Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in its Resolution 217 A (III), on 10 of December 1948 in Paris, which includes in its 30 articles the human rights considered basic. Due to the lack of international consensus that existed at that time on the obligation to protect and respect human rights, the document failed to be formalized as an international treaty, binding on the signatory States, and was limited to a declaration, which was taken as a guiding ideal for humanity.

Three decades later, a sufficient international consensus was reached to establish the obligation for States to protect human rights, when the International Covenants on Human Rights entered into force, which, together with their optional protocols and the UDHR, comprise what is has been called the International Bill of Human Rights.

To date there are nine treaties that make up the basic body of international human rights instruments: civil and political, economic and social rights, against racism, against discrimination against women, against torture, children's rights, migrant workers, against forced disappearance and rights of people with disabilities.

History of the evolution of human rights

In the slow historical evolution of rights, it is from the 17th century when explicit declarations based on the contemporary idea of “natural law” begin to be contemplated. England incorporated the Habeas Corpus Act (Habeas Corpus Law) into its constitution in 1679 and the Bill of Rights (Declaration of Rights) in 1689. In France, as a consequence of the French Revolution, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

In 1927, the 1926 Slavery Convention came into force, prohibiting slavery in all its forms. The so-called "Malines Codes" covering international morality (1937), social relations (1927), family relations (1951) and the Code of Political Morals (1957), are partial attempts of the public conscience to regulate a minimum security of respect for the individual, habitually ignored by the States. As a consequence of the First World War, the League of Nations promoted the Geneva Conventions on security, respect and minimum rights of prisoners of war, and in 1948 after the Second World War, the General Assembly of the United Nations approved the document entitled " Universal Declaration of Human Rights”, set of norms and principles, guarantee of the person before the public authorities.

Elaboration process

Under article 68 of the Charter of the United Nations, the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations established the Commission on Human Rights. This body, made up of eighteen representatives of UN member states, was entrusted with the development of a series of instruments for the defense of human rights. Within the Commission, a committee made up of eight members was created, which would be Eleanor Roosevelt (United States), René Cassin (France), Charles Malik (Lebanon), Peng Chun Chang (China), Hernán Santa Cruz (Chile), Alexander E. Bogomolov/Alexei P. Pavlov (Soviet Union), Lord Dukeston/Geoffrey Wilson (United Kingdom) and William Roy Hodgson (Australia). Also of special relevance was the intervention of John Peters Humphrey, from Canada, director of the UN Human Rights Division.

The draft Declaration was put to a vote on December 10, 1948 in Paris, and was approved by what were then the 58 Member States of the UN General Assembly, with 48 votes in favor and 8 abstentions. from the Soviet Union, Eastern European countries, Saudi Arabia and South Africa. In addition, two other member countries were not present for the vote.

The South African abstention can be seen as an attempt to protect its system of apartheid, which clearly violated several principles of the declaration. The abstention of the Saudi delegation was mainly due to its disagreement with two articles: 16 (marriage without discrimination and with the consent of the spouses) and 18 (right to change religion). The abstentions of the communist nations centered on the fact that the declaration did not specifically condemn fascism and Nazism. However, Eleanor Roosevelt attributed said abstention to non-conformity with article 13 (right to leave the country freely).

This is how the vote went:

• In favour (48): Afghanistan, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Burma, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Ethiopia, France, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, the Netherlands, India, Iraq, Iran, Iceland, Lebanon, Liberia, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, United Kingdom, Turkey

• Abstaining (8): Saudi Arabia, Belarus, Czechoslovakia, Poland, South Africa, Ukraine, Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.

• Absent (2): Honduras and Yemen.
• Against: None

Structure and contents

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was written by representatives from all over the world, with the purpose of being a common ideal for all peoples and nations. In its content it establishes the fundamental rights that must be preserved around the world, it is made up of a preamble and 30 articles, which include rights of a civil, political, social, economic and cultural nature.

Preamble

The preamble, as an expository part that precedes a legal document, also called explanatory statement, is presented as an interpretative and synthesis source of the declaration, thus stating its intentions, analyzing and interpreting it.

In its content they present the considerations that are taken into account for its elaboration, mentioning: the recognition of intrinsic dignity, equal and inalienable rights, the promotion of the development of friendly relations between nations, the fundamental rights of man, which include the dignity and value of the human person and the equal rights of men and women; and universal and effective respect for fundamental human rights and freedoms. Under these considerations, this Universal Declaration of Human Rights is proclaimed as an exemplary model for all nations, in order to promote, through teaching and education, respect for these rights and freedoms; and that its recognition and effective application be ensured.

