U.N. Human Rights Commission Ends Session; Fails to Prepare International Treaty

The U.N. Commission Human Rights today completed its third session with its members conceding that while its draft of an international treaty guaranteeing all the accepted liberties and basic freedoms would have to be Postponed until 1949, the Human Rights Declaration represents a vast improvement over previous U.N. formulations.

The chairman, Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, and the representative of France suggested at today’s closing session that the Commission should recommend to its parent body, the Economic and Social Council, that it reconvene early next year to complete work on the international treaty and the measures through which human rights guarantees can he implemented.

Mrs. Roosevelt also proposed that the completed declaration should go to the General Assembly for adoption when, it meets in Paris September 21, in spite of the fact that the covenant will not be ready at that time. This move was opposed by Geoffrey Wilson of Britain, who argued that it had been generally agreed that the texts of the declaration and the treaty should he considered simultaneously by the Assembly. The question will be decided, however, by the Economic and Social Council, which meets in Geneva July 18.

The declaration will have only a moral effect while the treaty, when it is completed and ratified by the U.N. member nations, will be legally binding. One of the most significant amendments written into the declaration at this session is the condemnation of “incitement to discrimination.” Over U.S. objections, the Commission accepted this broadening of the original provision at the insistence of the Soviet bloc. The Commission is, therefore, on record as condensing not only the existence of religious, racial or national discrimination, but also its incitement.