CAB129-45 — Page 82

Printed for the Cabinet. March 1951

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CONFIDENTIAL

C.P. (51) 82

19th March, 1951

CABINET

Copy No. 31

UNITED NATIONS: COVENANT ON HUMAN RIGHTS

MEMORANDUM BY THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS

In C.P. (51) 57 the Minister of State undertook to submit to the Cabinet matters of substance which would arise at the meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Commission in April. I shall now be grateful for a decision by the Cabinet whether or no we should continue our efforts to achieve a United Nations Covenant on Human Rights.

2. The United Kingdom Government has hitherto led those who have demanded a Covenant on Human Rights. We have argued that both the rights themselves and the limitations on them should be clearly defined, so that binding obligations would be imposed on the participating States. We have insisted, against the opposition of the Russians and others, that there must be means of enforce- ment and implementation in the Covenant. But, again in conflict not only with the Russians but also with a good many others, we have insisted on confining the subject-matter to "fundamental" rights and on excluding "economic, social and cultural" rights, &c. In pursuance of this policy we submitted to the United Nations in 1947 a Bill of Human Rights which was used as a basis for the first discussions on a draft Covenant. Speeches have been made by Ministers in both Houses of Parliament laying down the policy outlined above. Further, we have signed, and have been the first signatory to ratify, a Convention on Human Rights drawn up by the Council of Europe.

3. The debates in the various United Nations bodies concerned during the past year, and particularly in the Third Committee of the General Assembly last autumn, have made it evident that a generally acceptable Covenant, or one accept- able to us, is unlikely to emerge. Many of the decisions taken at the Assembly on important points were taken by a minority of votes, if favourable votes were contrasted with negative votes plus abstentions. As far as the United Kingdom is concerned, many of the recommendations made were contrary to our views of what is desirable. It was decided that the Covenant should include economic, social and cultural rights and the right to national self-determination. A clause was adopted by the Assembly which was intended to apply the Covenant auto- matically to all the dependent territories of a signatory State, thus exactly reversing our own demand for a colonial application clause" of a kind which would enable the Governments of overseas territories, according to normal British constitutional practice, to consider the Covenant for themselves and to take their own decisions about its extension to their territories. (This was a success for the "anti-colonial " Powers.)

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4. The Covenant seems to have become, for a number of nations, a mere pretext for tacks on the colonial Powers. Futhermore the good faith of various

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Hatons in fresenting or supporting sweeping resolution¶urfhe inclusion of a maximum number of rights and of wide measures of implementation is very doubtful. To take but one example: on a resolution by Soviet Russia to delete the whole of that part of the Covenant dealing with enforcement, on the grounds that it would constitute an interference in the domestic affairs of States, there were no less than twelve abstentions, including a number of countries which had been pressing for additional rights in the draft Covenant, among which were most of the Arab countries and India and Pakistan.

5. Although it would be open to the Human Rights Commission to refuse to accept the recommendations of the General Assembly, it does not seem likely that it will do so. It is therefore necessary to decide whether our attitude during this next session of the Human Rights Commission should be one of continued co-operation aimed at obtaining the least objectionable draft or whether we should try to disengage from the exercise. The least objectionable draft might still be unacceptable to us, because the drafting of some article was contrary to English law or to the policy of His Majesty's Government, or because, for example, it contained an article authorising individual petitions to an international authority against the actions of a signatory Government.

6. In making this decision it is necessary to bear in mind that we have in the past taken the lead in putting forward the idea that a Covenant is desirable and in insisting on the revision of the first eighteen Articles of the draft Covenant (defining fundamental rights) to make them more precise and effective. As to inserting economic, social and cultural rights in the draft Covenant, we have in the United Nations consistently opposed this on the grounds that such rights were not suitable for inclusion in an instrument of this kind. Nevertheless, it must be remem- bered that the Council of Europe is considering a Protocol adding to the European Convention on Human Rights the rights to property, education and free elections, to which the United Kingdom may, on conditions, find it desirable to accede, although no decision has yet been taken that we should do so.

7. We must therefore examine the repercussions which would follow from disengagement. On the one hand, we must expect the worst construction to be put on any failure of ours to continue to support a Covenant. The Slav bloc will make the most of it in propaganda, which will probably emphasise our unwillingness to guarantee economic and social rights. The “anti-colonial" Powers, including some members of the Commonwealth, will undoubtedly be inclined to take the same sort of line, ascribing our unwillingness to participate either to an objection to the inclusion of economic and social rights, or to our dislike of the clause automatically including dependent territories. We should therefore have to explain our views and defend ourselves, and past experience suggests that we should get a poor hearing. Moreover, the abandonment of our participation in an attempt to secure a Covenant would probably lead to protests by interested British societies and in Parliament. Finally, if we were to abandon our advocacy of a Covenant this would not necessarily mean that the Commission would cease functioning or that it would fail to produce a further draft Covenant for the consideration of the Economic and Social Council and the Assembly. During these further discussions the fact of our disengagement might well be the subject of unfavourable comment.

8. On the other hand it is quite possible that, if we were now to take the line that a Covenant is not, after all, a practicable objective, we might obtain support from a number of countries. There are the most varied opinions about what the Covenant should include, and there has been a good deal of inconsistency in voting in the Third Committee of the Assembly. A strong case could be made that no satisfactory Covenant can be evolved from the widely conflicting views of so many nations and that there appears to be considerable doubt in a number of countries as to the possibility of reaching agreement. If we were to take up such an attitude we could point to the European Convention on Human Rights which we were the first country to ratify and argue that here was an instrument which was an effective guarantee of human rights because there was a fundamental similarity of outlook between the signatory nations. No such similarity of outlook has revealed itself in the United Nations discussions on the draft Covenant on Human Rights. Since the draft has been argued out in the greatest detail it is futile to go over the ground again unless a disposition to agree on fundamental matters manifests itself immediately in the opening sittings of the Human Rights Commission

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