On This Day: December 10
Human Rights Declaration Adopted by U. N. Assembly
By JOHN KENTON
Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES
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[The draft text of the Declaration of Human Rights was published in The New York Times Dec. 7.]
The declaration is the first part of a projected three-part International Bill of Rights. The United Nations now will begin drafting a convention that will be a treaty embodying in specific detail and in legally binding form the principles proclaimed in the declaration. The third part will be a protocol for implementation of the convention possibly by such measures as establishment of an International Court of Human Rights and an International Committee of Conciliation.
The Assembly accorded an ovation to Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt when Dr. Herbert V. Evatt, the Assembly's president, after declaring the declaration adopted, paid tribute to the first chairman of the Human Rights Commission for her tireless efforts in the long process of drafting the document.
"She has raised a great name to an even greater honor," Dr. Evatt said of the United States delegate.
Dr. Evatt also singled out for praise Dr. Charles Malik of Lebanon, first rapporteur of the Human Rights Commission and chairman of this Assembly's Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee that spent nearly three months in word-by-word redrafting of the text.
Before the vote Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Y. Vishinsky of Russia made a final effort to avert adoption of the declaration. He said that the document seemed to support the view that the conception of sovereignty of governments was outdated. He declared that only within the framework of government did human rights have a meaning.
Mr. Vishinsky urged adoption of a Soviet resolution submitted yesterday calling the declaration "unsatisfactory and requiring considerable amendment" and proposing to defer further consideration until the fourth Assembly next fall. Failing to get postponement, he asked the Assembly at least to accept a series of Soviet amendments to the text that would improve the declaration from the Russian viewpoint.
The Russian postponement resolution was rejected, 45 to 6, with 3 abstentions. Four Soviet amendments proposing new texts for the four articles to which the Russian bloc objected most strenuously were defeated by almost as decisive a margin.
The only amendment accepted was a British proposal to reword the declaration's colonial clause.
Article three of the declaration as completed by the Social Committee read: "The rights set forth in this declaration apply equally to all inhabitants of trust and non-self- governing territories." This was deleted and in its place substituted a second paragraph of Article 2, reading:
"Furthermore no distinction shall be made on the basis of political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or the territory to which a person belongs whether it be an independent, trust or non-self-governing territory or under any other limitation of sovereignty."
The Assembly then reached the stage of voting on the draft declaration itself and Dr. Julius Katz-Suchy of Poland asked for a vote article by article. Most articles simply were approved in silence when Dr. Evatt called for objections and the rest by a show of hands.
The final vote on the entire text was taken at four minutes before midnight.
"History will regard this proclamation as one of the outstanding achievements of the United Nations since its establishment," Dr. Evatt told the Assembly." During the past year there has been much unfair criticism of activities of the United Nations and in some quarters pessimism has been expressed as to its usefulness.
"This pessimism flows for the main part from difficulties which the United Nations has experienced in the political field. The Declaration on Human Rights is the result of two and a half years of unspectacular but important work in the social, humanitarian and cultural fields.
"This is the first occasion on which the organized international community of nations has made a Declaration on Human Rights and fundamental freedoms. It therefore has all the authority of a collective body of opinion of the United Nations as a whole. It is to this document that millions of men and women in countries far distant from Paris or New York will turn for hope and guidance and inspiration."
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