| Summary/Abstract |
By approving prohibitions on genocide and embracing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the United Nations in 1948 sustained a theory premised on the centrality of people—both in their collective and individual capacities—that enjoyed primacy over the claims of the sovereign state. This affirmation of human rights dovetailed with the UN’s earlier endorsement of the Nuremberg principles with their emphasis on personal accountability. The melding of privileges and responsibilities gestured toward, although it did not fully encompass, that philosophical line strenuously espoused at the time by the eminent legal theorist, Hersch Lauterpacht: the state is not a sanctified end but merely the custodian of the welfare and ultimate purpose of human beings. This analysis examines the Genocide Convention and the UDHR and brings into conversation their drafting histories, politics, and diplomacy. It traces the saga of two seminal documents and their tandem fates in Cold War America. The collectivist project of the Genocide Convention and the individualistic emphasis of the UDHR are usefully placed in the same analytical frame, something seldom done in the literature that deals with human rights and norms-making of the late 1940s and their interaction with Cold War dilemmas. As peoples and governments pick their way through the hazards of the twenty-first century, it is exigent—for the sake of upright bearing—to stay mindful of the orientation prescribed in the Genocide Convention and the UDHR.
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