U.N. Committee Gets Proposals for Strengthening International Bill of Human Rights

Several recommendations aimed at strengthening the draft Bill of Human Rights, drawn up last June, have been submitted to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, which will convene in Geneva on Monday to begin consideration of the document prepared by its drafting committee, it was announced today by the Consultative Council of Jewish Organizations.

The body, which includes the American Jewish Committee, the Anglo-Jewish Association and the Alliance Israelite Universelle, stressed that the Bill of Human Rights must take the form of an international convention with enforcement provisions, rather than a mere declaration. In addition, it suggested the following measures dealing with implementation of whatever convention is agreed to:

1. The right of immigration, affirmed in the drafting committee’s report, should be supplemented by international action to provide “facilities for transit and immigration.” 2. To the provision in the clause on freedom of information which bars from its benefits publications likely to promote disorder or crime, or aimed at the suppression of human rights and fundamental freedoms, should be added publications “advocating or calculated to promote racial or religious hatred, discrimination or persecution.” 3. Statelessness shall be recognized as “a denial of human rights and contrary to the interests of the international community.”

As an alternative to creation of an International Court of Rights, which is unlikely to be set up, the CCJO suggests that individuals and organizations be given the right to petition the U.N. Economic and Social Council on questions of human rights and that member states be authorized to raise violations of human rights before the General Assembly.