On This Day: UN Adopts Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights grew out of international revulsion at the mass killings of World War II, particularly the Holocaust. It was the product of the Commission on Human Rights, set up in 1946 as an independent body within the framework of the United Nations.

After three long sessions between 1946 and 1948, with Eleanor Roosevelt acting as chairwoman in 1947, the commission drafted and presented the declaration to the General Assembly when it convened in Paris.

Mrs. Roosevelt saw herself as the driving force behind the commission, to which she was appointed by President Truman. After the vote by the General Assembly in Paris, at 3 a.m., the delegates rose up and gave her standing ovation, according to The New York Times.

Mrs. Roosevelt was inextricably linked to the commission through the work of her late husband, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was credited with helping to create the United Nations, set up in 1945 to replace the League of Nations.

The rights commission, like the United Nations itself, had a mixed reputation. It won both praise and criticism for its work in areas like the Middle East and Africa, but it drew stern disapproval for giving high-profile positions to representatives of countries that did not guarantee human rights for their own citizens.

In 2001, the United States was voted off the UN Human Rights Commission for the first time since the panel was created in 1947. President Bush’s policies, including his opposition to the Kyoto treaty on climate change and a treaty to abolish land mines, as well as his calls for a missile defense system, were reasons cited by some delegates for the decision in 2001.

The New York Times described the vote as “apparently an act of cumulative annoyance after years of American rejection of international agreements, the hounding from office of Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, and congressional blocking of dues that beggared the United Nations.” It might look “like overkill to many Americans. But it has also sounded an alarm.”

Despite opposition by the United States, the Commission for Human Rights was replaced by the Human Rights Council in March 2006, one of several proposals for change made the previous year by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

In the words of Eleanor Roosevelt's biography, “Although she had already won international respect and admiration in her role as First Lady to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt’s work on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights would become her greatest legacy.”

She delivered an address to the UN General Assembly in Paris on Dec. 9, 1948. It was marked by outspoken comments on Soviet attempts to introduce amendments to the proposal.