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Human rights: a reply to Geoffrey Best*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 October 2009
Extract
Geoffrey Best's article ‘Whatever Happened to Human Rights9 in the January 1990 issue of the Review touches upon many important questions which are well known to human rights scholars. These include such political, legal and philosophical difficulties as defining the concept of self-determination, the prospects for implementing certain economic and social rights and the role of international law in improving human right standards. By examining the work of René Cassin in his role as a member of the Commission for Human Rights during the early years of the United Nations, Best points to these difficulties while attempting to achieve two further objectives. The first is to provide an appreciation of Cassin's personal qualities, and the second, to demonstrate that had Cassin's views been more closely adhered to human rights would in some way be healthier today. Although Best's article is the edited text of a lecture, and is consequently not the tightly argued piece we might expect from a more considered paper prepared especially for publication, several of his claims are either questionable or mistaken.
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- Copyright © British International Studies Association 1991
Footnotes
*
The author is indebted to Moorhead Wright for his comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
References
1 The working group that prepared the early drafts of the Declaration was set up by the Commission on Human Rights which was itself responsible to the Economic and Social Council. In turn, the Council was responsible to the General Assembly. Assembly practice was to delegate responsibility for agenda items on human rights to its Third Committee for full consideration. Documents were passed up and down this bureaucratic ladder throughout the two years that it took to finalize the Declaration, involving many others.
2 René Cassin, ‘How the Charter on Human Rights was Born’, UNESCO Courier, 21 (January 1968), pp. 4–6 and Best, p. 12, n. 6.
3 UN Doc. E/CN.4/AC/1/3/add.1.
4 Summary Records of the Commission on Human Rights, 12th meeting, 3 February, 1947. UN Doc. E/CN.4/SR.12.
5 For recollections of this meeting, see Roosevelt, Eleanor, The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (London, 1962) p. 248Google Scholar, and Humphrey, John, Human Rights and the United Nations: A Great Adventure (Dobbs Ferry, 1984), p. 29.Google Scholar
6 I mean by this an approach that recognizes cultural differences in viewing human rights and looks to positive law in providing solutions.
7 Humphrey, , A Great Adventure, p. 29.Google Scholar
8 In contrast to the positive-pluralist approach, this approach begins by recognizing the universal nature of humankind and attempts to define rights common to all humankind as a species.
9 At this time no decision had been taken as to the form of the Bill. The Declaration is only one facet, the other two being the legally binding Covenants and methods of implementation.
10 These suggestions had been discussed by the Commission earlier but had been rejected because it was thought too important a task to be divorced from the Commission members. See, Summary Records, n.4.
11 These included drafts received from Ivin A. Isaacs, Rev. Wilfred Parsons, Rollin McNitt, Viscount Shanky, Hersh Lauterpacht, H. G. Wells and the American Law Society.
12 These texts were in Spanish and submitted by Alejendro Alvares and Gustavo Gutieriz.
13 Roosevelt had no authority to take such action. According to Humphrey it was a ‘dubious legal act’ (A Great Adventure, p. 29–30).Google Scholar
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26 Representative of Pakistan, GAOR(VII), 3rd Comm., 448th meeting.
27 The UK, representative refers to self-determination as having ‘strong moral force’ in this context. See, GAOR(X), 3rd Comm., 642nd meeting.
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32 Representative of Saudi Arabia, GAOR(V), 3rd Comm., 296th meeting.
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36 Yearbook on Human Rights for 1947, p. 482–3Google Scholar. The procedure of adopting a non-binding Declaration of general principles followed by a Covenant was, in part, to avoid such confusion.
37 From 1949 the Yearbook on Human Rights listed examples of international treaties and constitutions that cited the Declaration, giving an indication that it was rapidly receiving recognition as a source of law.
38 GAOR(III), 3rd Comm, 92nd meeting.
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42 See, for example, GAOR(V), 3rd Comm., speech by representative of the USSR.
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