The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly setting out rights and freedoms held to belong to all people. It has been translated into hundreds of languages and has shaped human rights law worldwide.
Facts
Key ProvisionAdopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948, its thirty articles set out, for the first time in a single international document, a common standard of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, opening with the declaration that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. Adopted as a non-binding General Assembly resolution rather than a treaty, it nonetheless became the founding text of the modern international human rights system and the basis for the later binding human rights covenants. 2 Dates
AdoptedAdopted by UN General Assembly Resolution 217 A (III) in Paris: 48 in favour, 0 against, 8 abstentions. Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Gives binding legal content to the right to seek and enjoy asylum that Article 14 of the Declaration first proclaimed as an aspiration in 1948.
The Covenant converts the civil and political rights the Declaration first proclaimed in 1948 into binding treaty obligations, monitored by the Human Rights Committee.
The Covenant converts the economic, social and cultural rights the Declaration first proclaimed in 1948 into binding treaty obligations, subject to progressive realization.
Drafted By
Roosevelt chaired the United Nations Commission on Human Rights that drafted the declaration.
Influenced
The Universal Declaration's Article 14 right to seek asylum is given binding legal form in the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.
The Universal Declaration's civil and political rights were converted into binding treaty law by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966).
The Universal Declaration's economic, social and cultural rights were converted into binding treaty law by the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966).
Influenced By
The 1789 Declaration's language of universal, inalienable rights was a direct model the 1948 drafters of the Universal Declaration drew on.
Part Of
Adopted by the UN General Assembly on 10 December 1948 as Resolution 217 A.
Sources
Dissenting Readings (1 dissenting reading)
Description
Eight of the 58 UN member states abstained on the final vote rather than voting against: the Soviet Union, the Byelorussian and Ukrainian SSRs, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Yugoslavia objected that the Declaration privileged civil and political rights while slighting economic and social guarantees and state sovereignty; Saudi Arabia objected specifically to Article 16 (equal marriage rights) and Article 18 (the right to change one's religion) as contrary to Islamic law; South Africa, then entrenching apartheid, could not accept a document condemning racial discrimination. None voted against; the abstentions register that universality was contested from the moment of adoption, not agreed by acclamation.
A dissenting reading, from The eight 1948 abstaining statesUniversal Declaration of Human Rights (Britannica), Encyclopaedia Britannica
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights legally binding?
Not as a treaty, but much of it is now widely treated as customary international law.
The UDHR is a UN General Assembly resolution, not a treaty, so it does not bind states the way a ratified treaty does. Many legal scholars nonetheless hold that much of its content has since become customary international law through decades of state practice and its central place in later human rights instruments. It directly inspired two binding treaties that are legally enforceable on the states that ratified them: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, both adopted in 1966.
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