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<\/picture><\/a><\/p>\nEleanor Roosevelt speaking at the Conference For Human Rights in La Sorbonne, 1948.<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
Roosevelt was there to speak about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights<\/a>, a document whose drafting she\u2019d overseen<\/a>at the newly-formed United Nations<\/a>. The U.N. adopted the document that year on December 10, a date now commemorated as Human Rights Day.<\/p>\n The rights enumerated in the declaration were controversial among the U.N.\u2019s member nations, and remain so today. It proclaimed, among other rights, that \u201cEveryone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services.\u201d The former First Lady fought hard to make the declaration comprehensive, and later wrote that she considered it \u201cmy most important task\u201d<\/a> during her years at the U.N.<\/p>\n The 51 countries<\/a> that founded the U.N. did so in October 1945, just a couple months after the end of World War II<\/a>. In the wake of two world wars and the first nuclear bomb attacks<\/a>, and in the midst of a global refugee crisis, many feared that a more destructive World War III<\/a> was right around the corner. The U.N. was founded at a time when people like Eleanor Roosevelt wanted to avoid such a disaster and address human rights as a way of preventing war.<\/p>\n President Harry Truman<\/a> appointed Roosevelt to the U.S. delegation to the U.N. at the end of 1945. By then, she was well-known in the U.S. and abroad. As First Lady during Franklin D. Roosevelt<\/a>\u2019s administration from 1933 to 1945, she had championed poverty alleviation, access to education and civil rights, and traveled to the European and Pacific front lines of World War II. In April 1946, she became chair of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, and took on the task of drafting a human rights declaration for the world.<\/p>\n READ MORE: Why FDR Didn\u2019t Support Eleanor Roosevelt\u2019s Anti-Lynching Campaign<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Rooselvelt\u2019s ideas about human rights and the need to work toward global peace were heavily influenced by her experiences during the two world wars. On the home front, she served food to World War I<\/a>soldiers and \u201ctook the lead in making the federal government address shell-shocked sailors who were trapped in straight jackets in St. Elizabeth\u2019s Hospital in D.C.,\u201d says Allida Black,<\/a> a scholar at UVA\u2019s Miller Center for Public Affairs and editor emeritus of GWU\u2019s Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project<\/a>.<\/p>\n She saw firsthand the death and devastation in Europe caused by the First and Second World Wars, and continued to witness it during her U.N. appointment. In a column published in February 1946, she wrote about her visit to the Zeilsheim displaced persons camp<\/a> in Germany. After meeting Jewish people who had survived the Holocaust<\/a>, she reflected<\/a>: \u201cWhen will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?\u201d<\/p>\nPreventing War by Supporting Human Rights<\/h2>\n
Crafting a Declaration for All People<\/h2>\n
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