Universal Human Rights: The Contribution of Muslim States

Susan Waltz

University of Michigan, USA

 A. Introduction

Much has been written (and more has been said) about the compatibility of Islam and human rights. Discussions are often impassioned and tangled. In both ordinary conversation and political discourse, speakers readily conflate Arabo-Muslim culture with Muslim religious beliefs, and as a result, the meaning of Islam is confused. Similarly, the concept of human rights may be poorly understood and uncritically equated with Western philosophy. Such problems impede communication, and also compound more difficult issues. Beneath rhetoric and polemic lie deep-seated concerns about cultural dominance and exclusion, cultural integrity, and the distinguishing features of a sacred belief system. These are the underlying concerns that create tensions and fuel debate about the relevance and legitimacy of international human rights standards as universal norms.²

² Abdullahi An-Naim, Towards An Islamic Reformation: Civil Liberties, Human Rights, And International Law (1990); Bassam Tibi, Islamic Law/Shari’a, Human Rights, Universal Moral and International Law, 16 Hum. Rts. Q. 277 (1994); Chandra Muzaffar, Islam And Human Rights (Malaysia: International Movement for a Just World, 1995); Ann Elizabeth Mayer, Islam And Human Rights: Tradition And Politics (3d ed. 1999); Kevin Dwyer, Arab Voices: The Human Rights Debate In The Middle East (1991); Katerina Dalacoura, Islam, Liberalism, And Human Rights (1998); Heiner Bielefelt, “Western” versus “Islamic” Human Rights Conceptions?.

This essay seeks to shed some light on that debate without engaging philosophical issues directly. Philosophy, and religion is one door through which the subject of human rights may be approached; however, it is only one such door, and it is a door that at times may needlessly polarize and alienate. It is of immediate interest to note that the United Nations Human Rights Commission initially charged to draft international human rights standards chose not to work directly with a document that UNESCO had prepared with the intention of providing a broad philosophical footing for the standards. In fact, UNESCO did not publish the document until 1949, after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was approved. Some have speculated that the drafters specifically sought to avoid philosophical debates. Louis Henkin was one of the eventual participants in the political process by which international norms were established, and in 1990 he wrote:

The idea of rights here distilled from contemporary international instruments responds, I believe, to common moral intuitions and accepted political principles. Those intuitions and principles have not been authoritatively articulated. Developed during the decades following the Second World War, international human rights are not the work of philosophers, but of politicians and citizens, and philosophers have only begun to try to build conceptual justifications for them. The international expressions of rights themselves claim no philosophical foundation, nor do they reflect any clear philosophical assumptions; they articulate no particular moral principles or any single, comprehensive theory of the relation of the individual to society. That there are “fundamental human rights” was a declared article of faith, “reaffirmed” by “the peoples of the United Nations” in the United Nations Charter. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, striving for a pronouncement that would appeal to diverse political systems governing diverse peoples, built on that faith and shunned philosophical exploration.

In recent scholarship, the subject of human rights has been approached and studied as a political construction, the outcome of a concerted effort to build a public and worldwide consensus. From a constructivist perspective, human rights can be viewed as a project involving political strategy, diplomatic initiatives, and negotiated agreements. It is from this angle that the question of human rights is approached in this essay.

The role of Muslim states in the construction of the principal international human rights standards is the focus of this essay. The international human rights project engaged diplomats for some twenty years, producing the UDHR (1948) and two major human rights treaties: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Social, Economic, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) (1966). The purpose of this essay is to share the results of an inquiry into the role and contributions of nation-states whose governments at mid-century identified themselves with Muslim or Arabo-Muslim traditions. The role of these states in shaping the international standards, and in shaping the debate around them, is not well-known. Frequently, it is supposed that Muslim states were either absent, fundamentally contested the process and project, or played no significant role. That is not the case.

This article is divided into three parts. The first part establishes essential elements of context. The second (and main) part of the essay reports and analyzes contributions to the mid-century process of constructing human rights norms that in some way are linked to the Muslim world. This part of the essay includes a review of participants and their roles as well as the ideas and issues they advanced and defended. It reviews contributions both to the UDHR (1946–48) and to the two covenants (1949–1966). The essay concludes with commentary and reflections on these contributions.

This essay does not pretend to establish a complete and exhaustive account of the participation of Muslims or the role of states representing large Muslim constituencies in the UDHR formation process. The research on which it is based draws on sources accessible in the West, though some of them obscure. To the author’s knowledge, archival records from the Middle Eastern and other Muslim countries are not abundant. Through this initial effort, however, it is hoped that others will be led to search for materials and records that could add to the base of current understanding. In particular, the intentions and engagement of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia—over the full twenty-year period—bear further scrutiny.

B. Preface

Three documents are considered to establish the bedrock of international human rights standards, and international human rights law. They include the UDHR (1948), the ICCPR, and the ICESCR. [See Box 1.] Together, these three documents comprise the “International Bill of Rights.” The two covenants are legally binding treaties. Both of them were ratified by a sufficient number of states to enter force as international law in 1976, and there were more than 140 state parties to each of them by the end of 2002. More than a dozen other international human rights treaties and standards build on this foundation.

The political process by which the UDHR was negotiated was thoroughly documented by the United Nations. This was mainly due to an extension of initial enthusiasm about, and interest in, what was a new international organization, representing a fresh beginning. Nevertheless, the political history of the UDHR is not well-known. As this author has argued elsewhere, unwarranted assumptions are often made about its origins. For example, contrary to popular understanding, research carried out over the past decade has revealed that:

• the initiative for an international human rights declaration was not a post-war idea but can be traced back to the 1920s; 
• the Great Powers did not embrace the idea of human rights as they met to lay the foundation for the UN at Dumbarton Oaks; 
• it was small countries and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) who worked to ensure that multiple references to human rights were inserted in the UN Charter; 
• neither Eleanor Roosevelt nor Rene Cassin can be credited with “authoring” the UDHR; and 
• the US cannot be considered its great champion. 

BOX 1

BOX 1 Components of the International Bill Rights

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Approved by the UN General Assembly in 1948.

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Text approved by the UN General Assembly in 1966. Opened for signature and ratification in 1966. Entered force of international law in 1976.

International Covenant on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Text approved by the UN General Assembly in 1966. Opened for signature and ratification in 1966. Entered force of international law in 1976.

This article is divided into three parts. The first part establishes essential elements of context. The second (and main) part of the essay reports and analyzes contributions to the mid-century process of constructing human rights norms that in some way are linked to the Muslim world. This part of the essay includes a review of the origin of the UDHR and the origin of the political idea of human rights. In addition to Tony Evan’s 1996 volume, US Hegemony and the Project of Universal Human Rights, we now have The Evolution of Human Rights: Visions Seen by Paul Lauren (1998); Johannes Morsink’s The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Origins, Drafting, and Intent (1999), and A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (2001) by Mary Ann Glendon.

The UN records have been reexamined, as have papers of the US State Department and some papers deposited by the Soviet Union. Private papers and memoirs of Eleanor Roosevelt and John Humphrey, the first UN human rights secretary, are available, as are diaries and other writings of or about such figures as Charles Malik, Peng Chun Chang, Hernan Santa Cruz, Carlos Romulo, and Shaista Ikramullah. The record is by no means complete, but is in much better shape today than several years ago, to establish and interpret the negotiations that led to the UDHR.

Proceedings that led to the covenants have been subject to much less scholarly scrutiny, but UN documentation is extensive. In addition to UN documents, available resources include the recently published four-volume diary of Humphrey, Louis Henkin’s edited volume on the International Bill of Rights, Marc Bossuyt’s guide to preparatory work on the ICCPR, and the final chapter of Paul Lauren’s The Evolution of Human Rights. There does not appear to have been any previous analysis of the role of Muslim and Middle Eastern diplomats in these proceedings.

A final word about the three-part Bill of Rights is warranted. The eventual shape of the basic human rights standards was not anticipated in 1946, when the UN Commission on Human Rights was established. There was no initial agreement on whether to have a single document, or to create multiple documents with different legal standing. Wrangling over the form of the documents cut across multiple political divides, and the arguments are too complex to recount here.

Readers of this essay will want to note, however, that participants in the debate were divided over two main issues. The first issue was whether or not the initial document—what eventually became the UDHR—should be made legally binding. By a large consensus, this issue was resolved in favor of making it a declaratory statement. The second issue concerned whether to construct one legal document, or two. Many small states (as well as Soviet bloc countries and several Western powers) strenuously objected to a division, but in the end, US concerns held sway on this issue. In 1951, in deference to threats that a single covenant would result in US withdrawal from the UN project, UN members agreed to create two treaties: one on “civil and political rights” and the other on “social, cultural, and economic rights.”

All three documents comprising the International Bill of Rights involved extensive negotiations. The UDHR, a stand-alone declaratory statement of thirty articles, was constructed over a period of two years by a drafting committee. It was debated with great deliberation over a two-month period by delegates to the United Nations General Assembly’s Third Committee (UNGA Third Committee). The text approved by the Third Committee was referred to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) plenary on 10 December 1948, where, after additional scrutiny and some additional amendments of form, it was adopted without dissenting vote. Eight states, including Saudi Arabia, abstained.

The single corpus of rights established by the Declaration was subsequently divided, and two separate treaties (the covenants) were elaborated over the next eighteen years. During this time, membership in the UN expanded greatly. By the mid-1960s, the number of countries participating in the process of constructing these standards had more than doubled. When the two covenants were forwarded to the UNGA for final approval in 1966, there was no opposition of any kind. Both covenants were approved by unanimous votes of the UNGA, at that time consisting of more than 100 members. Among the countries participating in the vote this time were Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Mauritania, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, and Yemen.

