The Un Commission On Human Rights

Howard Tolley Jr

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780367296865
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000306668
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Derechos humanos

In 1946, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights became the first international body empowered to promote global human rights. During its first twenty years, the Commission established most of the contemporary standards of human rights. Increased social awareness in the 1960s enabled the Commission to respond to specific complaints from individuals and nongovernmental organizations and to pressure offending governments by using various measures that ranged from exhortation and mediation to sanctions designed to isolate violators. These enforcement activities have increased the Commission's visibility and have dramatically transformed its operation. Dr. Tolley's thematic history of the Commission offers important insights into states' political conduct in international human rights organizations, the evolving legal and institutional means of preventing human rights violations, and the difficulties encountered when an intergovernmental body is pressed to provide impartial protection to citizens against abuse by their own government.

1
The Commission's Genesis

The 1940s proponents of a United Nations Commission on Human Rights sought to improve on a framework of pre-war international law and organization that proved unable to prevent the Nazi holocaust. This introductory chapter describes and explains the Commission's precursors, founders, origins, and initial mandate.

Forerunners

Centuries of Western reforms advancing individual rights at the national level preceded the first international human rights initiatives.¹ The English Magna Carta and Bill of Rights, the United States Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen all contributed to the Western tradition of individual civil and political rights. Shamed by their own violations of these rights in Africa, Europeans convened meetings and drafted conventions to suppress the slave trade.² Mistreatment of Christians in Turkey, pogroms against Jews in Russia, and violations of religious liberties in Spain generated increasing pressure for humanitarian intervention and improved forms of international protection.³ European wars produced the most important efforts to safeguard individual rights. Following the Napoleonic ware, the Treaty of Vienna guaranteed religious liberties and civil rights for citizens of the projected union between Belgium and Holland. In 1878 The Treaty of Berlin recognized the rights of certain minorities.⁴ Various Geneva Conventions adopted after 1863 authorized the Red Cross to provide humanitarian relief to combatants and civilians during war.

The 1919 Versailles Treaty concluding World War I created the first permanent mechanisms for international supervision of human rights violations. The 1919 Treaty established a mandates system for governing territories taken from the German and Ottoman Empires. Administering powers accepted, as a "sacred trust," responsibility for the well-being and development of subject peoples. Individuals both within and without the trust territories could petition the League Council to redress grievances through a Permanent Mandates Commission. For the first time some nation states became regularly accountable for an international body for mistreatment of individuals subject to their rule.⁵ The Treaty also established the International Labour Organization (ILO), a tripartite body of government, employer, and worker representatives. The ELO was empowered to draft conventions protecting specific worker rights, such as minimum age and maximum hours, for implementation by the permanent staff of The International Labour Office.⁶ Under Treaty provisions comprising the League of Nations Covenant states promised "to endeavor to secure and maintain fair and humane conditions of labor for men, women and children."⁷

A series of postwar "minorities treaties" provided comprehensive human rights norms and supervisory machinery in states separated from the German and Ottoman Empire—Czechoslovakia, Greece, Poland, Romania and Yugoslavia. The instruments guaranteed "protection of life and liberty, freedom of religious worship, citizenship rights, equality of civil and political rights, free use of the mother tongue" and educational opportunities. To enforce their rights, minorities could petition the League Council directly.⁸ The victorious allies imposed similar obligations on Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Turkey. In addition, Albania, Estonia, Iraq, Latvia, Lithuania, and Finland made declarations before the Council upon joining the League. Germany and Poland agreed to a convention delineating citizens' rights in Upper Silesia.

The Covenant of the League of Nations did not, however, include any general reference to human rights. Nor in practice did the Assembly or Council ever investigate massive political repression by Stalin, Hitler, or Mussolini. International efforts to protect human rights before World War II thus amounted to sporadic, fragmentary measures affecting only a few target states or narrow groups of rights. Despite hopes raised by the ILO, the mandates system, and the minorities treaties, inter-war initiatives never overcame the prevailing belief "that international law covered relations between states and not the relation of the citizen to the state."⁹ Hitler demonstrated the total inadequacy of the League's patchwork system when he occupied Czechoslovakia, ostensibly to protect that country's German minority.

Wartime Conceptions

The holocaust which accompanied Nazi aggression persuaded the allies of World War II to move beyond the rudimentary forms of international cooperation that had thus far insured neither peace nor the observance of human rights. Planning for a new, stronger international organization had top priority in the United States. A State Department committee began planning postwar foreign policy even before the United States entered the war. President Franklin D. Roosevelt sought to overcome the isolationist sentiment that had kept the United States out of the League. A month after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt linked the war effort to human rights goals in his "Four Freedoms" message: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. The Atlantic Charter of August 1941 declared Anglo-American support for freedom from want and freedom from fear as well as respect for "the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live." Twenty-six states made a similar affirmation in a "Declaration by the United Nations" on January 1,1942; other states joined in principle as the war progressed.¹⁰

Encouraged by allied support for a new postwar international organization, technical advisory committees of the United States State Department had drafted a proposed constitution by June 1943. From the outset, planners had difficulty deciding where to assign responsibility for human rights. On the one hand, if human rights violations caused political disputes leading to war, then a collective security organ must have the power to prevent violations. On the other hand, if human rights problems resembled social disorders such as drug addiction, the international community should promote humanitarian cooperation rather than international coercion. Finally, if human rights entailed substantive legal guarantees for the individual against the state, then victims would need an international tribunal to adjudicate and enforce their claims. A State Department legal subcommittee tentatively advanced an adjudicatory approach by proposing an International Bill of Rights for the constitution. That low-level planning group decided not to recommend any enforcement machinery, concluding that an international court or commission would be "against all previous experience."¹¹

Secretary of State Cordell Hull then created a high level Political Agenda Group which reworked the committee proposals. The Agenda Group's outline submitted to President Roosevelt in December 1943, contained no reference whatever to human rights. In 1944 the Agenda Group drafted proposals for an Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) responsible for human rights concerns. The group concluded that a general provision for subsidiary commissions would be sufficient without express reference to a human rights commission. "There was no clear feeling ... whether this broad subject was primarily political, social, or cultural in nature."¹² Once the Soviet leaders gave assurances that the U.S.S.R. would participate in the new postwar organization, the State Department completed tentative proposals for a United Nations Charter by July 1944.

