Lots of Logos

The thing to remember about "On the Adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights" is that it's not a victory speech.

(We know Eleanor Roosevelt's entire career trajectory is in itself a victory, but that's a whole other story.)

When she stood in front of the Commission on Human Rights in 1948, she was less than pleased. They'd all been hanging out for way too long considering what they were trying to accomplish. As far as the former FLOTUS was concerned, giving the go-ahead to a history-making document focused on protecting human rights shouldn't even be a question, and she offers tons of logic to support her point of view.

As of 1948, there were 58 members of the United Nations, and they all had different ideas of what a government should look like. Sometimes those differences led to a few awkward situations—namely when certain countries (cough Soviet Union cough) used those differences as an excuse to avoid giving their stamp of approval to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

But this wasn't Roosevelt's first rodeo, and she was quick to knock the dissenters on their keisters by acknowledging that no government "can have what [they] want in a document of this kind. There are of course particular provisions in the Declaration before us with which we are not fully satisfied. I have no doubt this is true of other delegations, and it would still be true if we continued our labors over many years" (2-4).

Can you hear the implied "obviously" in there, or is it just us?

The Commission on Human Rights was completely unprecedented, and even the United Nations itself was swimming in uncharted waters. Its precursor, the League of Nations, had floundered and failed largely because of an unwillingness to compromise on certain issues, and Roosevelt wasn't going to let that happen with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

She unapologetically says the Soviet delegation was imposing on the General Assembly to talk again about making amendments to certain articles, and Roosevelt is "confident that they will be rejected without debate" (17).

In other words, enough is enough, and they need to get the show on the road.

Roosevelt dedicates the first half of her speech to meticulously laying out the Soviet amendments and immediately debunking them. And the naysayers might insist that this is all about those Cold War politics, but for Roosevelt, human rights are more important than any government. She believes "the Declaration, which has been worked on with such great effort and devotion, and over such a long period of time, must be approved by this Assembly at this session" (30).

And hold on to your hats, friends, because the logic train doesn't stop at that station.

Take a hot second to read through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Do you see how wide ranging and general the articles are?

Roosevelt doesn't hesitate to mention that in her speech, that "certain provisions of the Declaration are stated in such broad terms as to be acceptable only because of the provisions in article 30" (31), which says no one can do anything to violate the rights and freedoms listed in the previous articles.

Remember how we said there were 58 member nations, and they were all super different when it came to how their governments functioned? Well, the only real way to create a document that would work for everyone was to keep it general, and Roosevelt believed the broad language already addressed much of what the Soviet Union was concerned about.

It was open to interpretation—and, of course, this fabulous former FLOTUS offers proof of that, too.

Roosevelt talks about how, according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, "everyone has the right to equal access to the public service in his country" (32). But in the United States, any guy or gal who dreams of being an evil overlord wouldn't have access to public employment in the name of keeping the United States and its people safe.

And for her and most of the other member nations, that's what the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was all about—keeping people safe from the kind of "flagrant violation of human rights by Nazi and Fascist countries" (50).

The basic principles of the document were sound, and Roosevelt believed the General Assembly had done its job and assigned proper restrictions while simultaneously keeping in mind the diverse governments involved in the process.

Logically, there's nothing else to do but approve the darn thing and make it official because the "basic character of the document [...] is a Declaration of basic principles of human rights and freedoms" (43), and that's what was most important.