The recognition that man as such, irrespective of persons, without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion, has the right to live in circumstances in which his humanity can develop, has a long history.

In our civilization the rights of man have been wrested from authority in the national sphere by a gradual process. Magna Charta formulated as universal human rights certain rights to freedom, but at that time the liber homo, who was supposed to have a claim to these rights, was only the human being who belonged to a small group of “lords temporal and spiritual”. In the Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen, it was rather the rights of the “citoyen” than of man as such that were formulated: it was mainly a matter here of the rights to freedom of the bourgeois citizen. There was a gradual development in the law systems of the West European countries of the universal rights of man, as they were expressed, both in our country and elsewhere, in universal suffrage. In Russia the recognition of the human rights was achieved by revolution with the Declaration of the toiling and exploited masses, in which the human position of the dispossessed was strikinglyformulated. Thus it was by different ways that not merely the nobleman and the bourgeois, but every one came be regarded as a full human being.

Self-determination: a cry of the French Revolution, and a revolutionary cry at that. As a revolutionary cry, it can have little to do with the antithesis of revolution: law. Self-determination, actually, belongs to the realm not of law, but of history. Nevertheless, as an historical phenomenon, it is of necessity linked up with international law. In the words of the much regretted Telders, indeed, “international law essentially is a border-line notion in the sense, inter alia, of being itself a border, i.e., the border between the realm—the category—of law and the realm or category of history”. But if international law thus partakes both of law and of history, the fact alone does not suffice to give an adequate insight in the nature of the relation between historical self-determination and international law so understood. To that end, we should probe somewhat deeper into the relation between international law and history generally.

International concern for human rights was in the minds of many who were involved in the drafting of the charter for a new world organization in the closing days of the Second World War. This concern for human rights found its expression in a number of provisions of the United Nations Charter. However, proposals to incorporate in or annex to the Charter a definition or an enumeration of fundamental human rights did not commend themselves to the San Francisco Conference. Similarly, attempts to make provision in the Charter for the implementation of human rights also met with opposition. The Great Powers in particular were afraid that the world organization would actively impose human rights on the individual countries. Consequently, a certain degree of disappointment prevailed among the advocates of effective international protection of human rights. A last-minute move by American non-governmental organizations, whose representatives were attached in an advisory capacity to the United States delegation at the San Francisco Conference, resulted in enlisting the United States' support for an express reference in the Charter to the creation of a commission for the promotion of human rights. The United States, on its part, succeeded in obtaining the backing of the other three Sponsoring Powers (China, UK and USSR) for this idea. As a result, Article 68 of the Charter provides that “The Economic and Social Council shall set up commissions in economic and social fields and for the promotion of human rights, and such other commissions as may be required for the performance of its functions”. Among the functional commissions subsequently created by the Economic and Social Council, the Commission on Human Rights is the only one specifically referred to in the United Nations Charter.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations, can be considered as a consolidation of the ideas and principles that are expressed in the preamble and in different articles of the Charter of the United Nations pertaining to human rights. As far as international law is concerned the declaration contained numerous elements which served to stimulate the development of new rules in this discipline. Although the declaration did not mention the use of regional arrangements for the realization of its aims, the development during the past twenty years tends clearly in this direction. In the course of this study a distinction shall be made between matters which fall within the competence of a State, a regional organization or an international organization with a worldwide stature. These spheres of action will be labelled domestic, regional and international jurisdiction respectively.