3. Muslim Contributions and Contributions by Muslim and Middle Eastern Diplomats

Completion of the three documents comprising the International Bill of Rights required steady work for twenty years. The Commission on Human Rights began work on the UDHR in 1946, and it was accepted by the UNGA in December 1948. The Commission then worked on the draft covenants at every annual session from 1949 to 1954, during which time it circulated early drafts to governments and intergovernmental organizations for comment. In 1950, during the UN Fifth Session, all member states were given opportunity to comment on the several substantive issues pertaining to the draft covenants. This was arguably the moment when diplomats exercised greatest influence on the shape and content of the two human rights covenants.

The UNGA’s Third Committee discussed the initial draft for several weeks and sent it back to the Commission with instructions for changes. When the Human Rights Commission finalized its draft of the covenants in 1954, they were referred to the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), which in turn passed them on to the UNGA for formal review and debate in the UNGA’s Third Committee. That fall the Third Committee began an article-by-article scrutiny of the draft covenants, a process that would ultimately span twelve years. The text was finalized, and the treaties were opened for signature and ratification in 1966.

Over the course of this lengthy process, UN membership grew dramatically, and many new voices were added to the debate. There was a near total turnover among diplomats who participated in the process of constructing the human rights standards, and only a handful of individuals participated in the process for more than a few years. Those whose names appear repeatedly in accounts that cover ten years or more include Charles Malik (Lebanon), Rene Cassin (France), Jamil Baroody (Saudi Arabia), Hernan Santa Cruz (Chile), Karim Akroul (Lebanon), and Minerva Bernar-dino (Dominican Republic). Eleanor Roosevelt was removed from the US delegation by the Eisenhower Administration, and she died several years before the covenants were completed.

Because the gestation was so long, it is difficult to speak both generally and accurately about the participation of any single state or group of states. Not only did diplomats rotate out and new member states join the discussion, but the governments and policies of some states changed mid-course. Egypt, for example, entered the political process as a monarchy, but was represented by an Arab nationalist government for most of the period of negotiation (and for three years was politically joined with Syria as the United Arab Republic). As a means of approaching the question of participation, it is helpful to think of each of the three instruments as having an initial drafting phase followed by a more formal debate phase. The Commission on Human Rights, comprised of eighteen delegates from elected member states, oversaw the drafting phase for all the instruments. The Commission focused on the UDHR from 1946 to 1948, and it worked on the two covenants concurrently from 1949 to 1954. Formal debates on all three instruments took place in the UNGA’s Third Committee.

Box 2 provides a general overview of regional representation in the twenty-year process. When work on the project began in 1946, many Middle Eastern states were not yet members of the UN. Lebanon and Egypt were represented on the Commission during the first years of the UN, and they made direct contributions to early drafts of the UDHR. When the draft UDHR was forwarded to the Third Committee in 1948, opportunities for participation increased. The UN official record of the Third Committee’s proceedings in 1948 registers interventions from, among others, Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Syria during the article-by-article review of the UDHR. Both Egypt and Lebanon offered a substantial number of amendments to the draft prepared by the Commission.

By 1960, when the covenants were being discussed in the Third Committee, some eighteen UN member states had sizable Muslim populations and were actively participating in the process. From 1949 to 1963 representatives from Lebanon, Egypt, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan (at various times) held seats on the Commission. And finally, Halima Embarek Warzazi of Morocco chaired the 1966 session of the Third Committee, in which debate over implementation of articles in the two covenants was concluded, and the overall text of these draft treaties confirmed for formal and final consideration by the UNGA in plenary.

Box 2 also highlights the participation of certain individuals from the region. One Arab stands out above others, though he was an Arab Christian, not an Arab Muslim. Charles Malik of Lebanon was involved in the UN human rights project almost from its inception. Humphrey in his memoir identifies Malik as one of two main intellectuals who worked on the UDHR (the other was Peng Chun Chang from China). Malik contributed to substantive debates in the drafting phase of the UDHR, but his political role throughout the process was also substantial. He was rapporteur of the Commission in its earliest years, and in autumn 1948 he chaired the Third Committee debates. As such, he was responsible for ensuring the range of participation, the good order of discussion, and the political agreement on the outcome.

BOX 2 The International Bill of Rights—Contributions from the Middle East and Muslim World

Instrument	Phase	Participants from Middle East and Muslim World
UDHR	discussion	countres:	Egypt, Lebanon
	(Human Rights
	Commission)
	1946–1948	individuals:  Charles Malik, Omar Loutfi
	debate (UNGA	countries:	Afghanistan, Egypt, Lebanon, Pakistan,
	Third Committee)		Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran
	1948	individuals:  Charles Malik (Lebanon), Jamil Baroody
			(Saudi Arabia), Shaista Ikramullah
			(Pakistan)
the Covenants	discussion	countries:	Egypt, Lebanon, Pakistan, Afghanistan
(ICESCR and	(Human Rights
ICCPR)	Commission)
	1949–1954	individuals (selected):		Charles Malik (Lebanon),
			Mahmoud Azmi Bey (Egypt)
	debate (UNGA	countries:	Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt (UAR),
	Third Committee)		Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon,
			Libya, Malaya, Mauritania, Morocco,
			Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria,
			Tunisia, Yemen
	1954–1966	individuals (selected):		Jamil Baroody (Saudi Arabia);
			Bedia Afnan (Iraq); Abdul Rahman
			Pazhwak (Afghanistan); Abdul Kayaly and
			Jawaat Mufti (Syria); Begum Aziz Ahmed
			(Pakistan); Abdullah El-Erian (UAR);
			Mohammed Chakchouk (Tunisia); Abdul
			Latif Hendraningrat (Indonesia); Wan Mustapha bin Haji Ali (Malaya); Halima Embarek Warzazi (Morocco)

In 1951, he succeeded Eleanor Roosevelt as Chair of the Human Rights Commission, and Humphrey considered him a great improvement, writing in his private diary: “Malik was unanimously elected chairman of the [Human Rights Commission] this morning. He isn’t perfect—no one is—but he will be a good chairman something this commission has been without since its inception.” In earlier entries, Humphrey was not always flattering in his assessment of Malik, noting first an apparently excessive effort to please people and then later a streak of abrasiveness that won him enemies rather than friends.

Malik was a Thomist philosopher and was fiercely attached to the idea of natural rights, which he argued at length with other delegates, including Peng Chun Chang of China and Charles Duke from United Kingdom. Although Malik’s strong personality brought him into conflict with many he worked with, during his early years of work on the human rights project, he also served as UN spokesperson for the Arab League. Glendon, who has had access to Malik’s personal papers, reports that he was deeply enmeshed in diplomatic efforts to craft a solution to the Palestine crisis early in 1948, and many times thereafter. Malik can be considered a representative of the Middle East, though not a representative of Muslim views.

Other individuals from the region acquired a certain prominence as work on the Declaration proceeded. They include Omar Loutfi, who represented Egypt on the Commission for several years and in 1955 chaired the Third Committee; Karim Azkoul, representing Lebanon in Third Committee debates chaired by Malik; and Baroody, a Lebanese diplomat who had lived in Saudi Arabia for many years and was accredited by the Saudi Arabian UN delegation for more than twenty years.

Muhammad Zafrullah Khan, Foreign Minister of Pakistan and head of Pakistan’s UN delegation in 1948, did not enter the debate on the UDHR until the final days of its review. However, he made a long-lasting impression with strong words about freedom of religion, which he addressed to the UNGA in plenary session. In 1949, when the Commission began its work of drafting the covenants several other individuals rose to the fore, including Bedia Afnan from Iraq, Jawaat Mufti from Syria, and Abdul Rahman Pazhwak from Afghanistan. Pazhwak served as chair of the Commission in 1963, as did Egypt’s Mahmoud Azmi in 1953. Information on some of these figures was located by McGill University archivist John Hopkins as he was editing Humphrey’s papers, and his brief biographical notes are presented in Box 3.

Thus, as a point of departure, it can be seen that the governments of the Muslim world were present and represented throughout the process that led to the International Bill of Rights. As the following passages demonstrate, they were present not simply as passive witnesses, but as active participants who contributed to the debate and helped shape its outcome.

C. Issues of Concern

By the second half of 1948 there were many issues on the international human rights agenda. Not all of them were equally compelling to Middle Eastern and Muslim delegates. (The same could be said, of course, for every delegation.) States referred to at the time as the Great Powers had just emerged from a war that had spread its horror all over the world, but even so, that war had left some regions and societies more morally and physically devastated than others.

At mid-century there was no shortage of events and developments to shock the human conscience and demonstrate the urgent need to protect human rights. Nazi atrocities had been revealed and continued to horrify. In South Africa, the Nationalist Party had come to power on a platform of racial and ethnic discrimination. Pakistan and India were engaged in a war that some called genocidal. Zionist leaders would soon claim a right to statehood, dispossessing and displacing thousands of Palestinian Arabs in the process. Civil war in China would leave human casualties and produce revolutionary change. The British, French, Belgians and Dutch were trying (somewhat desperately) to hold onto their empires. Foreign rule was a thorn in the flesh of colonized nations. Latin Americans, politically independent, hoped that the end of the war and the reconfiguration of world power would gain them a place of political respect in world affairs.

For the United States and the former Soviet Union, the first chilly winds of the Cold War had begun to blow, and that conflict would eventually shade every aspect of US foreign policy. But the US had additional concerns about human rights. At home, powerful advocates of “states’ rights” (favoring many discriminatory and racist policies) agitated against Roosevelt-era progressive federalism. Far from agreeing to an expansion of rights, fervent anti-Communists sought to restrict civil liberties in the US. Among US politicians and diplomats there was concern that too much talk of human rights in the UN could create any number of difficulties for them at home, and that the US Senate would never ratify a far-reaching text.

The Soviets for their part faced a world in which they were isolated. Their ideology was regularly attacked, and reliable partners were few. They governed repressively at home and installed like-minded governments in the battered and broken Eastern European countries over which they gained tutelage at the end of the war. Stalinist terrors remained a horrible secret.

