International Human Rights Day
December 10
Perspective of the Soviet Delegation on Draft Covenant on Human Rights
Discussion on human rights at the United Nations continued after adoption of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights in 1948, specifically on the Covenant on Human Rights.
In the official records of the United Nations General Assembly of December 4, 1950, the USSR delegation pointed out that “the chief fault of the UN Declaration on Human Rights was its formal, legalistic character, since it confined itself to proclaiming a few human rights in an extremely general and incomplete form, without stating the ways and means of implementing these rights.”[1] The delegation pointed out that the draft Covenant “not only contains all the faults of the Declaration, but it also omits any mention of certain rights which are vitally important to millions of people, such as the right to work, the right to social security, the right to leisure, the right to education and many other social, economic and cultural rights which are contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, although in a proclamatory, unsatisfactory and incomplete form.” It said that the UN, two years after the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” is even further from solving the problem of protecting and ensuring respect for human rights.”
The USSR delegation proposed amendments and corrections to the draft Covenant “to ensure that all citizens, without distinction, have an opportunity to take part in the government of the State and therefore to abolish all restrictions, based on property, education, or anything else, on the right to take part in elections of candidates to representative organs, and to afford all citizens the opportunity of occupying any State or public office.”
It also proposed changes “to ensure the right of every people and every nation to national self-determination and to the development of their national culture,” as well as “to provide that the State should be obliged to guarantee to everyone the right to work and to choose his profession, so that conditions may be created in which the threat of death from hunger or exhaustion will be ruled out;
“Fourthly, to ensure access to education without any discrimination whatsoever. And to ensure this by the provision of free elementary education and the organization of a system of scholarships and schools;
“Fifthly, to ensure the right to rest and leisure by providing by law for a reasonable limitation of working hours and for periodic holidays with pay;
“Sixthly, to introduce social security and social insurance for workers and employees at the expense of the State or at the expense of the employers, in accordance with the laws of each country;
“Seventhly, to take all the necessary measures to ensure decent living quarters to every person;
“Eighthly, to guarantee the strict observance of trade union rights and to create conditions in which the unhampered activities of trade union organizations can be ensured;
“Ninthly, to ensure that the rights proclaimed in the covenant are not used for purposes hostile to humanity and, in particular, for purposes of war propaganda, for fomenting hostility among nations, for inciting to racial discrimination, or for spreading slanderous rumours.
“Finally, to provide that the activities of any fascist or anti-democratic organization must be prohibited by law, subject to penalty.”
The delegation of the USSR was also “unable to agree to the proposal … for the establishment of various international organs, such as the committee on human rights; such a measure would constitute interference in the internal affairs of States and a violation of their sovereignty, since the implementation of the provisions of the Covenant in every State falls entirely within the domestic jurisdiction of the States signatories to the covenant and must allow for the specific economic, national and other characteristics of each country.”
The USSR delegation believed that “it cannot be expected that the covenant should reproduce the principles and provisions of the Constitutions of socialist States, such as the Soviet Union and the peoples’ democracies, where the above-mentioned human rights are confirmed by law and are guaranteed in practice on the basis of the socialist system of social relations. It must be borne in mind that such legislation is possible in the USSR and in the peoples’ democracies because all exploitation of man by man has been eliminated in these countries and a firm foundation has thus been established for the universal respect for and implementation of human rights.”
It further argued:
In defining the future work of the Commission on Human Rights, the General Assembly cannot, of course, ignore the particular economic and social circumstances of the various States Members of the Organization, circumstances which prevent many of them, at the present time, from settling in a consistent and satisfactory manner the problem of establishing living conditions which are really worthy of human beings. The Soviet Union delegation considers, however, that even so, the General Assembly can recommend to the Commission on Human Rights that it should include in the Covenant the aforementioned minimum rights, the implementation of which affects millions of people. This is particularly essential because it is impossible to state seriously that the draft Covenant guarantees real, and not imaginary, human rights.
Note
1. General Assembly, 5th session: 317th plenary meeting, Monday, 4 December 1950.
(TML Archives)
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