A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Mary Ann Glendon has written the definitive history of the successful effort by Eleanor Roosevelt and others in the late 1940s to draft and secure United Nations (UN) approval of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Although the declaration was not put in the form of a legally binding commitment, Glen-don emphasizes its importance as setting a common standard by which the rights and wrongs of every nation's behavior could be measured,…a pillar of a new international system under which a nation's treatment of its own citizens was no longer immune from outside scrutiny. According to Glendon, the worst fears of the Soviet Union and South Africa were eventually realized as the declaration “provided a rallying point for the freedom movements that spurred the collapse of totalitarian regimes in Eastern Europe and the demise of apartheid.” Glendon does not add much to Joseph Lash's account of Eleanor Roosevelt's role in winning support for the declaration in the United States and in the world community. Glendon's real contribution is the light she sheds on the key roles played by others, including René Cassin, whose drafting skill transformed the original draft of the declaration from a mere list of rights into a logical, coherent document, and Charles Malik, who guided the declaration through the treacherous shoals of the UN Economic and Social Committee and the General Assembly.