This was the world out of which the three major human rights instruments were born. Over the two decades of their incubation, political issues and concerns evolved, and the locus of debate spread to several UN organs. By consequence, the task of assessing the “most important” issues for the Commission or the Third Committee during this period is a highly subjective one. Are the most important issues the ones that inspired the lengthiest debate, elicited the most passion, or engaged the interests of the most powerful players? The question has no simple answer.

The best-known version of the story of the UDHR and the covenants turns around Great Power interests, and particularly Cold War tensions. In re-reading both the detailed and summary accounts of UN debates about these instruments, it is clear that not all players were equally engaged in that ideological sparring. (And it is also apparent that the Cold War was only one of several political concerns nursed by delegates from the US.) The hostility between the US and Soviet bloc was so palpable that no participant could have been unaware of the tensions, but there was certainly more than one set of concerns, and more than one story to tell.

By 1950 the Human Rights Commission had identified four critical policy issues that it felt needed to be decided before the Commission could make further progress on what it then expected, to be a single treaty. Those four issues provide some insight as to the fault lines of the general debate. First, the Commission asked for the Third Committee’s views on the adequacy of the first eighteen draft articles, extending from the UDHR. Two sub-questions were posed—should any additional rights be included in the covenant, and were the articles drafted in such a way as to provide adequate protection of the rights they set forth? This set of articles contained the substantive provisions of the post-UDHR covenant, and the 1950 review offered a critical opportunity for states to express any reservations.

Second, and specifically, was it desirable to add articles on socioeconomic rights? Third, the Human Rights Commission asked about the desirability of including articles that would create special provisions for applicability to federal states and to non-self-governing territories (including colonies). Finally, did the Third Committee view the articles relating to implementation as adequate?

BOX 3 Prominent Diplomats from Muslim States Participating in Various Stages UN  Human Rights Debates

Omar Loutfi Egyptian lawyer and diplomat, was his country’s representative to the UN from 1949– 1963. In 1948 he was a member of the Human Rights Commission and he became legal counselor to his delegation in 1949. He became well known in 1956 when, in addition to chairing the Third Committee, he represented Egypt’s interests during the Suez crisis before the General Assembly. He served as UN Under-Secretary for special political affairs from 1961–1963.

Jamil Murad Baroody Lebanese-born Arab diplomat, was Saudi Arabian alternate Permanent Representative to the UN (1947–1957). He was Arab Political and Economic Observer, London (1929, 1935– 1939), taught Arabic at Princeton (1943) and became advisor to the Arabic edition of Readers’ Digest (1944–1947). He joined the Royal Delegation of Saudi Arabia to the San Francisco Conference (1945), and served as Deputy Permanent Representative of Saudi Arabia to the UN, with the rank of Ambassador (1957–1979).

Bedia Afnan Iraqi diplomat and Permanent Delegate to the U.N. European Office. [Iraqi representative to the General Assembly Third Committee, 19xx–19xx

Jawaat Mufti Syrian diplomat and international civil servant, worked for the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1947–1956). He was Deputy Permanent Representative, New York (1958–1959), Minister to the U.K. (1961–1962), and the U.S. (1962–1965). He was Deputy Resident Representative of the United Nations Development Programme for Argentina (1965–1967), El Salvador (1967–1970), and the Dominican Republic (1970–1973). After being Division Chief, UNDP Regional Bureau for Africa, he became UNDP Resident Representaive for the Cameroons (1974).

Sir Muhammad Zafrullah Khan Pakistan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and leader of his delegation to the UN [in 1948]. He was a member of the minority Amahdi sect

Abdul Rahman Pazhwak Afghan journalist and diplomat. Director of the [Afghan] UN Section, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1952–58). He was Permanent Representative to the UN (1958–1973), chairing the Human Rights Commission in 1966. He was Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany (1973), India (1973–1977), and the United Kingdom (1977–1978).

Drawn from A.J. Hobbins, On The Edge Of Greatness: The Diaries Of John Humphrey, First Director Of The United Nations Division Of Human Rights, Vols. I–IV (Montreal: McGill University Libraries, 1994–2000). Supplemental material in brackets

Some of these questions touched on points that for Muslim states were of great concern. UN records suggest that over the twenty-year process of drafting and debating the UDHR and the two covenants, delegates identifying themselves and their countries with Muslim tradition took special interest in five main issues. Each of the five issues is discussed in turn. Most of them involved protracted debate, and because work on the covenants followed closely upon the UDHR, four of the five issues are threaded through consideration of both the UDHR and the covenants.

1. Religious Freedom and the Right to Change Religion

The Saudi Arabian abstention on the UNGA vote to approve the UDHR is arguably the Muslim world’s best-known connection to the mid-century efforts to create international human rights standards. That is unfortunate for several reasons. First, the Saudi abstention feeds an inference that Saudi Arabia steadily opposed the human rights project. Such an inference is difficult to reconcile with the fact that Saudi Arabia, a few years later, voted in favor of the ICCPR. The Saudi abstention on the UDHR may also lead some to infer that Saudi Arabia was disengaged from the human rights project. To the contrary, the Saudi representative was one of the few diplomats to have seen the UDHR and the covenants through, from the start, the Third Committee debates in 1948, to the end, with the approval of the covenants in 1966.

From 1948, to at least 1970, Baroody served as part of Saudi Arabia’s UN delegation, and he participated in every Third Committee session that discussed the human rights instruments. Baroody was an articulate and accomplished diplomat. Although inclined to arrogance, and sometimes querulous, he argued forcefully and commanded attention. It would be misleading to present him as an ardent defender of rights, but he was an active participant in the process and he cast votes in favor of most articles in both the UDHR and the covenants. It is perhaps ironic that after 1960, Baroody’s arguments and his familiarity with UN procedures were instrumental in moving the stalled human rights project forward. For example, in 1965 Humphrey recorded in his diary that Baroody had visited him with a proposal to unblock stalemated debate over measures of implementation.

Finally, attention to the Saudi abstention directs attention away from the substantial diversity of opinion among delegations from the Muslim world. If the story is not followed into the covenants, some may assume that views articulated by Muslim delegates were disregarded in the final text. For better or for worse, that was not the case.

Why did Saudi Arabia abstain from voting on the UDHR? In brief, it objected to provisions in Article 16 (discussed later) and Article 18. Article 18 establishes freedom of thought and religion, including the right to change one’s religion. It was to this latter provision that Saudi Arabia objected, but not on grounds that apostasy is forbidden or other points of theology. When UDHR Article 18 was initially considered by the Commission (prior to 1948), it established freedom of thought and conscience but made no reference to religion.

Ironically, the elaboration of religious freedom in this article came as a backlash to a Soviet amendment that would have limited the scope of religious freedom. The draft forwarded by the Commission established an individual right of conscience and read in part: “this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief; and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance.” Saudi Arabia was not one of the eighteen members of the Commission, so its objections were not raised until the Third Committee hearings of 1948.

When debate on this article opened, the Saudi Arabian delegate Baroody expressed his surprise that the draft article listed three freedoms: thought, conscience, and religion, but it elaborated a right to change one’s mind only with regard to religion. He argued that such sentiments had led to crusades and religious wars, charging that “throughout history missionaries had often abused their rights by becoming the forerunners of a political intervention, and there were many instances where peoples had been drawn into murderous conflict by the missionaries’ efforts to convert them.”

Baroody also challenged the French delegate to say whether the French government “had consulted the Moslem peoples of North Africa and other French territories before accepting that text,” and he asked the Lebanese delegate if Lebanon’s Muslim population had authorized him to approve the text. Saudi Arabia offered an amendment proposing to omit the phrase “freedom to change religion or belief,” and this proposal dominated discussion of Article 18, with debate lasting a full day and extending through twenty pages of official record. Some have suggested that Baroody’s arguments were probably informed by Wahhabi doctrines, but neither at this moment nor in subsequent debates did Baroody frame arguments in terms of Islamic doctrine or Arabo-Muslim culture. He did not mention or allude to a prohibition against apostasy. He did, however, take umbrage at an assertion that the Commission had consulted some religious NGOs—but none, apparently from the Muslim world. This offense, together with his more general objection to a Western bias he perceived in the draft document, seems to have fueled Baroody’s outrage about Article 18.

Whatever Baroody and others said in the public hearings, in UN corridors it was soon understood that some considered the text of Article 18 to run counter to Islamic precepts. This view, however, was not shared by all Muslim delegates. Indian delegate Mohammed Habib pointed out that the Indian constitution provided the right to convert or be converted, a provision that applied to the forty million Muslims of India. He thought it would be a “tragedy” if the Saudi amendment were approved. Sir Muhammed Zafrullah Khan prepared a speech for the UNGA plenary, asserting that his delegation felt the need to defend the honor of Islam. He felt it necessary to explain that:

The teaching of Islam was based on the Koran which contained the oral revelations made to the prophet Mohammed; the Koran was, therefore, the very word of God for Moslems. It stated that neither faith, nor conscience which gave birth to it, could have an obligatory character. The Koran expressly said, “Let he who chooses to believe, believe, and he who chooses to disbelieve, disbelieve.” [Islam] formally condemned not lack of faith, but hypocrisy.

During the same plenary session, Syrian delegate Abdul Rahman Kayaly noted that during the examination of articles in the Third Committee, it was apparent that not all UN members were in agreement. He declared the Syrian’s support of the majority’s decision, without commenting on particular articles. With regard to Article 18, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry’s legal advisor Wahid Fikry Raafat took a middle ground in that same plenary debate. He affirmed his delegation’s intention to vote for the UDHR, but posited reservations about the purported right to change religion or belief.

According to Raafat, the Egyptian government intended to apply the declaration and “execute it in all honesty,” but it seemed forthright to note that the Egyptian delegation was not entirely in accord with the article and felt that religious beliefs could not be cast aside lightly. When this article was voted on by the UNGA Plenary, four states abstained and none opposed. For the final vote on the Declaration as a whole, Egypt and Syria set aside any reservations they held and voted with other Muslim states (except Saudi Arabia) in its favor.