Subsequently the United States, United Kingdom, and U.S.S.R., and later China (Big Four) met at Dumbarton Oaks to plan a postwar international security organization. None of the organization's general purposes, nor any specific functions proposed for the General Assembly or Security Council referred to human rights. China unsuccessfully sought to include provisions for nondiscrimination and equal rights. The United States and United Kingdom hesitated to approve broad human rights provisions because of their racial segregation and exclusionary immigration policies.¹³ The single reference to human rights in the Dumbarton Oaks proposals appears in the Chapters on Economic and Social Cooperation.¹⁴ In accord with die United States tentative proposals, ECOSOC would be able to create subsidiary commissions, but no human rights commission was expressly specified. The Big Four agreed on a security council that could "protect" the peace by imposing sanctions on states committing aggression. By contrast, they maintained that the organization should "promote" human rights and did not authorize any organ to sanction violations. In 1945 the Big Four sponsoring states invited the other United Nations to discuss the Dumbarton Oaks proposals at a conference on international organization to be hosted by the United States at San Francisco.

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and Latin American states complained vehemently about the inadequate provision for human rights in the Dumbarton Oaks proposals. To overcome the isolationism that had doomed American participation in the League the Democratic administration had cultivated both public and Republican supporters for the United Nations. Throughout the war, the State Department had received advice from citizen groups such as the Commission to Study the Organization of the Peace, the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Association of the United Nations, the Foreign Policy Association and the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ.¹⁵ The State Department appointed a committee of NGO consultants for its delegation to San Francisco. Twenty-two advisory NGOs submitted an amendment to the Dumbarton Oaks proposals providing for creation of a human rights commission under ECOSOC.¹⁶ A prominent Republican member of the United States delegation, Senator Arthur Vandenberg, also supported stronger human rights language.¹⁷

The United States also had to accommodate the human rights concerns of Latin American neighbors who had not been involved in the great power conferences. After the U.S.S.R. had agreed to attend the San Francisco conference, Secretary of State Hull flew directly from Yalta to an inter-American meeting in Mexico City.¹⁸ Latin American states adopted a sweeping resolution on essential rights as the Final Act of the Inter-American Conference on War and Peace at Chapultepec in March 1945.¹⁹ By the time the San Francisco conference began, the United States responded to its advisory NGOs and Latin American neighbors by committing its delegation to support the creation of a commission for the promotion of human rights under the proposed ECOSOC.²⁰

Delivery in San Francisco

The Conference on International Organization convened in San Francisco on April 25,1945. The United States led the Big Four sponsors in recommending modest amendments making the promotion of human rights both a mam purpose of the organization and a specific responsibility of the General Assembly and ECOSOC. "The General Assembly shall initiate studies and make recommendations for the purpose of:... b) promoting ... and assisting in the realization of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion."²¹ A similar amendment authorized ECOSOC to make recommendations to promote human rights. In addition, the sponsoring powers recommended a special commission under ECOSOC "for the promotion of human rights."²²

A minority favoring United Nations protection of human rights would have granted enforcement powers to a main political organ such as the Security Council, General Assembly, or the ECOSOC. France proposed that the "General Assembly and the Economic and Social Council cooperate with the Security Council in the execution of these [human rights] functions."²³ At one point the French delegate also proposed a separate council to deal with human rights.²⁴ Three Jewish NGOs proposed that ECOSOC have the power to make binding human rights decisions and "be empowered to act in cases of infraction in the same way as the Security Council."²⁵

Dissatisfied Latin American states unsuccessfully attempted to strengthen the major power's amendments. Panama wanted the United Nations to "safeguard and protect" rather than to "promote" human rights.²⁶ Panama was also unable to obtain approval for an international bill of rights as part of the basic Charter. Mexico and Uruguay introduced separate amendments calling for permanent human rights organizations for the protection of international rights and the promotion of equality. Canada, Australia, and Chile also proposed terms that would have imposed greater obligations on members.²⁷

The final compromise language provides for something more than mere promotion of human rights, but does not promise United Nations protection. By the terms of article 55, the United Nations would "promote,.. universal respect for, and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, language, religion, or sex;" then in the article 56, "[a] 11 members pledge themselves to take joint and separate action in cooperation with the organization for the achievement of the purposes set forth in Article 55."²⁸

Would the United Nations require a separate commission to ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Tables and Illustrations
• Preface
• 1 The Commission's Genesis
• 2 A Quest for Consensus on Universal Norms, 1947-1954
• 3 Promoting Human Rights Ideals, 1955-1966
• 4 Non-Aligned Protection Initiatives, 1967-1979
• 5 Promoting Third World Norms, 1967-1979
• 6 Global Protection, 1980-1986
• 7 New Standards, Promotion, and Institutional Adjustment, 1980-1986
• 8 The Commission's Independent Sub-Commission
• 9 Politics, Impact, and Future Prospects
• Afterword: Developments at the Commission's Forty-Third Session, 1987
• Appendix A: ECOSOC Authorizing Resolutions
• Appendix B: Commission Membership, 1947-1987
• Appendix C: Symbols of Commission Documents and Publications
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index