Personal notes on an important anniversary.

• Author: Bruce, Margaret K.
• Position: Presentation to the UN General Assembly of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights on Dec 10, 1948 - Transcript

A common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge.

- Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Shortly after arriving in New York from London in March 1946, I became the sixth member of the fledgling UN Division of Human Rights (later the Centre for Human Rights). Sadly, I am one of the few survivors of that period, and regret that none of the main architects of the Universal Declaration is alive today to share in the observance of this fiftieth anniversary. The promotion and encouragement of respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms is among the purposes of the United Nations, defined in Article 1 of the United Nations Charter, which mentions human rights seven times, but makes no reference to "protection" of human rights.

At the founding Conference of the United Nations in San Francisco in 1945, the Latin American delegations, in particular, wanted the Conference to discuss an international bill of human rights; Panama even wanted it to be incorporated as part of the Charter. But time did not permit that and the preparation of such a bill was assigned as a matter of priority to the Commission on Human Rights. Indeed, it was the Latin American women representatives, especially Bertha Lutz of Brazil and Minerva Bernardino of the Dominican Republic, who pressed successfully for the inclusion in the Charter of provisions on equal rights of men and women and the prohibition of discrimination on grounds of sex.

It was at the first General Assembly, in London in early 1946, that Eleanor Roosevelt first appeared on the United Nations scene, a stately figure in black as she passed through the corridors of Church House, Westminster, and visited the Secretariat offices, which were situated around an enormous bomb crater. "I might point out that during the entire London session of the Assembly I walked on eggs. I knew that as the only woman on the delegation I was not very, welcome. Moreover, if I failed to be a useful member, it would not be considered that I as a woman had failed, but that all women had failed ...".

Needless to say she did not fail. In a move typical of her, she gathered together the 17 women, from 11 countries, who were attending this first General Assembly, and together they drafted an open letter to the Women of the World. Mrs. Roosevelt read the one-page letter to the plenary Assembly on 26 February 1946, and it was...