A/73/227 the human rights, including cultural rights, of everyone. 6 This was the one generalizable position, and indeed the only one that could respect diversity. 4. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was drafted at a time of devastation and insecurity, with millions of refugees displaced across Europe, the Indian subcontinent and many other parts of the world. The ghost of the Holocaust and other atrocities of the Second World War haunted the process, leading states to sustain “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”. 7 Among the drafters were those who were committed to the total defeat of Nazism and fascism, to the end of the age of empires and to the recognition that these goals required a common strategy: a universal search for liberty and equality. This search crystallized in the Declaration. Significant additions were made by recently decolonized States with regard to the prohibition of slavery and of discrimin ation, as well as guarantees of the rights of women and the right to self-determination. 8 5. Hernán Santa Cruz of Chile, a member of the drafting committee, described the drafting exercise as “a truly significant historic event in which a consensus had be en reached as to the supreme value of the human person, a value that did not originate in the decision of a worldly power, but rather in the fact of existing ”. 9 6. All too often the history of human rights norms, and of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights itself, is written by Governments opposed to universality, and even by some who advocate it, and by some academic critics of human rights in an exclusivist way, emphasizing the contributions of European and North American delegates and overlooking the truly global contributions that blended together to create a transcultural human rights framework. While it is appropriate to celebrate the well-known and significant contributions of individuals such as Eleanor Roosevelt and René Cassin, insufficient attention has been paid to the work of other women delegates and delegates from the global South in the drafting process. We need to recognize and pay tribute to the efforts of delegates such as Minerva Bernardino, a diplomat and feminist leader from the Do minican Republic, Hansa Mehta, an anti-colonial feminist, a member of the Constituent Assembly and the representative of India to the Commission on Human Rights, and Begum Shaista Ikramullah from Pakistan. It is thanks to Mehta that the first article of th e declaration refers to “all human beings” rather than “all men”, which she feared would be interpreted to exclude women 10. Bernardino pushed for the use of the phrase “equality of men and women” in the preamble. 11 7. Divisions were not along clear lines of religious, cultural or national blocs, but sometimes within them. For example, it is in part thanks to Ikramullah (who also received support from Egypt at the time) that article 16 contains the guarantee of equal rights in marriage, notwithstanding the opposition of Saudi Arabia — a truly pioneering achievement for its time. This provision challenged racial segregation laws in countries such as the United States of America, as well as limitations on marriage based on religion, caste and nationality in other countries. The Foreign Minister of Pakistan defended the right to leave religion in the General Assembly __________________ 6 7 8 9 10 11 18-12312 Chetan Bhatt, “The challenges to universalism”, presentation at the Special Rapporteur’s expert consultation, Geneva, 28 February 2018. David Mayers, “Humanity in 1948: the Genocide Convention and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights”, Diplomacy and Statecraft, vol. 26, No. 3 (2015). Gita Sahgal, “Who wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? ”, Open Democracy, 2012, available at www.opendemocracy.net/5050/gita-sahgal/who-wrote-universal-declaration-ofhuman-rights. See www.un.org/en/sections/universal-declaration/history-document/index.html. Sahgal, “Who wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? ”. OHCHR, “Women helped make the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ‘universal’”. 25/26