The United Nations Commission on Human Rights, holding its 20th annual session here since March 8, adjourned today after a month of deliberations which nearly all members of the 21-delegation body considered one of the most productive series of human rights meetings in two decades.
During the session this year, the Commission adopted five vital articles in a draft Convention on the elimination of religious intolerance; voted overwhelmingly to include in that draft a specific mention of anti-Semitism as one of the prejudices that must be eliminated throughout the world; decided to consider another Convention which would ban statutes of limitations on the apprehension, extradition, trial and punishment of war criminals; and named a working committee to study a proposal that the U. N. create a new post, that of United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Most of these matters are to be pursued at the Commission next session, to be convened in Geneva a year from now. They were designated as priority issues to be ready for General Assembly consideration in the fall of 1967.
Of particular interest to Jews was the fact that two of the Commission’s leading delegates this year were Morris B. Abram, representing the United States, and Israel’s Supreme Court Associate Justice Haim H. Cohn, representing Israel. Mr. Abram is president of the American Jewish Committee.
Secretary-General U Thant announced just before the Commission adjourned, that he has appointed Marc Schreiher, until now deputy director of the general legal division of the United Nations Office of Legal Affairs, as director of the Division of Human Rights. Mr. Schreiber, who has been a member of the Secretariat since 1946, succeeds John H. Humphrey, whose resignation from the Secretariat is to take effect at the end of this month. Mr. Humphrey, who will assume a faculty post at McGill University in Montreal, was given a farewell luncheon last week by the North American section of the World Jewish Congress.
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