A/77/246 20. The Special Rapporteur is grateful for all the submissions by States, civil society organizations and other groups and individuals. 3 B. Minorities have human rights, but not immediately 21. The creation of the United Nations and the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights did not occur without divisions an d tensions in terms of ideology and priorities. These already existed between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and their respective allies before the Second World War, and continued between the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. Tensions also existed between Western and emerging States in the global South. 22. In the area of human rights, some of these differences were clear from the debates over what was to be incorporated into international human rights sta ndards. Civil and political rights were emphasized by the West, and economic, social and cultural rights were defended by Eastern European and non -European countries. There were, however, other disagreements and debates over the nature and content of the new human rights architecture that was being hammered out before the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Among the more prominent were whether the Declaration would contain exclusively individualistic rights (yes – at least initially), whether it would include a petition mechanism so that allegations of human rights breaches could be raised directly at the United Nations (no – but with eventual mechanisms under specific treaties) and whether minorities should be referred to explicitly in the Declaration (no – at least not initially). 23. The latter exclusion is not entirely straightforward, yet it remains symptomatic of a malaise in the new institution and its “universal” human rights orientation, as well as the lack of consensus among the States Member of the United Nations. As indicated in an earlier thematic report of the Special Rapporteur on the concept of minorities (A/74/160), there were proposals for the inclusion of a minority provisio n in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 4 24. While there were draft proposals and discussions, there was no agreement. Two narratives emerge in 1947 and 1948 over a human rights provision for minorities in the Declaration: a more sanitized one, which suggested that the “supreme importance” of the provision meant that it had to be more closely examined (see A/74/160, para. 35) and could not be included in the future Declaration, and a more accurate one, which emerged from the reading of the travaux préparatoires themselves and of the resolution on the fate of minorities (resolution 217 C (III)), which accompanied the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 10 December 1948. The text of this – now largely forgotten – resolution intimates some of the reasons for the exclusion of any mention of minorities and also the unease at such an exclusion. The resolution reads as follows: __________________ 3 4 22-11516 See https://www.ohchr.org/en/calls-for-input/2022/call-inputs-place-human-rights-minoritiesinstitutions-structures-and. The drafting committee of the Declaration made a proposal for a minority provision, which read: “In States inhabited by a substantial number of persons of a race, language or religion other than those of the majority of the population, persons belonging to suc h ethnic, linguistic or religious minorities shall have the right as far as compatible with public order to establish and maintain their schools and cultural or religious institutions, and to use their own language in the press, in public assembly and before the courts and other authorities of the State” (E/CN.4/21, annex F, art. 36). 7/21