The Universal Declaration on Human Rights at 75: Does It Still Work?

The United Nations General Assembly voted to adopt the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR) 75 years ago today on December 10, 1948. In the aftermath of the Second World War’s atrocities, the acceptance of this document of the United Nations Human Rights Commission was, like the United Nations itself, seen as a hopeful development in a world gone mad. Though there were abstentions from some Middle East and Soviet bloc countries, none of the nations represented voted against it.

The UDHR went on to inspire two international covenants that bound the signing countries to recognize human rights, not to mention a number of courts and other international bodies dedicated to protecting human rights, and it is seen by many as one of the bases of contemporary international law. There is a reason for this: it is coherent because it taps into deep roots of natural law and human relations.

But three key factors prevent it from having a deeper impact. First, one of the aspects that allowed for its embrace in 1948—its refusal to ground the rights it identifies in any religious or philosophical understanding—may well be what leads to its fading importance. Second, and likely related, changes in the way many think about the nature of human rights have distorted its meaning in a way that has led to myriad claims of all kinds of spurious rights. Third, on the flip side of the second, though liberals and even leftists are celebrating this document officially, it’s not clear that they accept many of the rights proclaimed.

For those who have never read it, the document is well worth a look. Though conservatives might blanch at reading something that was spearheaded by Eleanor Roosevelt, the document itself is quite good. Roosevelt’s two original co-writers were the Chinese diplomat Pen-Chun Chang and the Lebanese Catholic Charles Malik. They were later joined by Canadian jurist John Humphrey and French diplomat René Cassin as well as a number of others.

The preamble to the UDHR begins with the propositions that “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world” and that the articles contained in the declaration ought to be recognized as “a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations.”

Articles 1 and 2 set out the universal character of the nature of human beings as possessing “reason and conscience” and being “free and equal in dignity and rights”—no matter their “race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.” Other articles forthrightly name “the right to life, liberty, and security of person” (3), the right to not be kept in servitude or slavery (4), recognition of equality before the law and equal protection by the law (7), right to marriage and the right to give or withhold consent to marriage (16), the right to property and not to have arbitrary seizures of it (17), and many more.  

Those who have studied the American Constitution will see that many of the protections in the Bill of Rights—including freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion—are here affirmed. And both rights and duties are affirmed. This is a document that sets out a summary of what the natural law demands of governments with regard to ordinary people as well as of what ordinary people are expected to do for their nations. Though many of the articles are certainly at the least debatable, it is nevertheless a document with serious strengths.

Yet those weaknesses were noticed from the beginning. In an essay as part of a symposium on the UDHR at Law & Liberty, Jordan Ballor and Trey Dimsdale cite the Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain’s recollections about a UNESCO meeting about human rights where “someone expressed astonishment that certain champions of violently opposed ideologies had agreed on a list of these rights. ‘Yes,’ they said, ‘we agree about the rights but on condition no one asks why.’” Though Maritain, who was an indirect influence on the writing of the UDHR, was hopeful about the practical agreements, Ballor and Dimsdale observe that he too “recognized the difficulties faced with articulating a doctrine of universal rights that could be assented to by what he called ‘many schools of thought.’”

The reality is that the document is built on the western philosophical and religious understanding of the world with some assists by traditional Chinese philosophy. Malik was a scholar of Thomas Aquinas and was assisted in reframing some of the terms by Chun, who was trained in traditional Confucian philosophy. Yet in forsaking a philosophical or theological framework, it can seem to a modern, secularized world that has left behind Thomas and Confucius, as simply a set of ideas from a different age.

Another Law & Liberty contributor, Daniel Philpott, suggests that the fate of the UDHR is dependent on whether its claims are enunciated as part of the natural law. One might argue that even that is not enough since most people aren’t philosophers. British legal scholar David Griffiths notes in another symposium that it may well be that specifically religious language will be needed to keep this alive. “While the UDHR and international human rights law send few pulses racing, religious language provides a way for people to express their deepest yearnings for a fairer and more just world.”

That the Declaration had to be non-specific with regard to its intellectual framework didn’t just mean that its inspiration or grounding might seem obscure. It also meant that its language could be coopted and manipulated. Jordan and Ballor cite the French political philosopher Pierre Manent’s worries about the dangers of thinking about rights outside of that philosophical context of the natural law. Another Law & Liberty contributor, legal scholar Adam MacLeod, argues that modern rights talk did indeed go astray when it left behind natural law thinking about human rights: “It stipulates the desirability of some end and then confers on it the status of a human right.” Alas, MacLeod notes that some of this confusion is in the UDHR itself. “Alongside true natural rights such as the duty of the state to protect the natural family (Article 16) and the duty to never compel any person to belong to an association (Article 20), the Declaration lists contingent entitlements such as rights to ‘social security’ (Article 22) and ‘protection against unemployment (Article 23).’”

Such mistakes in thinking have led to the ever-expanding list of “rights” that we are perpetually told we must respect. And given the ambiguity about whether these rights are negative (such that one ought not prevent others from exercising them) or positive (such that one is obligated to provide for their exercise), we have a big mess. Even if I am (hypothetically) obligated to allow someone to get gender-mutilating surgeries in order to affirm what he thinks is his “gender,” do I have to pay for it?

And in fact, even as these spurious rights proliferate, too many moderns on the left are inclined to deny the rights that really are natural rights. That obligation of the state to protect the natural family in Article 16 is something that is now widely denied. The freedom “to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance” (18); the freedom “to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers” (19); and the freedom and indeed “prior right” of parents “to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children” (26)—all these are widely denied or at least challenged in the very western states that saw their recognition.

All of these difficulties make the prospect of the UDHR’s long-term relevance to modern life tenuous. Many countries without the religious and philosophical heritage to ground the Declaration’s better parts simply ignore it anyway. Meanwhile those who do have this heritage are seeing their ruling classes follow the more dubious claims it makes and reject the true ones. We can be glad for those who put this document together as well as for the good it has done. But not everyone agrees on the rights anymore. Too few want to ask why they don’t agree anymore. Too many want to keep using the terms of rights and obligations without defining them.

The Declaration may not be enough to unite nations anymore. But it may well provide a good place to trace our way back to earlier ways of thinking and belief about the dignity of human persons and the rights they bear. Perhaps on this anniversary that is enough.

David P. Deavel teaches at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas, and is a Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative. Follow him on X @davidpdeavel.