Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Palais de Chaillot, 10 December 1948

At its 183rd plenary meeting at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris on 10 December 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 217 A (III), proclaiming the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The recorded vote was 48 in favor, none against and eight abstentions. Of the 58 UN members at the time, Honduras and Yemen were absent rather than abstaining, and Honduras afterwards formally regretted its representative's unavoidable absence and said that representative would have voted yes.

Thirty articles and no court

The Assembly proclaimed a preamble and 30 articles as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and nations, covering civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights.

It was adopted as a declaration rather than a treaty and imposed no binding treaty obligations that night. The binding covenants meant to complement it still had to be drafted and adopted.

How the text reached the Assembly floor

After nearly two years of Commission, Drafting Committee and Third Committee work, the Third Committee sent the completed text to the General Assembly, which debated it in its 181st through 183rd plenary meetings.

The drafting behind it was multinational: Eleanor Roosevelt chaired the Commission on Human Rights, John P. Humphrey of the Secretariat prepared the preliminary draft, René Cassin composed what the UN identifies as the first draft, and delegates including P. C. Chang, Charles Malik and Hernán Santa Cruz shaped its philosophical and socioeconomic content.

The vote left the UN with an agreed articulation of universal rights against which conduct could be judged, but no new treaty-enforcement system. The Assembly had approved the Genocide Convention the previous day.