Jacob Blaustein last night proposed the immediate appointment of a “United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights,” who would help governments instigate specific violations of human rights.
“If the human rights commitment in the United Nations Charter is to be effective,” he said, the trend must be toward “a greater capacity to deal with–initially, at least, to expose and air, if not to judge–specific violations.”
Mr. Blaustein, former United States delegate to the United Nations General Assembly, made the proposal in a Dag Hammarskjold Memorial Lecture at Columbia University. The Dag Hammarskjold Memorial Lectures are sponsored jointly by Columbia University, the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation and the United States Committee of the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation.
“The time has arrived to strengthen the executive powers of the United Nations in the matter of human rights,” Mr. Blaustein said. The General Assembly or the Secretary-General, he suggested, might appoint “an independent personality who would be a kind of international commissioner.” The appointment would not require a treaty and therefore “it should have the ready support of those member states, like the United States and some others, which have not been willing thus far to enter into treaties,” he said.
Mr. Blaustein charged that the United States’ policy in the United Nations during the past 10 years has been “a retreat from the position of leadership this country had assumed in the international protection of human rights.” He criticized the government’s refusal to consider ratifying certain human rights covenants, drafts of which the United Nations has been trying to write for several years.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
