The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Origins, Drafting, and Intent

In his 1941 State of the Union message President Franklin Roosevelt called for the protection worldwide of four essential freedoms: "the freedom of speech and expression, the freedom of worship, the freedom from want, and the freedom from fear". Roosevelt's enunciation of these freedoms was part of a movement that gathered strength in the 1940s and strived to make the protection of human rights part of the conditions for peace at the end of World War II. In 1947 Eleanor Roosevelt was elected to be the chair of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights that was charged to produce a separate document for this purpose. The resulting Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, has become the moral backbone of more than two hundred human rights instruments that are now a part of our world. The document has been a source of hope and inspiration to thousands of groups and millions of oppressed individuals. Johannes Morsink offers a behind-the-scenes account of the Declaration's origins and development. He reports on the detailed discussions that took place in the United Nations, tells us which countries argued for or against each provision of the Declaration, explains why certain important amendments were rejected, and shows how common revulsion toward the Holocaust provided the consensus needed to adopt this universal code of ethics.