Women and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Rebecca Adami

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429795527
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Who were the non-Western women delegates who took part in the drafting of the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) from 1945-1948? Which member states did these women represent, and in what ways did they push for a more inclusive language than "the rights of Man" in the texts? This book provides a gendered historical narrative of human rights from the San Francisco Conference in 1945 to the final vote of the UDHR in the United Nations General Assembly in December 1948. It highlights the contributions by Latin American feminist delegates, and the prominent non-Western female representatives from new member states of the UN.

1 The San Francisco Conference

A Call to All Women

[T]he word ‘man,’ although it is assumed that it represents all human beings, only represents its gender. On the other hand, it is evident that the term ‘human’ represents more the human race than the male gender. Here is why, in an instrument that transcends and in the value of the charter of rights, the male gender cannot represent the entire species.¹

—Minerva Bernardino, the Dominican Republic

Controversies at the San Francisco Conference, 25 April 1945–26 June 1945

Before the San Francisco Conference in 1945, Dagens Nyheter² reported from New York that major hindrances toward the creation of the United Nations remained to be solved by the five Great Powers (the United States, the United Kingdom, France, China, and the Soviet Union). There was a plan in place to hold a two-week-long meeting in Washington before April 25th to solve these issues regarding how the votes would be divided in the Security Council, how to deal with the pressure from the Soviet Union for a Lublin-Committee to represent Poland in San Francisco, and whether Argentina would be given an invitation to join the San Francisco Conference.

The Soviet Union declared Argentina a fascist state and threatened that if Argentina were invited then Poland should be represented with the Lublin-Committee. The Lublin-Committee was a provisional government established by the Soviet Union in opposition to the Polish government that was still in exile in London after the Polish territory was retaken from Nazi Germany. This was against the Atlantic Charter that Stalin had signed at the Yalta Conference declaring that democratic elections would be held in countries controlled by the Red Army.

The Polish Government-in-Exile would send members in an unofficial capacity, as would the Lublin-Committee. Argentina was finally admitted to the Conference after pressure from the United States.

What seemed an irresolvable conflict between the Great Powers was the proposal from the Unites States for international trusteeship by the United Nations of German colonies in Africa and Oceania. At the Peace Conference in Paris in 1919 after the First World War, it had been decided between the victorious powers that the colonies of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire would be governed by the League of Nations themselves. Now both Britain and France wanted to take over the colonies. Instead of becoming autonomous, the colonies had come under the rule of the winning powers, who had divided these territories amongst themselves. Controversially, at the San Francisco Conference, the United States suggested forming Trustee Commissions in the United Nations that would be responsible for ‘developing’ these territories in such a way that they could eventually gain independence. This was met with resistance from United Kingdom and France, who wished to tie these territories ever more tightly to the existing colonial system. A compromise was met: Some colonies were divided between the winning powers, and some came under trusteeship of the United Nations.

The mandates had been divided into three different types, depending on the ‘societal and cultural advancement’ of the population of the colony relative to the population of the colonial empires. Class-A mandates were occupied provinces of the former Ottoman Empire, including today’s Palestine, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. The populations of these lands were viewed by the Great Powers as ‘sufficiently developed’ after the First World War for active participation in the administration of their own territory in the near future. Iraq, nonetheless, won its independence from Britain in 1922 after a popular revolt, whereas Syria and Lebanon remained under French rule until 1947. The Class-B mandates included the German colonies in Africa, where the population of the colony would manage political control of their own territories in the ‘foreseeable future.’ Cameroon and Togo were divided between France and England. The Class-C mandates were sparsely populated territories in Oceania, which the powers decided were to be incorporated under the mandate of Australia and Japan.

The Americans desired a form of trusteeship in that an international Trustee Commission would be set up by the United Nations to regularly visit the mandates and present reports on their ‘status.’ The United States hoped to gain support for their position from Russia and China but would initially avoid openly mentioning the colonies and mandates of Italy and Japan, both sensitive subjects at the time.

The United Kingdom wanted to postpone the San Francisco Conference, but Franklin Roosevelt was convinced that the earlier the San Francisco Conference was held the better. An international organization for peace would gain greater support from the public before the end of the war as people were still living under the “fresh impressions of the current catastrophe.”³ The Conference would begin in late April 1945.