With the UDHR formally acclaimed by the UNGA, the human rights project returned to the Human Rights Commission for negotiation of the covenants. UN working papers do not indicate that the right to change religion was discussed by the Commission in 1949 or 1950, though Egypt remained a member of the Human Rights Commission during that time and may have cast the lone (unidentified) vote against the clause that retained that phrase. When the draft text was referred to the Third Committee in 1950, Baroody’s ire was again provoked. The UN rapporteur recorded his comments:

The Human Rights Commission had chosen to ignore the warnings of the Saudi Arabian delegation: paragraph 1 of article 13 of the draft covenant was a word-for-word reproduction of article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Therefore, he was obliged to repeat what he had said on the subject at previous sessions… The Saudi Arabian delegation urged that the phrase in question should be deleted… Its attitude was mainly due to fear of the repercussions which such a provision would have upon the Moslem world. It must not be forgotten that in the course of history missionaries had often abused their rights. Political propagandists were taking the place of religious missionaries, but the methods used varied little.

The Yemeni delegate joined with Saudi Arabia to express concern about articles that appeared to disregard consequences to Arab and Muslim countries. Egyptian delegate Azmi Bey affirmed his government’s attachment to the UDHR and described his personal participation in events to    commemorate the UDHR’s first anniversary. Nevertheless, he expressed serious concern about the inclusion of the right to change religion. He reminded delegates that the covenant was to be a legally binding document and the inclusion of this phrase could make it difficult for many governments to secure ratification.

An Egyptian effort to amend the draft text at the Third Committee’s session in 1950 was not successful, but in deference to concerns raised by several Muslim delegations, the Commission in 1952 unanimously agreed to articulate the right to maintain a religion or belief as well as to change it. A text with this change was forwarded to the Third Committee in 1954, but the brief review lasted only long enough to provide the Saudi Arabian delegate opportunity to reiterate his objections. It was not until 1960 that the Third Committee was able to focus attention on this article of the draft ICCPR. In the interim, though, few opinions had changed: the Commission’s slight alteration from 1952 did not satisfy those who opposed elaboration of a right to change one’s religion. Baroody reviewed the history of this article at length for the benefit of his newer colleagues in the Third Committee. He again argued that the phrase should be removed because it appeared to encourage the proselytizing work of missionaries.

Debate that extended over five days included hostile remarks traded by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and a plea from the newly arrived Moroccan delegate to devise a text that would take into account all beliefs (as well as the lack of belief). Many UN members felt that a guarantee of the right to change religion was necessary to give legal content to the right of freedom to believe, and they were reluctant to remove the problematic phrase. Amendments finally submitted by Brazil and Philippines proposed compromise language, and they were greeted with relief. By a vote of 54 to 0, with 15 abstentions, the Third Committee finalized the text of Article 18, and “freedom to change or maintain” became “freedom to have or adopt.” Several delegations registered their interpretation of the word “adopt” as sufficiently broad to cover the possibility of religious conversion.

Much as one might have wished it otherwise, the protracted process of elaborating and negotiating the text of the provisions concerning freedom of religion is more an illustration of the rule than demonstration of an exception. In many cases, constructing and negotiating the international human rights standards involved stubbornness, demagoguery, and power plays as much as it did principled argument and legal reasoning. For rights advocates, the Third Committee’s solution to the knotty question of freedom to change religion was neither liberal nor ideal. It was a practical solution, however, and the parochial considerations that drove it were, in the end, not all that different than arguments advanced by several states. They argued that their own legal and cultural traditions-imposed limitations on the applicability of some of the human rights principles proposed. 

Many delegates shared the sentiments of the Afghan representative, who emphasized the importance of negotiating controversial points in order to make the standards as universal as possible. That process involved some serious compromises, but it also yielded some fruit. In the end, Saudi Arabia cast its votes in favor of the covenants—as did every other member of the United Nations.

2. Gender Equality in Marriage

A second issue which elicited response from Muslim delegations—and provoked debate among them—was the question of gender equality within marriage. As Morsink has documented closely, the concern over gender equality in the UDHR and other human rights instruments has a long and complex history that can be traced back to the UN Charter itself. From 1946–1948, within the Human Rights Commission and Third Committee, the issue of gender equality was most ardently pursued by delegates affiliated with the UN Commission on the Status of Women and by the USSR. Outspoken proponents of gender equality included Bodil Begtrup (Denmark), Hansa Mehta (India), and Minerva Bernardino (Dominican Republic). Advocates of gender equality routinely objected to the exclusionary language of “all men” and “brotherhood,” and they called for explicit recognition of equality in a number of areas including the workplace, political participation, and the courts, as well as within marriage. Resistance to liberalizing language came from countries with a strong Catholic tradition and from the US, where—as the Soviets pointed out—in at least one southern state a woman had no legal personality apart from her husband.

It will perhaps come as a surprise to some readers that the Muslim world was not united on this issue, and at various moments, differences were aired in open forum. While most Muslim diplomats sought to limit gender equality, some strong voices advocating women’s rights were also lifted from among representatives of the Muslim world, including delegations from Iraq and Pakistan.

As with the issue of religious freedom, concerns about provisions for gender equality were first voiced by Muslim delegates in the 1948 Third Committee hearings, in the context of the review of what is now Article 16 of the UDHR. Delegates from the Muslim world did not routinely object to general references to gender equality included in several articles, but they did focus on the article specifically about marriage. The draft article received from the Commission declared the family as the fundamental unit of society, entitled to society’s protection. It established the right to marry (at full age), the necessity of consent for marriage, and equal rights in marriage.

Both Saudi Arabia and Egypt proposed amendments to the draft text forwarded by the Human Rights Commission. The Egyptian proposal would have replaced all specific provisions with a generic assertion of the simple right to find a family. (It was rejected by the Third Committee as too vague.) The Saudi Arabian amendment was more complex, and it provoked extended debate and some strong reactions from among the Muslim delegations. To establish some context before examining the Saudi proposal, it is worth noting that four other countries (besides Egypt and Saudi Arabia) also submitted written amendments addressing various aspects of the text. The USSR, for example, proposed that rights should be extended after divorce; Mexico proposed to insert a phrase that prohibited the imposition of limitations due to race, nationality, or religion. (The US objected to both.)

The Saudi Arabian amendment expressed two concerns, focusing attention on the phrase that accorded marriage rights to men and women “of full age,” and proposing an additional stipulation that marriage rights be subject to national laws. With regard to eligibility for marriage, Baroody argued that the phrase “full age” did not incorporate the notion of physiological development and should be replaced by the expression “legal matrimonial age.” In deference to objections raised by other delegations, he endorsed a substitute phrase, “mature age,” proposed by Syria.

The second element of the Saudi amendment proposed that men and women are “entitled to the full rights as defined in the marriage laws of their country.” Baroody pointed out that a Muslim woman could own, inherit, and dispose of property, and that in the event of a divorce, she was entitled to a pre-determined indemnity. Rapporters recorded that:

He wished, in that connection, to emphasize the fact that apparently the authors of the draft declaration had, for the most part, taken into consideration only the standards recognized by western civilization and had ignored more ancient civilizations which were past the experimental stage, and the institutions of which, for example, marriage, had proved their wisdom down through the centuries. It was not for the Committee to proclaim the superiority of one civilization over all others or to establish uniform standards for all the countries in the world.

The Saudi Arabian proposals met the approval of Syria and Lebanon, but they provoked the ire of several other delegations, including Pakistan. Pakistan was represented in the Third Committee by Shaista Ikramullah, a young woman born into the Sunni tradition and raised in Purdah. Shaista Ikramullah agreed with Saudi Arabia that “equal rights” in marriage should not be interpreted as “identical rights,” and in some cases equal rights could be a liability for women rather than an asset. She agreed that Muslim marriage laws provided adequate safeguards to women in countries where they were applied, and she objected to the Mexican amendment because it disregarded religion as a condition for marriage. But these issues, in her view, were not the main concern of the article. Rather,

[S]he thought [the article] was designed to prevent child marriage and marriages contracted without the consent of both parties, and also to ensure protection of women after divorce and the safeguarding of their property…

Unfortunately, however, she could not support the [Saudi Arabian] amendment, as she feared it would enable countries with laws discriminating against women to continue to apply them.

Both elements of the Saudi amendment failed by a large majority, that necessarily included several delegations from Muslim states.

When the text of UDHR Article 16 was forwarded to the UNGA in December 1948, it included provisions for full age of marriage partners, free and full consent of intending spouses, and equal rights as to marriage, and prohibited limitations due to race, nationality, or religion.

The text was approved unanimously during the plenary’s article-by-article vote, but Egypt’s delegate did note his discomfort with provisions that preclude discrimination on the basis of religion. He admonished his fellow diplomats to recognize the difference between restrictions “that shock the universal conscience,” such as those based on race and nationality, and restrictions against marrying those of another faith, which were religious in nature.

With the final vote on the UDHR, the issue of gender equality was temporarily laid to rest, but it quickly resurfaced when the Third Committee began its review of the Commission drafts. Divisions among Arabo-Muslim delegations remained deep. The initial draft covenant prepared by the Human Rights Commission and sent to the Third Committee for comment in 1950 did not contain an article on marriage equivalent to Article 16 of the UDHR, so comments about gender equality were attached to other provisions. The delegate from Yemen, for example, noted that the article on equality before the law and equal protection of the law “did not take into consideration the differences between the laws of the various countries, in particular with regard to marriage, divorce and inheritance.”

The Iraqi delegate countered:

The question of religion had been raised. If all nations lived in accordance with the spirit and the letter of their religion, there would be no need for a covenant on human rights. No covenant could, in any case, demand so much in respect of human rights as Islam did. The Commission on Human Rights should concentrate its attention on the similarities rather than the differences among conflicting views on human rights and thereby draft a covenant to protect the common interests of humanity.

