The Universal Declaration of Human Rights has been the centrepiece of the modern international law of human rights for more than sixty years. If anything, its significance continues to grow. The Declaration was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948. The Charter of the United Nations, which entered into force in October 1945, recognized the importance of human rights but gave only the most general indications about the content of the concept. At the time the Charter was adopted, at the San Francisco Conference in June 1945, United States President Harry S. Truman said that “under this document [the Charter] we have good reason to expect an international bill of rights, acceptable to all the nations involved”.

The official documents relating to the drafting of the Universal Declaration are reproduced in this collection, from the pioneering work of the so-called “nuclear” Commission on Human Rights, in 1946, to the final drama of the vote in the General Assembly on the evening of 10 December 1948. There are more than 700 individual documents. The material actually begins with the work of the Preparatory Commission, set up in late 1945 following the entry into force of the Charter of the United Nations. Thus, it does not contain the proceedings of the San Francisco Conference or of the earlier Dumbarton Oaks discussions. It concludes with the resolution of the General Assembly to which the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is annexed. The documents are drawn from a range of United Nations bodies, essentially the Commission on Human Rights and its subsidiary organs, the Economic and Social Council and the General Assembly. Relevant materials from the 1948 Conference on Freedom of Information and of the Press are also included. Every item in this collection bears an official United Nations document code.