Article 1

The celebrated motto of the French Revolution inspired the first article of the DUDH.

This article clarifies that the equality of human beings refers to dignity and rights. "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights and, endowed as they are with reason and conscience, must behave towards one another in a brotherly manner."

Article 2

“Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or any other condition. In addition, no distinction will be made based on the political, legal or international status of the country or territory under whose jurisdiction a person depends, whether it is an independent country, a territory under fiduciary administration, non-autonomous or subject to any another limitation of sovereignty.”

Articles 3 to 27

Articles 3 to 11 include personal rights;

They establish fundamental rights of individuals: the right to life, liberty and security (Art. 3); right to recognition of their legal personality (Art. 6); right to equal protection before the law (Art. 7); right to effective recourse before competent courts (Art. 8); right to be heard publicly and fairly before the court, under conditions of full equality (Art.10); right to the presumption of innocence (Art. 11).

Exclusions that seek human rights are proposed: no one will be subjected to slavery (Art. 4); no one will be subjected to torture or cruel punishment or treatment (Art. 5); no one may be arbitrarily detained, imprisoned or exiled (Art. 9); no one will be sentenced for acts or omissions that at the time they were committed were not criminal under national or international law; Nor will a heavier penalty be imposed than the one applicable at the time the crime was committed (Art. 11).

Articles 12 to 17 include individual rights in relation to the community;

Right to move freely and to choose their residence in the territory of a State, right to leave any country, including their own, and to return to their country (Art. 13); right to seek asylum and enjoy it, in case of persecution (Art. 14); right to nationality (Art. 15); right, without making any restrictions, to marry and found a family (Art. 16); right to property individually and collectively (Art. 17).

Articles 18 to 21 encompass the rights of thought, conscience, religion and political freedoms;

“Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; This right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.” (Art.18).

“Every individual has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; This right includes the right not to be bothered because of his opinions, to investigate and receive information and opinions, and to disseminate them, without limiting borders, by any means of expression” (Art.19).

On the other hand, articles 22 to 27 deal with economic, social and cultural rights;

“Everyone has the right to an adequate standard of living that ensures their health, well-being and especially food, clothing, housing, medical assistance and the necessary social services, as well as their family; He also has the right to insurance in case of unemployment, illness, disability, widowhood, old age or other cases of loss of his means of subsistence due to circumstances beyond his control. (Art. 25, 1).

“Everyone has the right to education. Education must be free, at least as far as elementary and fundamental instruction is concerned. Elementary instruction will be compulsory. Technical and professional instruction will have to be generalized; access to higher education will be equal for all, based on the respective merits (Art. 26.1).”

This last part of the letter, which are articles 28 to 30, addresses the conditions and limits with which all rights must be exercised, for example:

"Everyone has the right to establish a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms proclaimed in this declaration are fully effective" (Art. 28).

Memorial to the 5 years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Importance of the Statement

Although it is not an obligatory or binding document for States, it served as the basis for the creation of the two international conventions of the UN, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, agreements that were adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in its resolution 2200 A (XXI), of December 16, 1966. It continues to be widely cited by university professors, defense lawyers and by constitutional courts. Likewise, the text acquires constitutional rank in some countries, as is the case of Argentina:

Adopt or discard treaties concluded with other nations and with international organizations and concordats with the Holy See. Treaties and concordats have a higher hierarchy than laws.

The American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man; the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; (...); under the conditions of its validity, they have constitutional hierarchy, they do not derogate from any article of the first part of this Constitution and must be considered complementary to the rights and guarantees recognized by it. They may only be denounced, if any, by the National Executive, after the approval of two thirds of the entire membership of each House.

The other human rights treaties and conventions, after being approved by Congress, will require the vote of two thirds of the entire membership of each House to enjoy the constitutional hierarchy.

Rule 75paragraph 22 of the Constitution of the Argentine Nation (1994)

The Spanish Constitution of 1978 also recognizes the Declaration:

The norms relating to fundamental rights and freedoms recognized by the Constitution shall be interpreted in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international treaties and agreements on matters ratified by Spain

Article 10paragraph 2, of the Spanish Constitution (1978)

Internationalist lawyers continually debate which of its provisions can be said to constitute customary international law. Opinions vary widely on this, ranging from a few stipulations to the entire document.

According to the Guinness Book of Records, the "UDHR" it is the document translated into the most languages in the world (in 2004 it had been translated into more than 330 languages).