In fact, it appears, the Iraqi delegation was deeply concerned about the draft covenant’s apparent silence on gender equality. When the moment came for the Third Committee to prepare its formal response to the Human Rights Commission (to be transmitted via ECOSOC), the Iraqi delegate insisted on the insertion of a new, generic article recognizing gender equality. The proposal was opposed by most Arabo-Muslim states, and by several Western countries.

The latter argued that a generic statement of the principle of gender equality was unnecessary, since the preamble of the covenants echoed the Charter in proclaiming the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family. Bedia Afnan, however, asserted that her delegation “believed it imperative that the equality of women in regard to [economic, social and cultural rights] should be unequivocally stated. That was the purpose of her amendment.”

A majority of states agreed, and Bedia Afnan’s insistence resulted in the creation of what is now Article 3 in both the ICCPR and ICESCR, instructing states parties to ensure the equal right of men and women to the rights set forth in both covenants. In the end, delegates felt that it was important to respect the wish of the UNGA, which had called for “an explicit recognition of equality of men and women” to the enjoyment of human rights. The recorded view of the UNGA, in turn, can be traced to the amendment proposed by Iraqi delegate Badia Afnan in 1950.

When the decision was made in 1951 to split the covenants, an article on the protection of marriage, the family, and motherhood was envisioned for the ICESCR. The UN Commission on the Status of Women lobbied for an additional article to be added to the ICCPR on the civil right to marry.

The Human Rights Commission acceded to this request in 1953 and began its work from a text provided by the Women’s Commission, based closely on Article 16 of the UDHR. In the ensuing discussion, several members of the Human Rights Commission returned to arguments that had been put forward by Muslim delegates in the 1948 hearings of the Third Committee, and the term “full age” which had caused so much debate in 1948 was quietly changed to “marriageable age.”

In approving the change, Commission members acknowledged the practical reality that marriage age varied from country to country and could be established either on grounds of legal majority or physical maturity (as Saudi Arabia and Syria had argued). The Commission also removed from the text provisions intended to prevent discrimination. Communist bloc countries represented on the Commission suggested that non-discrimination clauses should be expanded rather than reduced, which in the political context of the day was probably sufficient to ensure defeat. The phrase “without limitation due to race, religion, or nationality”—which Egypt had found objectionable—was thus removed from the text.

The Human Rights Commission completed its work on the marriage and family articles in the ICCPR and ICESCR in 1953, but they were not debated by the Third Committee until 1961. By then, the composition of most delegations had changed, and the UN membership had expanded. Voices from Ghana, Cambodia, Congo-Brazzaville, and Malaya, among others, had joined the debate. Now the Pakistani delegate was Begum Aziz Ahmed, and she found the “marriageable age” wording acceptable. Bedia Afnan of Iraq, however, found it objectionable. She challenged the phrase, but a majority supported it, and “marriageable age” remained in the text of the ICCPR.

A more engaged, and polarized, debate developed around the idea of equal rights as to marriage, contained in the final paragraph of the draft ICCPR article. In view of the agreed generic assertion of gender equality (in Article 3), some delegations felt that the Commission’s language on equality in marriage was not strong enough. The delegate from Libya argued that the text

[M]ust be formulated in such a way as to guarantee the equality of the rights and responsibilities of the spouses, without prejudicing existing family relationships and in conformity with the Charter of the United Nations… She further pointed out that, behind the emancipation of women throughout the world, it was the equality of rights and responsibilities which furnished the incentive and not the privileges and prerogatives.

Most delegations from the Muslim world were ultimately willing to settle for equivocal text forwarded by the Commission, to the effect that national legislation should “be directed towards equality of rights.”

A group of fourteen nations, however, sought wording that ensured full equality of rights in marriage. After much debate, Philippines persuaded a majority of states to accept wording that instructed states to “take appropriate steps to ensure equality of rights.” The article, as amended, was adopted 79 votes to 1, with 3 abstentions. Its final text reflects a process of political negotiation that turned primarily around the interests of certain members of the Muslim community, on the one hand, and an array of small-to-middle range powers on the other. Large states like the United States, the former Soviet Union, France, and United Kingdom were represented on the Human Rights Commission, and they had had their say in that forum. They were absent almost entirely from the debate that finalized the text in the Third Committee.

3. Social Justice and the Indivisibility of Rights

The UN Commission on Human Rights began its work in the shadow of the Cold War. By the time the UNGA’s Third Committee opened debates on the draft declaration of human rights in September 1948, tensions between the United States and the former Soviet Union were rife. These tensions were felt in most of the Committee’s eighty sessions devoted to consideration of the draft UDHR. Debate on some issues—such as the right to exit a country—turned into a contest that pitted the Soviet bloc countries against Western democracies; other debates, however, drew in a wider range of active participants, with interests of their own.

The issue of socioeconomic rights was one of them. Muslim delegates entered the debate with Syria in the lead. In the context of a difficult discussion on social security (which focused on the choice of terminology and its implications), Syrian delegate Abdul Kayaly proposed that the UDHR’s Article 22 should express concerns about social security in the broader terms of social justice. Baroody, for Saudi Arabia, added that the Syrian proposal conformed to Islamic law. He informed his colleagues on the Third Committee that Muslim populations enjoyed social security through such institutions as Zakat and Waqf, which were different than social assistance programs common in the West, but no less effective. Such Islamic institutions, he asserted, “were not only the equivalent of a social security system, their machinery was simpler, their administration less costly and their effectiveness had stood the test of fourteen centuries.”

The Syrian proposal was central to debate on this issue, and it received considerable support from various quarters. but ultimately it did not find its way into the final text of the UDHR. Although the specific Muslim proposal was not accepted, Muslim delegations generally offered strong support to articles elaborating socioeconomic rights. Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Afghanistan were among the states who supported incorporation of the right to social security, education, free choice of employment, and an adequate standard of living were included in the Declaration.

Debate about the place of socioeconomic rights carried over to the covenants, and indeed, for two years dominated the political debate. The US, in particular, considered this a question of great importance, and one that might ultimately determine whether the US would support legally binding instruments. Thus, the stakes were high. In 1950, the UN Human Rights Commission considered the question of whether a single covenant, as a legally binding treaty, should include socioeconomic rights. Within the eighteen-member Commission, a majority felt that it should. Advice was sought from the UNGA’s Third Committee, which concurred with the Commission’s majority view.

In the Third Committee debate, Egypt expressed the view that economic, social, and cultural rights had become “an essential part of the structure of civilized society.” Iraq argued that the distinction between socioeconomic rights and other fundamental human rights was merely academic, and “[a]ny right acquired by any human being should be acquired by all human beings.” Syria asserted that articles on basic economic, social, and cultural rights “should form an integral part of the draft covenant.” In its December 1950 plenary session, the UNGA affirmed these views, deciding to include socioeconomic rights in a single covenant by a vote of 35 to 9, with 7 abstentions.

The fight, however, was not over. The US was resolved not to have socioeconomic rights included in the legally binding instrument. In addition, Eleanor Roosevelt abandoned her earlier efforts to defend the economic rights that President Roosevelt had promoted as a fundamental freedom. Through a series of political maneuvers in 1951, ECOSOC asked the UNGA to reconsider its position on socioeconomic rights, and debate was eventually reopened in the Third Committee. Chile, Pakistan, Egypt, and Yugoslavia offered a resolution intended to reaffirm the UNGA’s 1950 decision, but their motion was subverted by amendments presented jointly by Belgium, India, Lebanon, and the United States.

By a vote of 29 to 21 with 6 abstentions, the Third Committee agreed not only to reconsider its earlier decision, but to divide the covenant into two separate instruments, one dealing with civil and political rights and the other with social, economic, and cultural rights. In the subsequent plenary session of the UNGA, delegates from Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt expressed grave concerns about splitting the covenants. The Saudi Arabian delegate spoke at length about the interconnection of rights:

We still maintain that human rights and freedoms, whether civil and political on the one hand or economic, social and cultural on the other hand, are so interconnected and interdependent that their separation into two documents would be artificial and arbitrary. Indeed, any human rights covenant which does not explicitly safeguard economic, social and cultural rights would, at best, be no more than an affirmation of civil and political rights which are to be found in almost all national constitutions and in the statute laws of Member States.

The Egyptian delegate, offering final commentary in the debate, pointed more ominously to political considerations and risks: [T]he Egyptian delegation is anxious to prevent the General Assembly from abandoning the position taken at its fifth session in favor of formulating economic, social and cultural rights with civil and political rights in a single covenant, and so to save from possible shipwreck a piece of work which would redound to the honor of the United Nations.

From [several discussions in several UN bodies], my delegation has the impression that some States—more especially the great Powers—are haunted by the fear of seeing the covenant on human rights completed and opened for signature and ratification. In some case this fear is due to a jealousy, which I would describe as pathological, of any interference whatever in what they regard as the hermetically closed field of their domestic affairs; in others, to the measures of international supervision to which the application of the covenant would be subjected to the advantage of some of their citizens who are segregated from society owing to discriminatory inhibitions; in yet other cases, to the inevitable consequence of extending the application of the covenant to territories under the sway of the States.

To the disappointment of many small states, the UNGA ratified the Third Committee’s decision to split the covenants and brought the divisive debate to a close.

By consequence of that decision, over the next fifteen years, the Commission and the UNGA Third Committee would prepare not one, but two, human rights covenants to complement the UDHR. During the course of that work, delegations from the Muslim world participated in debates and endorsed articles in the ICESCR protecting mothers, children, and the family (Article 10) and establishing the legal rights to gainful employment (Article 6); just and favorable conditions of work (Article 7); trade unions (Article 8); social security (Article 9); food, clothing, and housing (Articles 11); health (Article 12); education (Articles 13 and 14); and participation in cultural life, and enjoyment of the benefits of scientific progress (Article 15.

