The Gazette 1973

THE ENFORCEMENT OF HUMAN RIGHTS S.A.D.S.I INAUGURAL PART I

The Inaugural Meeting of the 89th Session of the Solicitors Apprentices Debating Society was held in the Library, Solicitors' Buildings, Dublin, on 23rd March 1973 at 8 p.m. Mr. T. V. O'Connor, President, took the chair, and the Records Secretary, Mr. Denis Barron, B.C.L., read a humorous account of the 88th Inaugural Meeting. Having referred to "De Bello Mallico" which meant that the bell tolled for Des O'Malley, who came to the meeting with his foot soldiers known as "Brachii Speci- alii", and "Gardii O'Malii" —friends of the great general. The women opposing him shouted "Brutalitas Gardiorum" and, having been driven back shouted "Desmondus delendus est". Then O'Mallius erroneously said: "Fiat Justitia ruat caelum" which translated means "I'll be Minister for Justice even if the heavens fall". The customary awards for Oratory, Legal Debate, Impromptu and Irish Debate were then distributed. The Auditor, Mr. Bryan C. Sheridan, then read his Inaugural Address on "The Enforcement of Human Rights", as follows. Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen. 1973 marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the adop- tion by the United Nations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, the twentieth anniversary of the entry into force of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms in 1953, and the fifteenth anniversary of the achievement by the European Court of Human Rights of its competence to hear cases under the Convention. These afford a timely excuse for a review of Human Rights Law and Practice. While the concepts are much older, it was really in the "Enlightenment" that, as d'Entreves puts it, Natural Law became more a "theory of rights than a theory of law". From this period date the Virginian Declaration of Rights of Man, the American Declaration of Inde- pendence and Declaration des Droits de l'Homme et du Citoyen which together form the precedent for the inclusion in nation's constitutions of recitals of the freedoms their citizens should enjoy. Human Rights after the Second World War It was in the period after the Second World War that Human Rights and especially the idea of universal en- forcement of Human Rights came into its own. Conse- quently it is on this period I intend to concentrate. It was the reaction to the denials of, and outrages against, Human Rights in the Second War that brought about the specific inclusion of promotion and encour- agement of respect for Human Rights in the Charter of the United Nations Organisation. That war for many proved the necessity of respect for Human Rights as a prerequisite for world peace. At the height of the war, in the Atlantic Charter of 14th August 1941, which was later endorsed by forty- seven nations, Roosevelt and Churchill expressed the hope that peace when achieved would "afford assur-

ances that all men in all lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want". The Declaration of the United Nations signed on 1st January 1942 by twenty-six countries at war and later endorsed by twenty-one others, declared that vic- tory was essential to "preserve human rights and justice in their own lands as well as in others". The Charter of the tjnited Nations The promotion of respect for Human Rights formed part of the 1944 Dumbarton Oaks proposals which became the basis upon which the San Francisco Confer- ence of 1945 drew up, and opened for signature, the Charter of the United Nations Organisation. In the Preamble to the Charter the peoples of the United Nations "express their determination to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small". The encouragement of respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion is declared by Article 1 of the Charter to be one of the purposes of the United Nations. The initiation of studies and the making of recom- mendations to assist in the realisation of human rights, is given to the General Assembly by Article 13 and to the Economic and Social Council by Article 62. All members pledge themselves to take joint and separate action in co-operation with the U.N. for the achievement of universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms. The Economic and Social Council was to set up a Commission for the Promotion of Human Rights and this was done in 1946. At the San Francisco Conference, and indeed even before, the idea of drafting an International Bill of Rights was put forward. The first object of the Com- mission on Human Rights was to be the preparation of such a Bill. When work on this was started it was decided that the Bill of Rights would be in two parts, a Declaration and later a Covenant, containing measu- res of implementation. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights Thus in 1948 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was presented to the General Assembly by the Chairman of the Commission, Mrs Eleanor Roosevelt, and on December 10th of that year was adopted by resolution of the Assembly. Of fifty-eight States then members of "the United Nations, forty-eight voted in favour, none voted against, eight abstained, and two were absent. Inasmuch as it is merely declaratory and sets stan- dards to which governments should conform the Declar- ation resembles the Declaration des Droits de l'Homme but it is original in the scope of rights covered. For as well as listing what might be called the traditional rights such as life, liberty, and person, the Universal 112