18 Quotes by Rene Cassin

As a consequence of these hesitations and of the vague character of such innovations, the Commission on Human Rights itself had doubts from the beginning about its role and its functions in general.

How is it that, once victory took form and the horrible spectacle of the extermination camps was revealed, we could have shamelessly broken the promises given to the peoples in those years of ordeal?

In less than eighteen months, it prepared a first draft which it submitted to the General Assembly and which, at the end of one hundred sessions of elevated, often impassioned discussion, was adopted in the form of thirty articles on December 10, 1948.

The other salient characteristic of the Declaration is its universality: it applies to all human beings without any discrimination whatever; it also applies to all territories, whatever their economic or political regime.

Similarly, the problem of the rights of the state in the disposition of inheritances left by individuals presents social aspects of the first importance.

The single outstanding exception was the broad yet precise mandate communicated by the General Assembly in 1946 to prepare as soon as possible the Charter of Human Rights which the San Francisco Conference had not had the time or the courage to draw up.

The International Labor Organization was the only agency with a broad mandate, limited moreover to the protection of the rights of workers as such.

The exploitation of women, mass hunger, disregard for freedom of conscience and for freedom of speech, widespread and racial discrimination all these evils are far too prevalent to be overlooked.

I shall confess at the outset that it was only shortly after the beginning of this century that I entered active life – with a somewhat precocious capacity for involvement.