Though for many years these socioeconomic rights would be sidelined in most UN and international fora, the end of the Cold War reopened debate about the role and place of such concerns in the discourse of global politics and the international framework of human rights. Along with the right to development, the 1993 UN-sponsored World Conference on Human Rights declared that all rights included in the UDHR should be considered indivisible. Over the past decade, human rights groups in the North as well as the South have steadily increased their efforts to promote and defend these rights.

4. The Right to Self-Determination and the “Colonial Clause”

Analysis of the politics at play in the construction of the UDHR commonly acknowledge dispute over socioeconomic rights and Muslim concerns about changing religion and gender equality in marriage. Over the twenty-year history of the International Bill of Rights, however, the single issue that most engaged delegations from the Muslim world was the right to self-determination, and a companion concern that peoples in non-self-governing territories should enjoy the same human rights as citizens of sovereign states. The right to self-determination was included as Article 1 of both the ICCPR and the ICESCR largely due to the insistence, and persistence, of a coalition of states from the Middle East and South Asia. No article in the covenants was more hotly contested.

The issue first arose during the Commission’s work on the UDHR, and though it did not come to a head until work on the covenants was well underway, the story of this particular concern actually begins in 1948. The Soviet bloc countries, passing up no opportunity to needle the Western imperialists, were generally vigilant about language that appeared to exclude people living under colonial rule. As Morsink recounts, in May 1948, shortly before the draft UDHR was to be transmitted to the Third Committee for review and approval, a small group working on the preamble proposed wording that omitted any reference to peoples in non-self-governing territories. The Soviet representative objected.

The point registered with Egyptian representative Omar Loutfi, who argued it was “essential that the Declaration should state that it was for nations and peoples that were not autonomous or were under Trusteeship.” He went on to offer language that presents the UDHR’s most direct assertion of universality: rights enshrined in the Declaration apply “‘both among the peoples of the Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.’” The fact that representatives from both France and United Kingdom argued against the phrase, which they claimed was unnecessary, no doubt underscored the importance of the issue for Loutfi and others.

Loutfi’s wording was inserted into the draft UDHR’s preamble, but the matter did not rest there. In the fall of 1948 the Third Committee poured over the draft UDHR for two months, and with its task nearly complete, Charles Malik, as chairman allowed Third Committee delegates to submit additional articles for consideration. Late in November 1948, the Yugoslav delegate proposed, inter alia, a new article making clear in its separate statement that rights laid out in the UDHR applied equally to citizens of sovereign states and peoples in non-self-governing territories. The Third Committee voted to accept such an article, and charged an eleven-person drafting committee to incorporate it into the text.

The drafting committee, however, returned to the Third Committee with a significantly altered text, which represented a position inherently favored by the colonial powers. Instead of a separate article specifically mentioning the rights of peoples in the non-self-governing territories, the drafting committee had incorporated a general concern about the rights of colonized peoples into the existing article prohibiting discrimination. This maneuver clearly obscured the issue and, feeling they had been wronged, many delegates protested vehemently.

Delegates from France, Cuba, and Belgium defended the change that had been made by the drafting committee. Charles Malik, however, ruled that the drafting committee had overstepped its bounds: the article proposed by Yugoslavia and accepted by the Third Committee would be restored. Efforts to overrule Malik’s ruling were unsuccessful, but that did not discourage United Kingdom from raising the issue once more, when finally the draft UDHR was presented to the UNGA plenary, in December.

The British delegation proposed to reframe the Yugoslav article as a second clause in Article 2, effectively “demoting” concern for the colonies. This time the effort of colonial powers was successful: the UNGA voted in favor of the British proposal by a vote of 29 to 17, with 10 abstentions. As a result, the Egyptian “universality phrase” failed to stand as a separate article, though it remains in the operative text of the UDHR, as the second clause of Article 2.

Like the issue of socioeconomic rights, the troublesome question of who could be expected to benefit from human rights did not go away. As soon as work began in earnest on the legally binding covenant, it resurfaced. Several powers, including the United Kingdom, sought a clause that would limit responsibility of colonial powers to implement the covenants fully in overseas territories they controlled.

The so-called “colonial clause” was opposed by most of the lesser powers represented in the Human Rights Commission, including Chile, China, Mexico, India, and Peru. However, it was met with the most vigorous protest in the Third Committee, where Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Egypt led and shaped the debate. On numerous occasions delegates took up the message of Syrian delegate Abdul Kayaly, who declared that the colonial clause would be “contrary to the UN Charter, which was based on the principle of equality of human rights.”

The fight was not an easy one, and it was by no means assured that opponents of the colonial clause would prevail. The battle was joined in 1950, at the Third Committee’s 302nd meeting. During that session, Syria and Philippines submitted a resolution that opened two separate fronts. On one hand, they sought to preempt insertion of a colonial clause by asserting universal application of the covenant and on the other hand, they proposed an article on the “right to self-determination” in its stead. After much debate the Syria-Philippines resolution was approved by a vote of 30 to 11, with 8 abstentions. Half of the battle was won at that point: the colonial clause died in that session, though the United Kingdom would continue to advocate it on many occasions through 1954.

Gaining recognition of the right to self-determination was more difficult. During the Third Committee’s 1950 session, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia were successful in securing passage of a resolution. It called for the Human Rights Commission to study ways and means to ensure the right of self-determination and to prepare recommendations for the following year’s session of the UNGA. However, when the Human Rights Commission met in 1951, it was completely absorbed in the debate on socioeconomic rights and was not able to open discussion on self-determination. This fact provoked a coalition of thirteen states, who in the 1951 Third Committee meeting expressed their displeasure at the lack of progress on the issue and set to work drafting another resolution. Taking matters into their own hands, they prepared the text of an article on the right to self-determination and sought the Third Committee’s agreement to ask to UNGA, in plenary, to approve its insertion into the covenant.

Third Committee debates over this issue lasted a full week and produced a great display of political posturing on both sides. The thirteen-state coalition used stirring rhetoric, procedural devices, and cold logic to plow their way through “technical, methodological, and legal objections” raised by Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Greece, Liberia, Netherlands, Sweden, and Turkey. Colonial powers and their allies argued that the concept of self-determination was vague and nebulous; it was a political principle, not a legal right; it was inappropriately placed in the covenant as a collective right; it was incompatible with the envisioned implementation system; and because self-determination is achieved through a slow and gradual process it would not be furthered by a provision included in an international treaty.

The Third Committee majority were not convinced by such arguments, and they agreed to refer the matter to the UNGA plenary. In that plenary session, Syrian delegate Jawaat Mufti pointed out that the draft resolution had “evoked from the very moment of its submission a wave of protests and objections on the part of certain delegations which are in principle opposed to any measure for making respect for that right effective. These protests and objections come particularly from states administering Non-Self-Governing or Trust Territories.” Baroody, representing Saudi Arabia, added passion to the appeal:

I may perhaps be allowed one or two more minutes, because when I speak on this right of self-determination I am speaking on the part of millions who should be sitting in this General Assembly. A lot of water, so to speak, has flowed under the bridge since a request was made for the insertion of an article on self-determination in the covenant. The anguished cry for freedom and liberation from the foreign yoke in many parts of the world has risen to a very high pitch, so that even those who had been compelled to block their ears with the cotton wool of political expediency can no longer deny that they can hear it. Nor can those who have so far shielded their eyes from the dawn of a new day for those clamoring for freedom pretend that the night is not over and that darkness still prevails. . .. [T]he pressure on the gates of freedom has increased and millions and millions of people trying to break through have been kept at bay with bayonets and with tanks and machine guns. So great has been the pressure that those in the front rows have fallen as martyrs of freedom, while thousands taken into custody languish in prison depths and thousands more live in hiding, driven from the comfort of their homes. There are also those who, from fear of being killed or impounded, have fled their native land and now live as exiles in foreign climes just because they could articulate more eloquently their burning desire and that of their fellow men for freedom and self-determination.

What we are asking here is that the people living in the Non-Self-Governing Territories should be free. They cannot enjoy any human rights unless they are free, and it is in a document like the covenant that self-determination should be proclaimed. As I have no further time left in which to speak, I will end by saying that I support all those who have spoken in favor of inserting an article on the right of peoples to self-determination. 

Following these interventions, the UNGA in plenary session approved the resolution. Nevertheless, for proponents of the right to self-determination, the time to celebrate had not yet arrived.

Although the UNGA had given its explicit approval to the inclusion of an article on self-determination, several states, including Australia, Canada, Netherlands and United Kingdom, reintroduced the matter during the Third Committee’s reading of the draft covenant in 1954. The coalition supporting self-determination, however, was armed with research on the concept of self-determination (gathered from New York libraries) and fortified with new UN members added to their cause. In a show of strength, and as insurance against arguments put forward by their opponents, twenty countries now endorsed a statement affirming the right to self-determination.

In the 1955 session’s article by article debate on the covenants, there was one last round of the familiar arguments adduced many times over the previous five years. Despite dire warnings that inclusion of a right to self-determination “might jeopardize the future of the covenants,” the con-tested article was approved by a vote of 33 to 12 with 13 abstentions. Today it stands as the opening article in both the ICCPR and the ICESCR.

The political history of this article, of course, raises questions about motivation and intent. The claim to a right of self-determination clearly fueled the flames of anti-colonialism, but did it advance the definition and understanding of human rights? Throughout the period that this article was under consideration, in numerous diary entries, Humphrey despaired of the demagogic rhetoric that he felt—with some justification—was eclipsing consideration of work sponsored by the UN Division of Human Rights, including the prepared text of the covenants.

