The pages are yellowed, filled with handwritten notes and multiple erasures. These sheets of paper are, however, witnesses to History: they form the first draft of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 and the words we see there are those of John Humphrey, the law professor of the McGill University in Montreal which wrote it, expressing all the post-war ideals for humankind.
Many modifications have of course been made to it, the result of negotiations between States and the contribution of other jurists such as the Frenchman René Cassin, but the Declaration has, since its origins, this very particular link with Canada. The name of John Humphrey has been and is forever linked to the protection of fundamental rights.
This New Brunswick native, lawyer and professor, was teaching law when an incredible opportunity presented itself, barely a year after the end of the Second World War. He was offered to chair the brand new Human Rights Division of the United Nations (UN), a commission of which had been tasked with drafting a “charter of rights”.
He set about the task, first gathering all the documents he could get his hands on on the subject of human rights and listing each of the rights enshrined therein. He will then write a first draft of 48 articles. The final version, adopted in the form of a resolution by the member countries of the UN on December 10, 1948, ultimately contained 30 articles.
It will not contain all of John Humphrey’s suggestions. For example, an article providing for the protection of minorities will be eliminated, “because most governments are more interested in assimilating minorities than in protecting them,” he would later say.
He later seemed surprised by the international recognition for his contribution, saying humbly in 1988: “It was part of my work. Someone has to start making things happen. »
William Schabas, professor of international law at Middlesex University, London, and specialist in fundamental rights, reports having discovered “all personal” contributions from Mr. Humphrey: for example, Article 27 of the Declaration states: right to enjoy the arts”, a reference which was not subsequently taken up in the international conventions adopted by UN member countries.
Canada’s hesitations
Canada’s contribution to the Declaration “is not just rosy,” warned Stéphane Beaulac, full professor at the University of Montreal, specialist in international law and fundamental rights, and senior counsel at Dentons LLP, in an interview.
There was a lot of “resistance” from Canada to the adoption of the Declaration, he says. Because if Canada presents itself today as a champion of human rights, it was at times disinterested, even reluctant, at the end of the Second World War. He even abstained during a committee vote to adopt the Universal Declaration, recalls Mr. Schabas, who notes that there is still a “certain mythology” around Canada’s contribution at that time. . Canada poses today The Global Affairs Canada website speaks today of its “central role” in the drafting of the Universal Declaration.
“Rubbish,” says Mr. Schabas, however excluding from this harsh observation the enthusiastic and hard work of John Humphrey, who played “a very important role. »
On the day of the final vote, External Affairs Minister Lester B. Pearson explained this abstention to the General Assembly by noting that the Canadian government was concerned that the Declaration did not respect provincial jurisdiction.
“A bogus argument,” harshly judges Mr. Schabas, who conducted research on this event, published in the McGill Law Review : the Declaration was not binding on States, he recalls.
According to him, the abstention was more an attempt to satisfy a conservative fringe in the country who did not like this idea of “human rights”. They believed that Jehovah’s Witnesses would abuse freedom of religion, and that communists and trade unionists would misuse freedom of association. And they had the ear of the cabinet, he said, whose attitude toward the declaration sometimes approached “hostility.”
After 20 years with the UN, John Humphrey returned to teach at McGill in 1966. He received numerous awards and distinctions, notably from the United Nations, and devoted the rest of his life to the advancement of human rights. person.