The United Nations and Human Rights, 1945-1985

Abstract

Between 1945 and 1985 there has been a marked change in the treatment of human rights at the United Nations. On the foundation of a few vague references to human rights in the UN Charter there has evolved an International Bill of Rights indicating numerous obligations of increasing salience. This core of global rules has been supplemented by a series of particular human rights instruments, some with special control mechanisms. Once the subject of human rights seemed idealistic and abstract, but by the 1980s there was growing attention through an increasing array of UN organs to specific countries and patterns of behavior such as torture and people who have disappeared. The subject of humans rights has not faded away like that of military coordination under the Security Council nor has it remained on the back burner like the Trusteeship Council. Rather it has emerged more and more as one of the subjects to which member states give great attention, if not always for the same reasons. Considerable debate exists at the United Nations over the significance of this change in the treatment of human rights. Clearly, the institutional and procedural changes in the field of human rights have been striking. It also seems clear that there is some legal significance to these changes. At least it now can be said that states have accepted a number of new legal obligations and that numerous cases exist which can be used as precedent should actors choose to do so in pursuit of human rights values. Ambivalence begins to set in when one tackles the subject of the practical significance of these changes for the condition of human rights beyond UN meeting rooms. There is considerable disagreement