U. N. Committee Votes Unanimously to Outlaw Racist, Religious Bias

The General Assembly’s Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee voted unanimously here today to draft two separate UN declarations, one condemning religious intolerance, and the other assailing racial discrimination. The vote came without a dissent in the 110-member committee after more than a week’s debate, launched by Israel, on a draft resolution calling for measures to forbid racial manife stations and religious prejudice throughout the world.

According to today’s resolution, a separate declaration on each of the related items will be drafted and presented to the Assembly by the time it convenes its 18th session, in September 1963. Then, today’s resolution ordered, two international conventions are to be drafted, in time for the following year’s Assembly, in 1964. Thus, if the time-table holds, international law will, for the first time, make both religious intolerance and racial discriminations illegal for every country whose government is a member of the United Nations.

Arab and Soviet representatives were visibly unhappy about the adoption of today’s resolution. The Arabs and the Russians have fought hard but with minor success against the interpretation of the entire issue as one dealing with anti-Semitism specifically and with Soviet Government repressions of Jewish religion and culture in general. They succeeded only in getting the committee to separate the issue of racial discrimination from religious intolerance. When today’s resolution came to a vote, not a single member voted against it. The resolution now goes to a plenary session of the Assembly. Since the committee vote was officially recorded as unanimous, the draft is certain to pass in the plenary session.