Peters Humphrey, a Canadian law professor from McGill University who directed the UN's human rights division, wrote the first draft.
• René Cassin of France helped shape its structure.
• P. C. Chang of China and Charles Malik of Lebanon debated its philosophy, Chang drawing on Confucian ideas.
• Hansa Mehta of India argued successfully for changing the wording "All men are born free and equal" to "All human beings".

The General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) on December 10, 1948 (now Human Rights Day), with 48 votes in favour, none against and 8 abstentions. Article 1 states: "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood."

The UDHR's 30 articles include civil and political rights (life, liberty, a fair trial, freedom of expression and religion, the right to vote) and economic, social and cultural rights (work, education, social security, an adequate standard of living). It is a declaration, not a treaty, so it is not legally binding by itself. But it inspired dozens of later treaties and constitutions, and Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982).

Movements for rights

Declarations do not change lives by themselves. People organized to make rights real.

• India: Mohandas Gandhi developed satyagraha ("truth force"), mass nonviolent resistance. In the Salt March of 1930 he walked about 385 km to the sea to make salt in defiance of British law. His methods inspired movements worldwide.
• The United States: Black Americans organized against segregation and disenfranchisement. The Supreme Court ruled school segregation unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). When Rosa Parks was arrested on December 1, 1955, for refusing to give up her bus seat, Black residents of Montgomery, Alabama, boycotted the buses for more than a year. Martin Luther King Jr., inspired partly by Gandhi, became the movement's best-known leader; at the 1963 March on Washington he spoke of his dream that his children would "not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." Activists such as Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer and the student sit-in movement were just as important. The Civil Rights Act (1964) and Voting Rights Act (1965) followed. King was assassinated in 1968.
• Human rights organizations: Amnesty International, founded in London in 1961, campaigned for "prisoners of conscience" jailed for their beliefs. Groups such as Human Rights Watch later documented abuses worldwide.
• Behind the Iron Curtain: the Helsinki Accords (1975) committed Soviet-bloc states to respect human rights. Dissidents such as the physicist Andrei Sakharov used that promise to expose abuses. In Poland, the independent trade union Solidarity (1980), led by Lech Wałęsa, grew to about 10 million members.
• LGBTQ rights: the Stonewall uprising in New York (June 1969) is often seen as a starting point of the modern gay rights movement. In 2001 the Netherlands became the first country to allow same-sex marriage; Canada followed nationally in 2005.
• Disability rights: activists' slogan "Nothing about us without us" shaped the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006).

Women's rights, Indigenous rights and the anti-apartheid struggle have their own lessons in this unit.