Indivisible Human Rights: A History

Chapter 5: Including Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights

Chapter 5 Including Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights Resolution 421 (V): The U.S. State Department “Postmortem” In Chapter 3, I offered a variety of views—our received wisdom—about the West and its position on economic, social, and cultural rights. Despite significant evidence pointing to more nuanced interpretations about this question, this debate continues.1 Was the United States really opposed to economic, social, and cultural rights? A review of internal U.S. State Department memoranda and instructions that would be sent to the U.S. delegation at the United Nations sheds an interesting— subtle and nuanced—light on this question. Before moving to the work of the Seventh Session of the Commission on Human Rights, this chapter opens with an examination of how the U.S. State Department viewed the adoption of General Assembly Resolution 421 (V) and the options the U.S. would pursue in the Commission in 1951. A memorandum dated December 22, 1950, sent by the Deputy Director of the Office of United Nations Economic and Social Affairs (James Green) to David Popper, the Principal Executive Officer of the U.S. Delegation to the General Assembly, titled “Post-Mortem on the Third Committee” reviewed the “Box Score” of voting on issues of interest to the United States at the U.N. Under the “tied” column is listed “Human Rights Covenant,” yet that tie involved a defeat over the decision to include economic, social, and cultural rights in the Covenant.2 In examining the reasons for defeat, the memo mentions the special characteristics of the Third Committee, including Green’s observation that many delegations are “motivated by deep emotional convictions rather than by the political considerations which are in evidence elsewhere in the assembly.”3 Green remarked that the Third Committee “is a forum for the underdeveloped countries and for those that oppose ‘colonialism.’ . . . Many different debates had obvious overtones; the colored peoples in opposition to the white, the newly independent 88 Chapter 5 countries against the administering powers, and the underdeveloped against the industrialized nations.”4 This sentiment was reflected by the comments that Eleanor Roosevelt made to John Humphrey at a reception two days after this memo was written.5 The memo pointed out that “the Soviet delegation and its four satellites took a relatively minor part in the work of the Committee. . . . For the most part they expressed their usual positions in a relatively perfunctory manner. As a result, the other delegations did not coalesce into an anti-Soviet group, but were left free to carry on their battles against the United States.”6 The memo also cites a lack of support from the United Kingdom and France as another reason that U.S. positions did not gain the support that they should have. “Frequent splits between the United States, the British Commonwealth, and the Western European powers made United States leadership difficult.”7 Green also cites the unpopularity of many U.S. positions, which, despite their being “well considered and entirely logical,” were “widely regarded as restrictive and conservative.”8 The next section of the memo makes recommendations for the next year, focusing especially on the need for the United States to take concerted steps to woo especially the underdeveloped states in the Third Committee. “The Third Committee should be regarded next year as a place where the United States can further its political objectives by listening sympathetically to the underdeveloped countries and by meeting their requests whenever feasible.”9 It also urges a stronger effort at diplomatic preparation for the sixth session of the General Assembly: “We need particularly to try to reduce to an absolute minimum our differences with the United Kingdom, the old Dominions, and the Western European countries, in order to limit the formation of opposing blocs of underdeveloped countries and prevent their playing the other highly developed countries off against the United States.”10 This advice seems to have been heeded, given the fact that the U.S. and the U.K. finally agreed on the level of precision of the drafted language of the first eighteen articles of the Covenant, and on measures of implementation. As for how the U.S. delegation should work diplomatically during the drafting of resolutions in the Third Committee, the memo suggests, “A special effort should be made next year to see that our Delegation does not insist too rigidly on the precise drafting of resolutions” and that the State Department should emphasize “broad objectives rather than . . . details.”11 The delegation...