The Content of an International Bill of Rights

Abstract

coveries and role of human intelligence in human affairs, of which the new research in atomic energy is the symbol. A further factor is, of course, that some of the elements of a world bill of rights are already embodied in the structure of the United Nations Charter. President Truman says, Charter is dedicated to the achievement and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms. Unless we can obtain these objectives for all men and women everywhere-without regard to race, language or religion-we cannot have permanent peace and security. 1 These new conditions profoundly affect any bill of rights in our day, for they are revolutionary in nature-far more revolutionary than any other world revolution. The increasing recognition of the dignity of man and the importance of protecting him under new economic and social conditions, the events of World War II, the emergence of the atomic bomb, a mark of the revolutionary triumphs of human intelligence in social relationships-these factors are a sharp challenge to those who frame an adequate statement of the rights of man in the twentieth century. The ends of government remain unchanged in the midst of these alarms. Security, justice, order, welfare, freedom are universal ends of political behavior, as seen through observation, experience, and reflection. But they are applied under new conditions from time to time as basic changes are made in social, economic, cultural conditions and in political perspectives. Obviously, there are many value systems other than the political-the religious, the cultural, the artistic; and a bill of rights will deal with those in the area of the governmental. But the political is not limited to the legal in the formal sense. It includes the wider range of political ideals and aspirations. Indeed, a recognition of the pluralism of values is one of the basic conditions of world order in particular. Our present task is to place the political values of human rights in their proper governmental setting as a part of the general understandings upon which world order is built.