Drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Further discussion and amendments were made by the Commission on Human Rights, the Economic and Social Council and the General Assembly of the United Nations.

Members of the Commission who contributed significantly to the creation of the Declaration included Canadian John Peters Humphrey of the United Nations Secretariat, Eleanor Roosevelt of the United States (who chaired the Drafting Committee), René Cassin of France, Charles Malik of Lebanon, P. C. Chang of Republic of China,[a] and Hansa Jivraj Mehta of India among others.

The Drafting Committee[2] included John Peters Humphrey was newly appointed as Director of the Division of Human Rights within the United Nations Secretariat.

In philosophical terms, the Soviet Bloc criticized the individualist stance of the issue, arguing in favor of the collectivism approach, where the rights of the collective dominate that of an individual.

(It was not until 1976 that the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights came into force, giving a legal status to most of the Declaration) [8] Source: United Nations Year Book 1948–1949, pp.