Largely unsympathetic to the emerging “UN majority” and relatively uncritical of the colonial powers’ thinly disguised efforts to protect power and privilege, Humphrey worried that the human rights vision was at risk. One of several journal entries related to the debate on self-determination reads:

Because they have not been willing to accept their responsibility the logical leaders in the U.N. battle for human rights have lost leadership in the Third Committee to certain demagogic forces. One concrete consequence of this was the adoption today by a big majority of an instruction to the [Human Rights Commission] to study “ways and means” of promoting the self determination of nations and peoples.

Others further removed from the process of negotiation have taken a broader, and more optimistic view. Cassese, for example, notes that while the article was borne of narrowly focused anti-colonial sentiments, even during the process of negotiation a broad consensus emerged that its provisions were relevant in multiple settings, including foreign occupation and domestic despotism. Thus the Syrian delegate observed that in a domestic context, the principle of self-determination “took the form of self-government, that is, a people’s right to adopt representative institutions and freely choose the form of government that it wished to adopt.” The right of self-determination was further elaborated in a 1960 UN declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, and it is now generally considered to have achieved the status of a preemptory norm of international law.

5. Measures of Implementation and the Right to Petition

A final concern that engaged the political energies of the Muslim world arose during discussion of the draft covenants, and was variously discussed under the headings of “right to petition” and “measures of implementation.” At issue was the question of enforcing the covenant and who might be permitted to refer a concern to the UN body designated to receive complaints. Some states felt that access to a complaint mechanism should be limited to states; others felt that individuals and/or NGOs should be able to forward complaints or exercise a right of petition.

Initial positions on this issue were developed in the Human Rights Commission, where Guatemala, India, France, and the Philippines advocated the right of individuals and NGOs to bring forward complaints and concerns. In the Commission, and later in the Third Committee, the former Soviet Union and Eastern European countries (except Yugoslavia) argued adamantly that any implementation measures threatened state sovereignty, and over many years they introduced several resolutions to this effect. Each one failed by a resounding majority. At the outset, Western powers were both divided and somewhat ambivalent, but by 1954, Australia, Canada, France, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States were all ready to endorse a view that the “time was not ripe” to extend a right of petition beyond the state.

Muslim interest in the issue can be traced to 1950, the earliest point at which it came before the UNGA’s Third Committee. States representing Muslim populations were not united on this issue in the same way that they were regarding the right to self-determination, but initially at least, they tended to favor centralized implementation and an expanded right of petition. In 1950, for example, the Egyptian delegate argued in the Third Committee that “[s]tates which signed the covenant in good faith need have no fear of any form of control,” and moreover asserted that “the Egyptian delegation was ready to accept the establishment of a permanent human rights committee, a court to sanction the committee’s findings, or any other provision that might seem necessary.” As the debate progressed, delegations from the Muslim world made important contributions and in some cases introduced innovative and far reaching ideas. In 1951, for example, Syria’s Jawaat Mufti proposed field investigations, conducted impartially and in good faith under UN auspices, as a means of pursuing human rights complaints and ensuring compliance with the covenants. (Saudi Arabia cautioned against going too far, lest the bounds of domestic jurisdiction be transgressed.)

Egypt was among a group of states that expressed unconditional support for the right of individuals, groups, and nongovernmental organizations to petition a Human Rights Committee, and proposed this idea to be part of the implementation measures. Mahmoud Azmi argued that the individual, as the first victim of a human rights violation, ought to have some form of redress. Had the issue been decided in 1950, several Muslim states, at least, might well have supported strong measures of implementation.

The protracted nature of the overall process used to approve the covenants, however, introduced some vagaries into the settlement of this issue. As noted in discussion of the other four issues, during the 1949 to 1954 period, discussion of the covenants moved back and forth between the Human Rights Commission and the UNGA’s Third Committee. In 1954, when the Human Rights Commission’s draft covenants were referred to the UNGA, the Third Committee set out a plan for systematic, article by article discussion of the covenants. By that plan, measures of implementation were left for discussion until the final stage, which arrived in 1963. Effectively, for nearly ten years, the UNGA set aside the question of implementation. When the Third Committee did return to it in 1963, it was obliged to note that in the interim the UN membership had doubled. New and old members alike required a new briefing on the matter. Background materials were duly assembled, but a financial crisis in the UN interrupted proceedings and discussion was ultimately delayed another two years.

By the time the Third Committee was prepared to discuss measures of implementation, in 1966, the opinions and positions of many delegations had shifted. The Soviet bloc remained firmly opposed to measures of implementation, but now they were joined by several former African colonies, expressing fear that their newly claimed sovereignty could be compromised. The Netherlands and Nordic countries, together with most Latin American countries, France, and Lebanon defended strong measures of implementation, but the Middle Eastern and Muslim countries were now more equivocal, and somewhat divided. Baroody, still representing Saudi Arabia, proposed that any review or appeal function should be carried out by national human rights commissions, with resort to international bodies after domestic appeals had been exhausted. (Humphrey initially considered this idea “cockeyed,” but he eventually warmed to it. This is basically the system of implementation in the European human rights regime today, and it is the system of implementation embedded in the 1998 Statute of the International Criminal Court.) The Saudi Arabian proposal, however inventive, received no support and was withdrawn.

Muslim states supported the creation of a Human Rights Committee to receive reports on implementation of the covenant on civil and political rights, but they generally held that its powers to pursue complaints should depend on a state’s voluntary, and optional recognition of its competence to do so. Pakistan and Egypt—sometimes joined by Iran, Libya, Tunisia, Sudan, or other Muslim delegations—were part of a loose coalition of states that sought to reduce opposition to this last set of draft articles through a process of amendments intended to remove provisions that some African and Asian states found objectionable.

They systematically proposed to limit the requirements on state parties and exclude the International Court of Justice from the implementation machinery. Most of their amendments were adopted. When Netherlands and Nigeria (with others) proposed a new article reviving the idea of a right of petition, Muslim states were among those arguing that it should be placed in an optional protocol of the ICCPR.

While these various moves considerably weakened the implementation mechanisms in the text forwarded by the Human Rights Commission, they also represented a political compromise that successfully garnered the requisite votes. States from the Muslim world threw their weight to the middle. In so doing, they helped reduce the potency of the implementation mechanisms, but at the same time they allowed the UN to bring closure to a process that had already stretched over twenty years. That process, however flawed, gave rise to the United Nations most effective human rights treaty monitoring body, the ICCPR Human Rights Committee, which today regularly hears state reports and individual complaints.

D. Commentary

UN records point to the active engagement of delegations from the Muslim world in the twenty-year negotiation of international human rights standards. This essay has sought to identify the issues that appeared most salient to them. By the provisions they actively promoted, the ideas they argued against, and the various proposals to which they lent political support, Muslim delegates helped give shape to international human rights instruments. They also engaged in the political process by strategizing, lobbying, and arguing-in favor of ideas they supported and against ideas they opposed. Like other states, they used procedural rules, polemic, and diplomatic finesse both to resist provisions that seemed unacceptable because they were contrary to practice of culture or provisions of law and to advance a favored political and ideological agenda.

Beyond this brief summary, an important question lingers. How, at the distance of half a century, are we to interpret the participation of Muslim states in the international human rights project? This is a difficult question and one that requires careful handling, for it leads perilously close to the impassioned and tangled debates from which this essay is distanced. Nevertheless, the following observations are offered.

As a first response, the factual record of participation, contributions, and textual changes puts to rest the crudest charges that Muslim states—and Islamic civilization—were excluded from the process of constructing the international human rights standards. The record of that political process makes it difficult to sustain the bald argument that human rights standards were developed by the West and imposed on the rest of the world. As should now be apparent, delegates from the Muslim world made some very real contributions to the debate and to the resultant text. Paradoxically, neither the equivocal language on freedom to change religion nor the boldest statement of gender equality would have been included in the ICCPR and ICESCR without the participation of Muslim states, nor would the clearest statement of universality be found in the UDHR. The right to self-determination also owes its place in the covenants to the persistence of states from the Muslim world. Official records establish the presence and active participation of delegates from the Muslim world, but they do not address Richard Falk’s more serious charge that the human rights enterprise is tainted by false universalism, “a mask worn to obscure Western civilizational hegemony.” Framing his essay in part as a response to the Huntington clash thesis, Falk asserts that Islamic civilization has suffered from geopolitical exclusion. He argues that the divide characterized by Huntington as a clash of civilizations and attributed to fundamentally incompatible normative frameworks in an age of the declining state is in fact the by-product of geopolitical exclusion.

Rejecting both the premise and the conclusion of Huntington’s celebrated essay, Falk proposes normative adjustment as a plausible response to the wounding insult of geopolitical exclusion, a solution more desirable than civilizational conflict. Normative adjustment would involve a reshaping of human rights discourse to make belated provisions for inter-civilizational participation. This task would be advanced by reinterpretation of the current normative expression of rights through a process of inter-civilizational dialogue and legitimation, as well as a reclamation of genuinely universal claims that “continue to be denied by a reliance on civilizational authority.”

This is not the place to engage an extended debate on Falk’s finely nuanced analysis, which in many regards is compelling. But Falk does build his argument on a premise that Islamic civilization was denied a right to participate in the elaboration of contemporary international human rights standards. That premise requires inspection, and the review of Muslim state participation offered in this essay provides the necessary data for that task. The construct of false universalism, in turn, provides an intellectual measure against which to evaluate the quality of participation by Muslim states.

To assess the participation (or exclusion) of Muslim states in the mid-century human rights project, and the aura of false universalism that potentially hangs over it, we must begin with some consideration of the historical context. During the initial years of negotiation, several Middle Eastern and Muslim states had governments that espoused a liberal political doctrine, with varying degrees of commitment to some form of participatory governance and rule of law. This political disposition was reflected in the diplomatic corps.

