U.N. Assembly Backs Jewish View on Right to Complain Against Human Rights Violations

The long campaign of Jewish organizations to roaden the scope of the international human rights treaty being prepared in the United Nations was advanced as a result of human rights action by the General Assembly yesterday. However, the vote left a long and rugged road ahead before a covenant ## completed.

What the Assembly did was to adopt a series of suggestions for revision of the present draft by the Human Rights Commission. Most important of these for non-governmental organizations was the Assembly’s call for consideration of provisions, either in the covenant itself or in future protocols, for receipt and examination of petitions on alleged violations of the instrument from individuals and organizations. The Assembly resolution specifically refers to proposals on this question advanced by give countries, including Israel and Uruguay. The Uruguayan proposal embodies a recommendation of the Consultative Council of Jewish Organizations.

In writing the original draft, the Human Rights Commission turned down all such suggestions and restricted implementation of the treaty to signatory states. The Assembly has now dissented from that approach, but has left up to the Commission the complicated task of deciding what implementation formula, encompassing individual petitions, a sufficient majority of U.N. members will approve. Actually, this means a second round of debate on the subject in the Commission, then in the Economic and Social Council, and finally again in the Assembly next year.

Meanwhile, the Social Committee adopted yesterday a definition of the term “refugee” as it is to be applied by the projected High Commissioner’s Office for Refugees. Under this definition a refugee is any person who is outside his country of nationality as a “result of events occurring before Jan. 1, 1951, and owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality or political opinion.”