The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was designed like a Greek temple
René Cassin, the French jurist who shaped its final structure, pictured the 1948 declaration as the portico of a Greek temple. Its preamble forms the steps, the opening articles on dignity and equality lay the foundation, four groups of rights stand as columns, and a final trio of articles caps everything as the pediment.
In Cassin's scheme, the first column covers personal rights such as life and freedom from slavery, found in articles 3 to 11. The second, articles 12 to 17, deals with a person's place in civil society, including movement, property, nationality and asylum. The third, articles 18 to 21, protects freedoms of thought, religion, expression and assembly, and the fourth, articles 22 to 27, sets out rights to work, housing, health and education. The closing three articles stress the duties people owe one another and their communities. Lebanon's Charles Malik pushed for what became Article 28, a claim to a social and international order in which these rights can be realised.
The Canadian John Peters Humphrey drew up the blueprint, and Cassin wrote the first draft from it. The committee was chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, and its debates were famously lively. P.C. Chang of the Republic of China, a pluralist, wanted every reference to religion dropped and drew on Confucianism to break deadlocks, while Malik, a Christian theologian, answered with Thomas Aquinas. Roosevelt recalled Chang suggesting the Secretariat spend months studying Confucian fundamentals. Chile's Hernán Santa Cruz argued for economic and social rights despite resistance from some Western nations, and India's Hansa Mehta proposed replacing all men are created equal with all human beings.
Meeting in Paris at the Palais de Chaillot, the General Assembly approved the text on 10 December 1948. The UN then had 58 members: 48 backed it, eight abstained, two cast no vote, and not one opposed it.
It is not itself binding, but every one of the 193 UN member states has ratified at least one of nine treaties it inspired. Translated 577 times, it paved the way for the International Bill of Human Rights, completed in 1966.
Source: Universal Declaration of Human Rights