21st Century Human Rights: The Universal Declaration of Emerging Human Rights

The Universal Declaration of Emerging Human Rights (UDHE) arises from a process of dialogue between various components of civil society, organized by the Human Rights Institute of Catalonia within the framework of the Universal Forum of Cultures Barcelona 2004, entitled Human Rights, Emerging Needs and New Commitments. On November 2, 2007, within the framework of the Monterrey Forum (Mexico), the DUDHE was approved.

The emerging human rights represent a new conception of civil society participation, giving voice to national and international organizations and groups that have traditionally had little or no weight in shaping legal norms, such as NGOs, social movements and cities, facing the social, political and technological challenges posed by globalization and the global society. The DUDHE does not intend to replace or remove the validity of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, nor the national or international instruments for the protection of human rights, rather it intends to update, complement, respond to the challenges of global society and act as complement from the point of view of participatory citizenship.

We, citizens and citizens of the world, members of civil society committed to human rights, forming part of the universal political community, gathered on the occasion of the Universal Forum of Cultures in Barcelona 2004 and Monterrey 2007, and inspired by the values of respect for the dignity of the human being, freedom, justice, equality and solidarity, and the right to an existence that allows to develop uniform standards of well-being and quality of life for all [... ]

Preamble of the Universal Declaration of Emerging Human Rights

Reactions

Praise and support

The Universal Declaration has received praise from a number of notable activists, legal scholars, and political leaders. The Lebanese philosopher and diplomat Charles Malik called it "an international document of the first order," while Eleanor Roosevelt—the first president of the Commission on Human Rights (HRC) who helped draft the Declaration—said that "might well become the international Magna Carta of all men throughout the world" At the 1993 UN World Conference on Human Rights, one of the largest international gatherings on human rights, diplomats and Officials representing 100 nations reaffirmed the "commitment of their governments to the purposes and principles contained in the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights" and highlighted the Declaration as a "source of inspiration and has been the basis for the United Nations to make progress in the establishment of norms contained in existing international human rights instruments. " In a speech delivered on October 5, 1995, Pope John Paul II called the Declaration "one of the highest expressions of human conscience of our time," despite the fact that the Vatican never adopted it. In a statement made on December 10, 2003 on behalf of the European Union, Marcello Spatafora said that the Declaration "places human rights at the center of the framework of principles and obligations that make up the relations in the international community".

As a pillar of international human rights, the UDHR enjoys broad support among international and non-governmental organizations. The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), one of the oldest human rights organizations, has as its fundamental mandate the promotion of respect for all the rights established in the Declaration, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Amnesty International, the third oldest international human rights organization, has regularly observed Human Rights Day and organized events around the world to raise awareness of and support the UDHR. Some organizations, such as the Quaker United Nations Office, the American Friends Service Committee, and Youth for Human Rights International (YHRI) have developed curricula or programs to educate young people about the UDHR.

Specific provisions are cited or elaborated by interest in relation to their specific area of interest. In 1997, the American Library Association (ALA) council endorsed articles 18 to 20 relating to freedom of thought, opinion, and expression, which were codified in the ALA's Universal Right to Free Expression and in the Charter of Library Rights. The Declaration formed the basis of the ALA's claim that censorship, invasion of privacy, and interference with opinion are violations of human rights.

Criticism

Islamic countries

Map of distribution of Islam in the world

The map shows the percentage of Muslim population in each nation, worldwide. The gray color for a nation means that almost zero percent of that nation's population is Muslim.

Most Muslim-majority countries then members of the UN signed the Declaration in 1948, including Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, and Syria; Turkey, which had an overwhelmingly Muslim population but an officially secular government, also voted in favour. Saudi Arabia was the only Muslim nation to abstain from the Declaration, claiming it violated Sharia. Pakistan, officially an Islamic state, signed the statement and criticized the Saudi stance, arguing strongly in favor of including freedom of religion.

In addition, some Muslim diplomats would later help draft other UN human rights treaties. For example, the insistence of Iraq's representative to the UN, Bedia Afnan, on wording that recognized gender equality led to Article 3 within the ICCPR and ICESCR, which, together with the UDHR, form the International Bill of Rights. Pakistani diplomat Shaista Suhrawardy Ikramullah was influential in drafting the Declaration, especially with regard to women's rights, and she played a role in preparing the 1951 Genocide Convention.

In 1982, Iran's representative to the United Nations, representing the country's newly installed Islamic republic, said the Declaration was "a secular interpretation of the Judeo-Christian tradition" that it could not be applied by Muslims without conflicting with sharia.