Historians will not be surprised to learn that in the course of debate over the international human rights instruments, Muslim delegates expressed concerns about the logical coherence of the draft texts and alluded to legal principles of positive law, the protection of individuals, and the duties and responsibilities of states as often as they did to Islamic culture and Islamic law. They understood and accepted that they were crafting standards of good governance that engaged all governments. Representing Pakistan in 1948, for example, Shaista Ikramullah charged that “[i]t was imperative that the peoples of the world should recognize the existence of a code of civilized behavior which would apply not only in international relations but also in domestic affairs.”

The fact that several states—including Iraq, Morocco, Libya, and Iraq, as well as Pakistan—chose to place women on their UN delegations also speaks to their attachment to liberal values, and to the image they sought to create and project. Even as Arab socialism took root and spread through the Middle East, Arab and Muslim delegates continued to represent their attachment to liberal values.

In this historical context, did such diplomats wear the mask of false universalism? Could they have been authentic, legitimate representatives of their states, of their national cultures? Did they adequately project the voices of their own people and their own value systems? These questions cannot be answered in any unequivocal way, not least because the answers are conditioned by a particular political moment and engage much broader and deeper debates about political legitimacy. What is clear is that these diplomats were the duly accredited representatives of their states, formally admitted as members of the United Nations.

If individual diplomats from Muslim states were removed from their own people by culture and by class, that did not necessarily differentiate them from their European and US counterparts, many of whom were also distanced from prevailing norms in their own societies. One needs only to consider the ferocity of the US struggle over civil rights in the 1960s to recognize how shallow was the concept of human rights in the US, for example. In the early 1950s, US Senator John Bricker—vice presidential nominee in the 1948 US presidential election—described the proposed human rights covenant as “completely foreign to American law and tradition” and sought to “bury [it] so deep that no one holding office will ever dare to attempt its resurrection.” Indeed, in 1953 the US announced—and widely disseminated—its intention not to ratify the covenants, and soon thereafter it essentially withdrew from the negotiation process.

Eleanor Roosevelt protested that decision, despairing that “We have sold out to the Brickers and the McCarthys.” George Kennan, however, suggested that it was Eleanor Roosevelt who was out of touch and out of reach of Washington, writing in a confidential memo that “numbers of people who play important parts in UN affairs, both within the [State] Department and in our delegation in New York, have grown up in their official duties with a different philosophy of foreign affairs than that which prevails elsewhere in the Department.” (Indeed, many in the US were suspicious of the UN: US employees of the UN were prime suspects for the McCarthy witch hunt of the 1950s.)

The diplomats representing Muslim states were not populist representatives of Muslim or Arabo-Muslim culture, but several other facts raise doubts about the extent to which their participation should be discounted as complicit support of Western civilizational hegemony. Under conditions of false universality, one might have expected delegates acting as Western proxies to offer proposals that could be easily endorsed by the hegemonic powers. That was not often the dynamic with proposals from Muslim delegations. From the outset, Arabo-Muslim delegates identified with victims of human rights violations. The plight of Palestinian refugees was the only topic that was allowed to interrupt the Third Committee’s consideration of the UDHR during the fall of 1948, and a report by the UN mediator on Palestine brought human rights considerations into clear focus for all the Middle Eastern delegates.

The Saudi Arabian delegate regularly seized opportunities to remind Western powers of the suffering of peoples whose rights were not respected. From the earliest debates in the Third Committee he protested the apparent dominance of Western traditions and alerted colleagues of his intention to challenge the language of the draft Declaration where its provisions ran counter to “Eastern” culture. Through twenty years of debate, delegates from Muslim states demonstrated that they did not always share the same views among themselves, and Western states did not always side with proposals that many would view in keeping with Western values. At various moments, for example, Western states resisted efforts to include liberal provisions for non-discrimination, minority rights, and gender equality as well as strong measures of implementation.

On several occasions, Muslim states played their hand by calling upon hegemonic states to live up to their own proclaimed values, in the overseas territories that they controlled. Do such self-interested moves cast doubt on the sincerity of Muslim delegates and their commitment to the human rights project? Perhaps. Yet the record inscribed on several hundred pages of UN documents suggests that no delegate, from any country, was immune to political considerations.

With few exceptions, those involved in the process were statesmen and diplomats, not human rights activists or advocates. Some may have been skeptical or cynical all the way through. It does seem, however, that diplomats occasionally allowed themselves to be taken by the moment, inspired by a vision. Thus we find the lofty words of Syrian delegate Abdul Rahma Kayaly, offered to the UN UNGA immediately following acclamation of the UDHR: “[C]ivilization [has] progressed slowly, through centuries of persecution and tyranny, until, finally, the present declaration [has] been drawn up. . .. Now at last the peoples of the world [will] hear it proclaimed that their aim [has] been reached by the United Nations.”

At the same time, it is important to recognize that participants represented governments, and governments pursue their interests in multiple ways. Contradictory forces are often at work. Moravcsik points out, for example, that in Western Europe, the 1949 to 1950 negotiations for the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms inspired an odd coalition that united “established democracies

. . . with dictatorships and transitional regimes in opposition to [the human rights convention].” Contrary to expectation, within Europe at the time, “[t]he primary proponents of reciprocally binding human rights obligations were [not the tried and true democracies but] instead the governments of newly established democracies.”

It is sometimes argued that countries endorse or ratify human rights standards because they wish to uphold national culture (the West) or because they wish to impress outsiders (the rest). With regards to postwar Europe, and post-Soviet Europe, Moravcsik has shown that those with greatest incentives to endorse universal human rights standards are political elites in newly democratized countries, who seek to lock-in democratic gains. All of these considerations complicate the effort to assess the degree to which Muslim states, and Muslim statesmen, participated fully and in full representation of their government and their society. The claim of false universalism can neither be sustained nor fully eliminated. There is one important way, however, in which Muslim-state delegates, and the societies they represented, were indisputably at a disadvantage throughout the twenty-year period of negotiation.

In addition to formal, diplomatically accredited representation at the UN, Western society was present and participated in the construction of human rights norms through several international NGOs (themselves accredited to the UN). Muslim states had no comparable presence. Whereas voting rules and elaborate procedural mechanisms formally ensured a level playing field for state representatives at the UN, it can be argued that the presence of mostly Western NGOs opened up a channel of participation for Western society that enhanced a process of legitimation for the human rights standards in those societies.

It has already been noted the Saudi Arabian delegate’s ire when Eleanor Roosevelt, as chair of the Human Rights Commission, explained to the Third Committee that the draft article on freedom of religion had been approved by the Commission “only after lengthy debate and as a result of consultation with representatives of different religious communities.” This was the comment that inspired Baroody to ask the delegates from Lebanon and France if they had consulted the Muslim populations under their jurisdiction.

International NGOs with access to the UN and national delegations were able to provide both commentary and input as drafts were being constructed. In this way, some of the most difficult social issues faced by Western society at the time (such as divorce) were removed from or finessed in the text, with no great fanfare. If the Muslim concerns about changing religion had initially been handled in this manner, Saudi Arabia might have joined other Muslim states in casting its vote for the UDHR.

One may speculate about the likely outcome had NGOs from the Middle East and Muslim states (such as there were) been represented in the UN family from 1946 to 1966. If Muslim voices of the day had been joined to those representing Catholics, Protestants, Quakers, and Jews, how might the mix of views have been different and how would negotiation of the text have been affected? As a result of Muslim lobbying, some rights might have been couched in more restrained language—but inclusion of voices from Muslim society might just as readily have enhanced some liberal views. We cannot exclude the possibility, for example, that a liberal perspective on gender rights would have been strengthened. Tunisia, after all, produced its very liberal Code of Personal Status in 1956, after President Bourguiba consulted with clerics and encouraged an active women’s lobby affiliated with the ruling party to lend their support. Such groups, it seems likely, would have formed the backbone of any representation of civil society in that epoch.

There is also a possibility that the active presence of Arab and Muslim representatives of civil society would have garnered attention and support for ideas proposed along the way by individual Muslim delegations. Syria, for example, had put forward the idea of “social justice,” and there was sufficient support for the concept to imagine that with active lobbying by civil society organizations, that that idea might have found its way into the final text. Likewise, many states felt that there should be a better articulation of individual duties than is currently found in UDHR Article 29, and Muslim civil society would likely have supported such an idea.

If Muslim civil society had been in a position to savor the fruits of active lobbying efforts, would that have allowed subsequent generations of Muslim citizens to claim ownership of the international standards more easily? And would it have emboldened them to hold their governments accountable to the standards and instruments they had helped to create? In the early years of the long negotiation process, delegates from Muslim states anticipated that there would be international instruments of implementation, possible inspections by the UN, and an appeals mechanism available to individual victims of human rights violations.

Speculation may seem idle at this point, but it is idle only in the sense that events did not unfold as imagined and that history cannot be changed. Counterfactual imagining does invite reflection on the actors, institutions, and the process by which international human rights standards were established. The fact that Muslim civil society was not represented in the sidebar process of constructing international human rights standards may lend some urgency to Falk’s concern for the need to attend to inter-civilizational inclusion as human rights standards continue to be developed. The case for revising or reconstructing existing international standards on the grounds that the process of their negotiation was insufficiently participatory is less obvious, or convincing. Rather, it would seem that those interested in advancing democracy and social welfare in the Muslim world have an inherent interest in reclaiming and advertising the history of their own states’ participation in the process of assembling those human rights standards. Many human rights groups operating in the Middle East and Muslim world depend on international standards to anchor their claims for justice, representation, and an array of human rights, yet they appear generally unaware of the degree to which their states were invested in the negotiations that created those standards. The history of Muslim states in the negotiation process has been lost, or mislaid, and it is hoped this essay has contributed to its recovery. This article’s emphasis on the contributions of Muslim states is not intended to minimize real and pervasive power differentials or the influence that Western powers have exercised both openly and in more subtle ways. At the same time, we must recognize an ironic truth that hegemonic power is increased when all significant outcomes are ascribed to hegemonic influence. The role of Muslim states in creating the international human rights standards should neither be exaggerated, nor discounted.