Jewish Congress Asks U.N. Human Rights Commission for Specific Safeguards

Representatives of the World Jewish Congress last ## addressed public sessions of three sub-committees of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights which is meeting here and made specific suggestions for the protection of Jews and other minorities.

At the group working on machinery to implement a convention outlawing practice abridging human rights, the Congress asked that the same machinery, once it is ## up, be applied to the peace treaties already signed between the Allies and the ## satellite states. It also requested that international non-governmental bodies ##nabled to attend Commission meetings and offer petitions and that the petitions of bodies with consultative status be heard without prior screening.The Congress asked the unit working on a draft convention to include an artide in the document prohibiting any nation from invoking the principle of liberty to jutify the destruction of liberty. At the sub-committee drafting a moral declaration on human rights, A.L. Easterman, political secretary of the organization, urged that national laws concerning arrest and detention be clarified to conform with the ##nciples of the U.N. Charter, and thus avoid a state of affairs such as resulted ##ing the last decade when the Nazis oppressed hundreds of thousands of Jews in ##many under the authority of national laws.General Carlos Romulo, Philippine delegate, moved Easterman’s proposal and offered and amendment providing that all national laws, decrees and judicial and ad##nistrative acts be in conformity with the principles of the Charter. He thanked ## Congress for the basic idea behind his proposal.The Commission’s Sub-committee on Minorities and Discrimination last night ##ncluded its deliberations and recommended four specific articles for inclusion in ##e draft declaration. Included were:1. A declaration that everyone is entitled to the rights set forth, regardless of race, sex, religion, language, political or other opinion, property status ## social origin.

2. A declaration of freedom to move within a state and freedom to emigrate and change nationality.

3. A declaration of the right to public employment subject to general non##iscriminatory examinations.4. A declaration of the rights of minorities to their own schools and religious institutions.

A fifth article providing for equal status before the law was temporarily by-passed. A U. S. suggestion that committees be appointed to complaints of minorities or individuals against violations was turned down as premature.