On June 30, 2000, the member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which represents most of the Muslim world, officially resolved to support the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, a document alternative which says that people have 'freedom and the right to a dignified life according to the Islamic Shari'ah', without any discrimination based on 'race, colour, language, sex, religious beliefs, political affiliation, social status or other considerations". The Cairo Declaration is widely recognized as a response to the UDHR, and uses similar universalist language, though derived solely from Islamic jurisprudence.

Regarding the promulgation of the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, T. Jeremy Gunn, Professor of Law and Political Science at the International University of Rabat in Morocco, has stated:

The League of Arab States (Arab League) of twenty-two members, each of whom also belongs to the OIC and is mostly Muslim, created its own human rights instruments and institutions (based in Cairo) that differentiate it from the international human rights regime. Although the term "Arab" denotes an ethnicity and "Muslim" refers to a religion, all Arab majority countries are also Muslim-majority countries, although the opposite is not true. In fact, the predominance of the Muslim majority countries is not Arabic. It has long been recognized that the Arab world of Muslim majority has a particularly poor place in terms of human rights. According to the Arab Human Development Report 2009, drafted by Arab experts for the United Nations Development Programme Regional Office for Arab States. Regional Office for Arab States, "Arab States seem happy to ratify some international human rights treaties, but they do not recognize the role of international mechanisms to realize human rights." [...] Resistance to the implementation of international human rights standards in some parts of the Muslim and Arab world is perhaps more noticeable to the panoply of rights related to religion. With regard to DUDH, the core of resistance focuses on issues such as the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion (art. 18), the prohibition of discrimination on the basis of religion (art. 2) and the prohibition of discrimination against women (preamble, art. 2, art. 16). The same resistance to universal norms, already present in the DUDH, continued in subsequent human rights elaborations, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief in 1981.

Several scholars from different fields have expressed concern about the Declaration's alleged Western world bias. Abdulaziz Sachedina notes that Muslims generally agree with the Declaration's universalist premise, which is shared by Islam, but they differ regarding the specific contents, which many consider "insensitive to particular Muslim cultural values, especially when it comes to speaking of individual rights in the context of the collective and family values of Muslim society". However, he notes that most Muslim scholars, while opposed to the document's inherently secular framework, respect and acknowledge some of its 'fundamentals'. Sachedina adds that many Christians equally criticize the Declaration for reflecting a secular and liberal bias in opposition to certain religious values.

"The right to refuse to kill"

Groups such as Amnesty International and War Resisters International have advocated adding "The right to refuse to kill" to the Universal Declaration, as has Seán MacBride, former United Nations Secretary-General and awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. War Resisters' International has stated that the right to Conscientious Objection to military service derives primarily from Article 18 of the UDHR, which preserves the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. Within the UN, some steps have been taken to make this right more explicit, and the Human Rights Council has repeatedly affirmed that article 18 enshrines "the right of every person to conscientious objection to military service as a legitimate exercise of the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion".

American Anthropological Association

The American Anthropological Association criticized the UDHR during its drafting process, warning that its definition of universal rights reflected a paradigm of Western Culture that was unfair to non-Western nations. Furthermore, they argued that the West's history of colonialism and evangelicalism made it a problematic moral proxy for the rest of the world. They proposed three notes for your consideration with underlying themes of cultural relativism:

1. The individual realizes his personality through his culture, hence respect for individual differences entails respect for cultural differences.
2. Respect for differences between cultures is validated by the scientific fact that no qualitative assessment technique of cultures has been discovered.
3. The norms and values are related to the culture of which they derive, so that any attempt to formulate postulates arising from the beliefs or moral codes of a culture must, to that extent, subtract applicability to any Declaration of Human Rights to humanity as a whole.

Bangkok Declaration

During the preparations for the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights, ministers from several Asian states adopted the Bangkok Declaration, reaffirming their governments' commitment to the principles of the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They declared their opinion on the interdependence and indivisibility of human rights and stressed the need for universality, objectivity and non-selectivity of human rights. However, at the same time, they stressed the principles of sovereignty and non-interference, and called for greater emphasis on economic, social and cultural rights, in particular the right to economic development, establishing guidelines for international collaboration between the signatories. The Bangkok Declaration is considered a landmark expression of Asian values regarding human rights, offering a broad critique of the universalism of human rights.

Sixtieth anniversary of the Declaration

December 10, 2008 marked the sixty years since the approval of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. On that day, the General Assembly of the United Nations declared the following year, 2009, the International Year of Learning about Human Rights, because, after an analysis of the real situation in the world, it became aware that the realization of the Declaration had flaws that could be reduced through learning and education.

For this anniversary of the Declaration, commemorative 2-euro coins from Belgium, Italy, Finland and Portugal were minted.