On 7 May 1945, German High Command would sign an unconditional surrender of all German forces. The triumph by the Allies was followed by the report six days later of the death of Franklin Roosevelt: “He was his own Foreign Minister and decided over United States foreign politics.”⁴ Delegates and advisors at the Conference, well prepared to work out a Charter, were suddenly forced to improvise in international politics, giving consideration to “relations with the British Empire, the Soviet Union, the American Republics and the Far East.”⁵

Before the San Francisco Conference, there was diplomatic pressure from Egypt to reach a balance between the Great Powers and the other states. It was a way to keep international peace, according to the Egypt Foreign Minister Abdel Badawi.⁶ In order not to produce a privileged position of the ‘Great Powers,’ a power balance within the new organization had to be created—something that had not been established at Dumbarton Oaks.

The overarching focus on issues covered by worldwide media from the San Francisco Conference concerned the undemocratic structure of the Security Council, perceived as the most influential force in maintaining world peace in the new organization.⁷ At the San Francisco Conference, Norway had proposed that smaller states should have the opportunity to question a veto placed in the Security Council so that no nation would be forced into a solution that would hinder its future security and development. This proposal was voted down.

After this, the Soviet Union, initially in favor of the structure in the Security Council—where the Soviet Union was one of five permanent members with veto-power—turned its back on the negotiations and threatened to leave the Conference. Would the Security Council be given the authority to investigate conflicts in cases where one of the veto states wished to use their veto against such an intrusion on national sovereignty?⁸ The Soviet Union claimed national sovereignty and veto-right above international cooperation against aggressions. The veto question, on how influential the veto-powers would be in the United Nations, threatened to erode cooperation and collapse the entire San Francisco Conference.

As the delegations continued their work on the United Nations Founding Charter, the Soviet Union expressed to the media that the Conference was unproductive.⁹ The veto question was solved, after all, on 9 June 1945, less than three weeks before the end of the Conference. The Soviet Union agreed that a veto from one of the five Great Powers could only be laid when action that might inflict on national sovereignty was decided within the Security Council but not at the initiation of an investigation of an international conflict.¹⁰

The next problem on the agenda that received international media coverage was the issue of the mandates. The Soviet Union canvassed here for their immediate right to independence, but the United States and Great Britain wanted developments in these territories to be “in accordance with the will of the people.”¹¹

Questioning the continuing existence of colonies meant threatening the economic and political supremacy of the Great Powers in the global world, eventually leading to the Cold War where the influence over colonial and trustee territories was fought along Western liberal and Eastern socialist ideological lines.

Reports from the San Francisco Conference on 12 May 1945 stated that the way the Trusteeship Commission would be controlled by the international organization was an unresolved problem. Great Britain seemed close to giving its support to the American proposal that territory suitable as military bases would be controlled solely by the governments that would administer the bases.

The United States wanted undisputed control of some Pacific bases and for a while objected to independence as a goal for trusteed peoples.¹² The issue of the mandates in relation to claims for independence was not resolved at the San Francisco Conference but lingered on in the newly established United Nations bodies working in 1946–48 with the drafting of an international Bill of Rights. The question remained an overarching and unresolved controversy: Would the bill include people living under colonial rule?

The influence over the agenda at the San Francisco Conference showcased in many ways where the countries’ alliances had lain during the Second World War. Evidently, Germany and Japan were not represented. Ukraine and the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist state were invited, even though their independence from the Soviet Union was questioned by Western states.

Other countries, such as Italy, were not invited to the Conference due to their stances during the Second World War. Denmark became the fiftieth member of the United N...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Preface: United
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: A Counter Narrative to Earlier Research
• 1. The San Francisco Conference: A Call to All Women
• 2. A Charter Signed by Women?
• 3. The United Nations 1946: Will Women Have a Say?
• 4. The Commission on Human Rights: Or the ‘Rights of Man’?
• 5. The Commission on the Status of Women: On Sisterhood
• 6. A Lack of Acknowledgment: ‘Men’ Trumps ‘All Human Beings’
• 7. The Commission on Human Rights Pressured to Consider the Rights of Women
• 8. The Third Committee: Rights in the Private Realm
• 9. The Socialist Dissent: A Surprising Support for Women?
• 10. Is a Vote in the General Assembly a Vote for the People?
• Epilogue: On Female Representation in the United Nations
• Index